John Harold Watson was born in England on May 14, 1938. For most of the Second World War he lived in Brighton, Sussex, where he spent most evenings in an underground shelter.

 

At the age of ten, John Watson started to study music, and became a pianist and cellist. He was a professional cellist from the age of seventeen. At the age of twenty, he served as the cellist on the orchestra of the Royal Yacht HMS Britannia.

 

In his mid-twenties, Watson left his musical career to read theology at the University of Cambridge, and earned his Master's degree from there in 1968. In 1977, he obtained a PhD from the Australian National University. The title of his dissertation was 'The Existence of God in the Theology of Karl Barth.' Since 1990 he earned a second PhD, which he also acquired from Cambridge. This dissertation was entitled 'Pauline New Testament Theology within Sahidic Coptic.'

 

John H. Watson's career in the field of religions is described below.

John Watson was baptized Anglican during the first days of his life, and the Anglican Church is also where he serves in his adulthood.

 

Father Watson was ordained a priest at Canterbury Cathedral by the archbishop of Canterbury in 1967. He served as a chaplain with the British Army of the Rhine, and then served as a school chaplain and University chaplain for over three decades.

 

Reverend Dr. John Watson is passionately committed to the mysticism of Buddhism, Christianity and Sufi Islam. [AWR 2003, 20, art. 2]

Interfaith dialogue is, according to Reverend Dr. John Watson, the most significant field of study in today's world. He has a wide knowledge of several religions and, for example, considers himself an assiduous student of the Qur'ān. [RNSAW 1999, 12, art. 27]

 

In 1999, John Watson joined the Board of Advisors for the Religious News Service from the Arab World (RNSAW), now known as Arab-West Report (AWR). John Watson deals with both dialogue between religions, as well as dialogue within religions.

 

Dr. Watson is an Anglican scholar who has devoted his time in the Christian Ministry to promoting cooperation and respect between distinct Christian denominations. He started this effort in college while he was chairman of the Theological Colleges Union at Cambridge in 1965. In the 1970's, he worked as press officer for the World Council of Churches, and his academic work described below also reveals his intra-faith work. [RNSAW 1999, 12, art. 27]

 

Concerning dialogue with other religions, Reverend Dr. John Watson emphasizes the similarities between distinct faiths. For example, he stresses that Sufism in Islam is among the greatest forms of spirituality and relates closely to Judaism and Christianity. He accentuates this point using the following quote from Father ^cAbd al-Masīh al-Habashī, an orthodox monk and hermit in the Egyptian Western Desert who inspired several monks to lead a live of seclusion: "Devotion to the mystical life is the real treasure of Islam and Christianity. The rest is window dressing or misrepresentation."

 

On a personal level, John Watson has many friends who are Muslims or Buddhists. He mentions that an abbot from a Buddhist monastery, Aihan Amoro, is one of his close friends.

Dr. Watson's commitment to intra and interfaith issues appears in his academic work. The Christian fraction originating from Egypt, the Copts, have been the subject of much of Watson's research. Refer to "Education, Career and Personal Background." He has devoted several decades to the study of the Coptic Orthodox tradition. He has also devoted some decades of study to the Coptic Sahidic dialect, under the direction of Professor J Martin Plumley of Cambridge University. He himself points out however, that Buddhism and Taoism are his great passions in the fields of religion and theology.

- Help to be Human, Confirmation Studies, nine volumes, 1971-2004
- Holy Persons and Holy Days, Perth, Australia, 1978
- Among the Copts, Sussex, U.K. 20001
- Listening to Islam, U.K. 2005
Dr. John Watson writes for the Coptic Cairene newspaper Watanī (My Country) once a fortnight. He has produced more than ten thousand magazine and newspaper articles since 1970 writing for the Church Times, Coptic Church Review, Coptologia, Le Monde Copte (The Coptic World), and the Jesuit journal The Month.