After training in surgery and anaesthetics at St. Thomas' Hospital, London, Canon White trained for ordination at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and studied Judaism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has earned a doctorate in anaesthesiology and two doctorates in theology, and has received nineteen honorary doctorates.

In 1998 he became Director of the International Centre for Reconciliation at Coventry Cathedral. He was also appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury's 'Special Envoy to the Middle East'.

Canon White has been extensively engaged in high level conflict resolution. He initiated and led negotiations during the 2002 Siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and helped to draft the First Alexandria Declaration of the Religious Leaders of the Holy Land, bringing together Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religious and political leaders. In 2005 he set up The Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East.

From 1998 to 2014 Canon White served as vicar of St George's Church in Baghdad – which, under his leadership, became one of the largest and most dynamic Anglican congregations in the Middle East. The church also provided a medical clinic and extensive humanitarian aid.

In November 2014, because of increasing terrorism, the Archbishop of Canterbury ordered him to leave Baghdad. During this time of intense persecution, most of his several-thousand-member Iraqi congregation (as well as many Iraqi citizens) fled to Jordan as refugees. Jerusalem MERIT, of which Canon White is the ambassador, seeks to provide for their financial, medical, educational and spiritual needs.