ARCHDEACON TONY BARRATT 

Tony Barratt, who died peacefully at his Devon home on 6 January, was an unassuming man who yet made an immense contribution to the mission of the church, not least in South America where he served for 30 years.  His greatest legacy is Study by Extension for All Nations (SEAN), a form of theological education which has helped train church leaders in more than 100 countries.  First produced in Spanish, it has been translated into over 80 languages and continues to expand. 

Tony was born in Clapham in 1919 into a family whose background included the Admiralty and the clergy.  A brilliant sportsman who at school excelled at cricket and athletics, he went on to study as a vet, gaining membership of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and his own practice in Ilfracombe.  As a pacifist, his wartime service was with the Field Ambulance Corps, from which he was honourably discharged to return to his veterinary training. 

Active in his local church where he was a leader of the Covenanters, he was called to ministerial training in the Church of England, studied at Tyndale Hall, Bristol, and was ordained in 1949.  A short curacy at St Paul’s, Slough, followed, before Tony, his wife Peggy and family embarked on service with the South American Missionary Society (SAMS), sailing to Chile in 1952.  At the time the Society’s work there centred upon the indigenous Mapuche people of the south; Tony soon became aware of the need to train national leaders for the many rural centres, a need met initially by a weekly training course and week-long gatherings in different communities, reached on horseback. 

These were the beginnings of a movement which would help create the national Anglican churches of what is now the Province of the Southern Cone.  They would also, following a period of service in Paraguay, lead to the birth in Argentina of Tony’s brainchild.  Working from the northern city of Tucumán, he investigated the current state of theological education across the continent and found it to be beyond the capacity of church leaders with little educational background.  The need in Anglican and other denominations was for something simple yet thorough which would enable such people to develop basic theological understanding and skills to lead the new and often very isolated churches which were springing up. 

To this work Tony Barratt now dedicated himself full time; the result was the phenomenon called SEAN which has taken theological education to hundreds of thousands of homes across the world and into all the major Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church.  Among its aims was the development of character and leadership, with a programmed system of tutor manuals helping local Christians become effective group tutors. 

On return to the UK Tony continued his work with SEAN, later becoming honorary director of the UK division of SEAN International, an organisation now led by his son Terry, also an archdeacon and former missionary.  In 1994 Tony was honoured by the award of a Lambeth Degree of Master of Letters by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey. 

He is survived by his wife Peggy and their five children, four of whom constituted the Latin American music group known as Los Picaflores (The Humming Birds), known and loved in this country and other parts of the world in the latter part of the twentieth century.