Master of the Temple Church Announces Retirement

The Revd Dr Robin Griffith-Jones, Master of the Temple at the Temple Church in London, will retire from the Mastership on 31 July 2026. 

He leaves with immense affection for The Honourable Societies of the Inner Temple and Middle Temple, for their members, staff and tenants, for his colleagues in the Church, and for the Church's whole community; and with equal gratitude for all the support, kindness and friendship he has been shown since his arrival in 1999.

The Temple Church enjoys the status of a Royal Peculiar. It was consecrated in 1185 and was the scene of negotiations which led to Magna Carta in 1215. The activities of the Church are now overseen by the Temple Church Trust (Charity No. 1205712).

Before ordination Robin worked at Christie’s. He served as curate in outer Liverpool, and then as chaplain at Lincoln College, Oxford. He was appointed Master of the Temple in 1999. The weekly and welcome round of regular services and occasional offices – greatly enhanced by the Temple Church Choir and Temple Singers – has been intercalated with a succession of projects at the Church: the commission and premieres of Sir John Tavener’s all-night-musical vigil The Veil of the Temple (2003; with the formation of the Temple Music Foundation which continues to go from strength to strength); the series of discussions, launched by Archbishop Rowan Williams, and the ensuing book on Islam and English Law (2008-13); the 800^th Anniversary of Magna Carta (2015); two conferences and books on the Temple Church in collaboration with The Courtauld Institute of Art; and in recent years the preparations for the Church’s capital project Restoration & Renewal. (Not to mention his responses, over several years, to The Da Vinci Code, in which the Church and Master appear.)

Robin taught New Testament for many years at King’s College, London, where he holds a DLitt.

Principal publications: The Four Witnesses (Harper One; 2000), The Gospel according to Paul (Harper One, 2005); Mary Magdalen (Harper One, 2008). Co/edited and /authored: Islam and English Law (Cambridge University Press, 2013); Magna Carta, Religion and the Rule of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2015); The Temple Church in London (Boydell, 2010); Tomb & Temple: Re-imagining the Sacred Buildings of Jerusalem (Boydell, 2018)