The Revd Dr Rex Mason: 1926-2025 

'One of a small group of remarkable pastor-scholars in the modern church, who served the Baptist community with grace and commitment'

The Revd Dr Rex Adlington Mason, who died on 17 February 2025 at the age of 98, was a distinguished scholar of the Old Testament, who also spent periods in the local church as a Baptist minister.

Indeed, his writing and teaching as an academic was imbued with the same ease and warmth of manner, personal concern for the individual, and light touch of humour that he brought to his pastoral work.

Students at Regent’s Park College from 1975 to 1993, and those earlier at Spurgeon’s College, will without doubt think of him not just as a tutor but as a friend, and will remember with affection the hospitality offered by him and his wife Audrey (a Welsh-speaker and highly accomplished teacher of Modern Languages). Audrey herself died in August 2023 after more than 70 very happy years of marriage together.

Wherever Rex was, there was laughter to be found, as well as acute thinking. It was his past students who wanted (even demanded) his portrait in the Helwys Hall at Regent’s Park College, and one of them commissioned it. 

Rex Mason was born in Gravesend, London on 25 September 1926, where his father was a bookseller—in a happy intimation of Rex’s later life among books. After the family moved from Gravesend he was baptized in 1938 and became a member at Ashurst Drive Baptist Church, Ilford.

With an early education at Wanstead High School, he went up to Oxford in 1944 (St Edmund Hall) on a short-term commission scholarship with the Royal Navy, and took ‘Moderations’ in English Language and Literature in 1945. One of his tutors at that time was C.S. Lewis.

He served in the Royal Navy until he entered Regent’s Park College in Oxford, from where he graduated B.A. in Theology in 1951. During his time there he met his future wife Audrey, who was reading Modern Languages at Oxford, proposing to her—as he often recalled—in a wild area of the University Parks that lies beyond the ‘Rainbow Bridge’.

While a young man in Ilford he had been a Christian worker in slum areas in Vernon, King’s Cross, London, also serving as a lay preacher. So it was appropriate that his first three years of ministry (1951–54) were as an assistant to the Revd Stanley Turl at West Ham Central Mission. From there he became minister at Upminster Baptist Church, Essex (1954–7), where the writer of this obituary listened to his children’s talks from the age of seven, and thereby received his early theological education.
           
Rex Mason then served as minister of Albany Road Baptist Church, Cardiff from 1958–65. During these periods of pastoral ministry, which were marked by highly appreciated pastoral care and brilliant preaching, he also gained the advanced degree of B.D. from the University of Oxford. He was then called to teach the Old Testament at Spurgeon’s College London, serving from 1965–75, during which period he took a Ph.D. at King’s College, London, in the study of Old Testament writings from the period after the Israelite exile.

From Spurgeon’s he came back to Regent’s Park College as Fellow in Hebrew and Old Testament Studies and Senior Tutor, and was also a University Lecturer and lecturer at Mansfield College, Oxford (1975–93). During this period Audrey’s and Rex’s two children, Tim and Ingrid, grew up in Oxford. Rex was Chair of the Old Testament panel for the Revised New English Bible, and served as Chair of the Board of the Faculty of Theology in Oxford from 1988–1990, retiring in 1993.

He was a teacher and lecturer of exceptional ability, whose students gladly accepted his incisive critique of their work because of the humanity and humour with which it was offered. He never failed to draw an audience for a lecture and a congregation for a sermon.

He was a renowned specialist in post-exilic Judaism. Among his writings were commentaries on Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi (Cambridge Bible Commentary), Micah, Nahum, and Obadiah (T. & T. Clark Study Guides), and Zephaniah, Habakkuk and Joel (Continuum Old Testament Studies). Especially important among his books was Preaching the Tradition; Homily and Hermeneutics after the Exile (Cambridge University Press), in which he developed a view of the Israelite prophets as ‘re-preaching’ prophetic words from the past for a life of faith in new generations, a thesis that both reflected his own experience as a highly effective preacher, and which attracted considerable interest in the community of scholars of the Hebrew Bible.

Perhaps the most widely-read of his books has been Old Testament Pictures of God (Regent’s Park College/ Smyth & Helwys), which combines all his gifts of scholarship and communication. His retirement was marked early on by the lively study Propaganda and Subversion in the Old Testament (SPCK), about which he wrote that ‘I have tried to make it as near a conversation with friends as a book can be’. He received a book of essays in his honour on his 70th birthday (After the Exile, Mercer University Press), was elected President of the Society for Old Testament Studies in 1997 and not long afterwards was honoured with the degree of Doctor of Divinity by the University of Oxford for his published work.

After retirement, Rex and Audrey lived for a short while in Oxford, then moving to Creech St Michael in Somerset, and finally to Banstead in Surrey, though always keeping their connections with Wales. Rex gave what he declared to be his last sermon in New Road Baptist Church, Oxford at a church anniversary a decade before he died, having previously been a member and having served as a moderator in that congregation. The present writer can witness that his vigour on that occasion was unabated.

Dr Rex Mason was one of a small group of remarkable pastor-scholars in the modern church, who served the Baptist community with grace and commitment. Another Oxford scholar of distinction in the Old Testament, John Barton, rightly remarked in his introduction to After the Exile, that ‘there are many people who appreciate his particular genius for combining deep seriousness with glorious hilarity’.


The Memorial Service for the Revd Dr Rex A. Mason will be at Sutton Baptist Church (21 Cheam Road, Sutton - SM1 1SN) on Wednesday 23 April at 2pm. 

 

Paul S. Fiddes