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The following review is reprinted with permission from the 17 August 2001 edition of the Church Times.

Speech restored by BCP

Pat Ashworth.
A Clergyman from Bingley has won a Courage Award from the Stroke Association for resuming full-time parish work six months after he suffered a devastating stroke in 1998.

The Revd James Scantlebury, Vicar of Harden and Wilsden in Bingley, has won a Courage Award from the Stroke Association for resuming full-time parish work six months after he suffered a devastating stroke in 1998. He was presented with the award at a ceremony in London last month.

Mr Scantlebury was 50 when he suffered the stroke, which badly affected his right-hand side, and which left him at first unable to walk, eat, speak or write.

He remembers nothing of the first two or three days in Bradford Royal Infirmary, from where he was later transferred to St Luke’s Hospital for the Clergy.

The Book of Common Prayer was the means by which he learned to speak again. "I knew it off by heart, so I said it aloud in the shower and in the bath. Fortunately, the stroke hadn’t affected the part of my brain called intelligence or memory."

Mr Scantlebury’s speech returned comparatively quickly as a result, and although still getting to grips with writing and walking, he was back at work, with help, for the beginning of Lent in February 1999.

Formerly right-handed, Mr Scantlebury has had to learn to write again using his left hand. His sight remains poor, but a computer, printer and scanner provided by his local disability-service team has proved invaluable.

"With Visual Liturgy, you can get everything you need," he says. "I can’t speak highly enough of it: it’s been a godsend to me, literally."

Though he has learned to walk again, he sits down to take services. He uses a wheelchair when necessary, and "always in difficult terrain like a cemetery, to avoid any distress to the mourners".

Mr Scantlebury is full of praise for the help he receives from his parishioners, from his wife Sue and children; and from the Stroke Association. With that support, there is no aspect of clergy work that he is unable to do, from preaching to hospital visiting.

And there have been positive outcomes. "People who are disabled relate to me as a disabled vicar in a way they couldn’t have done before."

He hopes to set up a Christian charity called Bethesda. "I’ve looked at societies for the disabled, but there’s very little in this country devoted to Christian reflection on what’s happened.

"In other countries, there are schools and colleges devoted to disability studies. I feel God has called me to this."

When I rang Mr Scantlebury in his London hotel room for this interview, there was a pause after he answered. "Would you mind ringing back in five minutes?" he asked, sounding on the verge of laughter.

In reaching for the phone, he had fallen between the twin beds, and couldn’t get up again. It was the absurdity of his situation that had struck him — another indicator, perhaps, of why he has triumphed over the odds against him.

This article first appeared in the Church Times, dated 17 August 2001 and is copyright © Church Times. Reproduced by permission.