Pritchard was
ordained in the
Church of England as a
deacon in 1972 and as a
priest in 1973. From 1972 to 1976 he served as a curate at
St Martin in the Bull Ring,
Birmingham and, from 1976 to 1980, he was Youth Chaplain and assistant director of Education in the
Diocese of Bath and Wells. In 1980 he became priest in charge of
Wilton,
Taunton. From 1988 he was Director of Pastoral Studies at
Cranmer Hall,
Durham and, from 1993, the college's
warden. In 1996, he became
Archdeacon of Canterbury and a canon residentiary of
Canterbury Cathedral.
Episcopal ministry In January 2002, Pritchard was consecrated as a bishop by
David Hope, the
Archbishop of York. In 2008, he supported the application by
Muslims in Oxford to broadcast the
adhan from the minaret of a mosque. As a result, he received hostile comments and letters of complaint. John Pritchard retired as Bishop of Oxford on 31 October 2014. In 2015, he was appointed an
honorary assistant bishop of the
Diocese of Durham. On 11 February 2017, Pritchard was one of 14 retired bishops to sign an
open letter to the then-serving bishops of the Church of England. In an unprecedented move, they expressed their opposition to the House of Bishops' report to
General Synod on sexuality, which recommended no change to the church's canons or practices around sexuality. By 13 February, a serving bishop (
Alan Wilson,
Bishop of Buckingham) and nine further retired bishops had added their signatures; on 15 February, the report was rejected by synod. ==Personal life==