- published: 16 Dec 2013
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Arthur Michael Ramsey, Baron Ramsey of Canterbury PC (14 November 1904 – 23 April 1988) was the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury. He was appointed on 31 May 1961 and was in office from June 1961 to 1974.
Michael Ramsey was born in Cambridge in 1904. His father was a Congregationalist and mathematician and his mother was a socialist and suffragette. He was educated at Repton School (where the headmaster was another future Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Francis Fisher) and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was President of the Cambridge Union Society and where his support for the Liberal Party won him praise from Herbert Asquith. His elder brother, Frank P. Ramsey (1903–1930), was a mathematician and philosopher (of, incidentally, atheist convictions) and something of a prodigy, who when only 19 translated into English Wittgenstein's Tractatus.
During his time in Cambridge the young Michael came under the influence of the Anglo-Catholic dean of Corpus Christi College, Edwyn Clement Hoskyns. On the advice of Eric Milner-White he trained at Cuddesdon, where he became friends with Austin Farrer and was introduced to Orthodox Christian ideas by Derwas Chitty. He was ordained in 1928 and became a curate in Liverpool, where he was influenced by Charles Raven.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group of Christians in the world[citation needed].
The current archbishop is the Most Reverend Rowan Williams. He is the 104th in a line which goes back more than 1400 years to St Augustine of Canterbury, the "Apostle to the English", in the year 597. From the time of St Augustine until the 16th century, the Archbishops of Canterbury were in full communion with the See of Rome and thus received the pallium. During the English Reformation the Church of England broke away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church, at first temporarily under Henry VIII and Edward VI and later permanently during the reign of Elizabeth I.
In the Middle Ages there was considerable variation in the methods of nomination of the Archbishop of Canterbury and other bishops. At various times the choice was made by the canons of Canterbury Cathedral, the King of England, or the Pope. Since the English Reformation, the Church of England has been more explicitly a state church and the choice is legally that of the British crown; today it is made in the name of the Sovereign by the Prime Minister, from a shortlist of two selected by an ad hoc committee called the Crown Nominations Commission.
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born January 17, 1964) is the wife of the 44th and incumbent President of the United States, Barack Obama, and is the first African-American First Lady of the United States. Raised on the South Side of Chicago, Obama attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School before returning to Chicago and to work at the law firm Sidley Austin, where she met her future husband. Subsequently, she worked as part of the staff of Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley, and for the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Throughout 2007 and 2008, she helped campaign for her husband's presidential bid and delivered a keynote address at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. She is the mother of two daughters, Malia and Sasha, and is the sister of Craig Robinson, men's basketball coach at Oregon State University. As the wife of a Senator, and later the First Lady, she has become a fashion icon and role model for women, and an advocate for poverty awareness, nutrition and healthy eating.