About Paul Lusk
I was born in Hertfordshire, UK, in 1947. My father was a post office clerk in Wembley, having been a Signals private in the war. My mother was a Jewish refuguee from Hamburg, Germany, first working as a domestic servant in London Jewish households, then joining the ATS (Auxiliary Territoral Service, the women's branch of the British Army in the second world war). My grandparents and most of her wider family died in the Holocaust. My parents named me James Paul - James in a tradition on my father's side, and Paul after my German grandparents Paul and Paula - and I was always knows as Paul.
My father became an Immigration Officer and we lived in Harwich, Hull and Dover. From Dover Grammar School I gained a scholarship to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Hertford College, Oxford, where I was awarded the university Gibbs prize in Politics in 1968. After spells working in development, education and journalism for the United Nations, the Sudan Government and a news agency, I returned to the UK and worked developing housing co-operatives in inner city Liverpool, working there through the Toxteth riots and the Militant Tendency's control of the city council. During this time I was baptised as a Christian believer, married Kay and became the father of two children - one now a scientist in Switzerland, the other a social worker in London. In 1988 I set up a consultancy, Partners in Change, working on housing and a range of neighbourhood initiatives, with expertise in the governance of community organisations and participative strategies for social and economic regeneration. I retired from professional consultancy work in 2015. My book, The Jesus Candidate, was published in 2017.
We now live in Whitstable, Kent, and belong to Emmanuel, an independent church in nearby Canterbury. We serve international students with Friends International and are Lifeskills coaches with Christians against Poverty.
I belong to the Anabaptist Network, and have a longstanding interest in how the sixteenth century Anabaptist ('rebaptiser') movement laid the foundation for modern liberalism through its insistence on a church free of state control. I see Roger Williams, the Puritan founder of the Rhode Island democracy, as a key linking figure in this transition.
Whitstable has rekindled an old interest in theatre. As a member of the Lindley Players, I've played Old Gobbo in Merchant of Venice and Widow Twankey in pantomime.
