The Very Rev. Alan W. Jones, dean emeritus of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, died Sunday at 83. The dean’s most recent successor, the Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young, announced his death on Grace’s website on January 15.
“His wife, Cricket, spent the morning with him and stepped out of the room to visit with a friend,” Young wrote of Jones, who was living in a retirement community. “When she came back to his bedside, she discovered that his spirit had just departed. Early in the afternoon, we anointed Alan with oil and prayed for him.”
Bishop Marc Andrus announced the dean’s death to the Diocese of California on January 16, and added the detail that Jones died “peacefully and while watching the online webcast of the Sunday Eucharist at National Cathedral.”
Both Young and Andrus credited Jones with welcoming labyrinth piety to the cathedral, under the guidance of the Rev. Dr. Lauren Artress.
“The outdoor labyrinth outside my office at Diocesan House is a space used by people from early morning into dusk,” Andrus wrote. “I see people each day walking, dancing, skipping, sometimes walking very slowly the sinuous, continuous path of the labyrinth. There are many thousands of labyrinths registered worldwide, and it was Alan’s welcome to Lauren’s initiative that launched this global spiritual movement”
Jones was born in London in February 1940. He was a graduate the University of Nottingham and General Seminary, and then earned a Master of Sacred Theology from General and a Ph.D. from Nottingham. He was ordained to the priesthood in England and received into the Episcopal Church in 1967. He taught ascetical theology at General (1975-85) and then became dean of Grace in 1985, remaining there until 2009.
He was chaplain of the Venerable Order of St. John in 1985, became an honorary canon of Chartres Cathedral in 2001, and received an OBE from Queen Elizabeth II in 2003.
Jones was a prolific author, and his books included Soul Making: The Desert Way of Spirituality (1989), Journey Into Christ (1992), and Reimagining Christianity: Reconnect Your Spirit Without Disconnecting Your Mind (2004).
“Alan Jones was deeply steeped in Benedictine spirituality,” Young wrote. “We will never forget his generous vision for reimagining the church and for a Christianity whose primary message is that God loves everyone without exception.”