Lewis Way

Lewis Way (1772–1840) was an English barrister and churchman, noted for his Christian outreach to the Jewish people. He is not to be confused with his grandfather, also called Lewis Way, a director of the South Sea Company.

He was the second son of Benjamin Way (1740-1808) of Denham, Buckinghamshire. Benjamin Way was an MP and a Fellow of the Royal Society. Lewis Way graduated M.A. in 1796 from Merton College, Oxford, and in 1797 was called to the bar by the Society of the Inner Temple. He was ordained in 1817, and devoted to religious works part of a large legacy left him by a stranger, named John Way (1732-1804).[1]

In 1801 he married Mary Drewe (1780-1848) youngest daughter of the Revd Herman Drewe of Grange, Devonshire.[2]

While staying in Nice on his way to Lebanon he donated funds for the construction of the Promenade des Anglais there.[3] He later lived in Paris and founded the Anglican Marbeuf Chapel near the Champs-Élysées, where his preaching attracted a fashionable congregation.[4]

Lewis Way's last years were spent in rural Warwickshire in the care of a private asylum at Barford. He was buried at All Saints' Church, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. His wife Mary died eight years later in Leamington Spa. They had nine children.

Mission to the Jewish people

Way, who belonged to the Evangelical wing of the Church of England, was active in the Church's 19th century outreach to Jewish people. He was a founding member of The Church's Ministry Among Jewish People (CMJ).

In 1817 Lewis Way obtained an audience with Tsar Alexander I of Russia who befriended him and shared his interest in the future of the Jewish people. Way wrote, “It was not an audience of a private man with an Emperor, but rather a most friendly exchange of views of a Christian with a fellow Christian.".[5] The Tsar sent Way to the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818) in what is now Aachen in Germany to obtain a commitment from the post-Napoleonic European heads of State to improve the lot of Europe's Jewish population. He succeeded in that mission.[6]

See also

The Lewis Way website at www.htsmedia.com

References

  1. ↑ Brown, Robert (2009) [2004]. "Way, Lewis (1772–1840)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/28905. External link in |= (help) (subscription required)
  2. ↑ Henderson, Geoffrey, Lewis Way - A Biography (2015)
  3. ↑ Price, Stanley & Munro. The Road to Apocalypse: The Extraordinary Journey of Lewis Way. (2011)
  4. ↑ An Anglican Adventure, Church Times
  5. ↑ Memorandum of an interview with his Imperial Majesty Alexander Emperor of all the Russias – 1818 -Parkes Library Special Collections, University of Southampton, MS 85 Papers of Lewis Way
  6. ↑ Henderson, Geoffrey, Lewis Way - A Biography (2015)
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