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Gavin Ashenden

Gavin began life originally reading Law, and intending to become a lawyer. Instead he was ordained as an Anglican, and spent ten years as a parish ‘priest’ in a London docklands parish and then a South London housing estate. After some postgraduate work with the Jesuits at London University in the Psychology of Religion, he became a University Chaplain and Senior lecturer for the next twenty three years. His Ph.D. was on the Oxford Inklings and so subsequently taught courses in Literature, Psychology as well as postgraduate courses in Monotheistic Mysticism. In the early 1980’s he spent some time smuggling bibles and medicine for dissident Christians behind the Iron Curtain, including carrying clandestine Catholic books to train seminarians in the underground church in Czechoslovakia. Arrests and interrogations at the hands of the Communist security services gave an additional perspective to his awareness of the need to guard freedom of speech and religion from the ambitions of the Left. His experience of the grittiness of Church politics was developed in part with being elected to the Church of England’s General Synod as a university theological representative for twenty years. For nine years he held the appointment as one of the Chaplains to the Queen. For four years he was presenter of a three hour BBC Faith and Ethics radio show He became a Catholic in 2019, and then Associate Editor of the Catholic Herald. Inspirational influences include in particular the recusants of post-’reformation’ England, St John Henry Newman, and GK Chesterton. He has written for the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, for four years had a weekly full page column in the Jersey Evening Post as well as a host of other publications and been interviewed regularly on news outlets around the world. He has been a speaker at a variety of conferences and universities in Europe and America; and is particularly looking forward to working with Dr Scott Hahn in the USA in the summer of 2026.

Articles By Gavin Ashenden

Lent as Training for Spiritual War – the Great Fight Back

Gavin Ashenden February 19, 2026 No Comments

“One of the reasons Evagrius can help us is that he names eight recurring thought-patterns by which temptation operates. If we are going to use Lent properly, we ought to allow ourselves to receive some training in recognising them early — and answering them quickly.” – Gavin Ashenden

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