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Laurence Alexander " Laurie" Green (born 26 December 1945) is a retired British Anglican bishop. He was the Bishop of Bradwell from 1993 to 2011. Anglican Communion
During his time in Birmingham he initiated work in urban theology, worked with Hell's Angels and Skinheads and had his own BBC Radio programme, 'The Green Machine'. He also worked as Assistant Youth Officer for the diocese and as Industrial Chaplain to the British Steel Corporation (Bromford Tubes Division). At the same time he became an honorary lecturer at the Urban Theology Unit, Sheffield University; UTU, Sheffield For seven years, he was the principal of the Aston Training Scheme for Anglican ordinands, before returning to East London to become, before his ordination to the episcopate, Vicar of All Saints, Poplar. Church web site Poplar is situated in the London Docklands, where his parish had the new financial quarter of Canary Wharf being built at one end, in close proximity to the tower-blocks of abject poverty at the other.
Within the Diocese of Chelmsford, Green's Episcopal Area of Bradwell covered such towns as Basildon, Tilbury Docks, Southend, Maldon, Brentwood and Chelmsford as well as the deep rural areas of the Dengie peninsula where a stone chapel was built by St Cedd in 654 AD in Bradwell. Green then lived near to the River Thames, by the Dartford Tunnel & Bridge. He was a member of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Urban Theology Group, served on the Urban Bishops’ Panel of the Church of England and as chair of the Church of England's Urban Strategy Consultative Group. He was instrumental in the setting up of an International Anglican Commission and Network on Global Urbanisation.
On 11 February 2017, Green was one of fourteen retired bishops to sign an open letter to the then-serving bishops of the Church of England. In an unprecedented move, they expressed their opposition to the House of Bishops' report to General Synod on sexuality, which recommended no change to the Church's canons or practices around sexuality.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Retired Bishops' Letter — The Letter (Accessed 11 February 2017; the fourteen bishops were David Atkinson, Michael Doe, Tim Ellis, David Gillett, John Gladwin, Green, Richard Harries, Stephen Lowe, Stephen Platten, John Pritchard, Peter Selby, Tim Stevens, Martin Wharton, and Roy Williamson.) By 13 February, a serving bishop (Alan Wilson, Bishop of Buckingham) and nine further retired bishops had added their signatures; Retired Bishops' Letter — New Signatures (Accessed 17 February 2017; the nine bishops were Gordon Bates, Ian Brackley, John Davies, Peter Maurice, David Rossdale, John Saxbee, Martin Shaw, Oliver Simon, and David Stancliffe. on 15 February, the report was rejected by synod. The Grauniad — Church of England in turmoil as synod rejects report on same-sex relationships (Accessed 17 February 2017) Green has continued to campaign for full equality for practising homosexuals in the Church of England.
Green remains founding-chair of the National Estate Churches Network (NECN) and in retirement, works alongside the Church Urban Fund as Chair and Development Officer for the NECN in the support of the church’s work on the poorer housing estates and projects of the UK. He also continues to work as a founding trustee of the charity Building Better Futures International. He is also the bishop visitor to the Anglican Benedictine community of religious sisters at Malling Abbey, Kent.
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