Sarah Coakley

Sarah Coakley (born 1951) is an Anglican systematic theologian and philosopher of religion with wide interdisciplinary interests.

Life and work

Her initial training was at New Hall (now Murray Edwards College), Cambridge (BA, First Class Honours, 1973) and at Harvard Divinity School (Th.M., 1975), to which she went as a Harkness Fellow. Her Ph.D. on Ernst Troeltsch is also from the University of Cambridge (1983). She has taught at Lancaster University (1976–1991); at Oriel College, Oxford (1991-3); at Harvard University, in the Divinity School (1993–2007; Mallinckrodt Professor of Divinity, 1995–2007); and has been a visiting Professor of Religion at Princeton University (2003-4). In 2006, she was elected Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge (the first woman appointed to this chair), and she took up the position in 2007. In 2011 she will become deputy chair of the School of Arts and Humanities, and will serve for 4 years on the General Board of the University.

Her teaching and research interests cover a number of disciplines cognate to systematic theology, including philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, patristics, feminist theory, and the intersections of law and medicine with religion. She is currently at work on a four-volume systematic theology, the first volume of which will appear as God, Sexuality and the Self: An Essay 'On the Trinity' (Cambridge, CUP, 2011).

From 2005 to 2008 she co-directed, with Martin A. Nowak, the 'Evolution and Theology of Cooperation' project at Harvard University, sponsored by the Templeton Foundation, out of which has come a co-edited volume, Evolution, Games, and God: The Principle of Cooperation (Harvard UP, forthcoming). An earlier interdisciplinary project on 'Pain and Its Transformations' undertaken with Arthur Kleinman at Harvard (as part of the 'Mind, Brain, Behavior' Initiative), produced Pain and Its Transformations: The Interface of Biology and Culture (co-ed. with Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Harvard UP, 2007).

Professor Coakley will deliver the Gifford Lectures in Aberdeen, Scotland, in Spring 2012.

She is an ordained priest of the Church of England, and has assisted in parishes in Waban, Massachusetts, and in Littlemore, Oxford, England (where she served her title). Her training for the priesthood included spells working in a hospital and a prison. She is now a minor canon of Ely Cathedral, where she helps with early morning office and eucharist.

She is married to Dr. J.F. Coakley, the Syriac scholar and fine printer.^[1] They have two daughters.

Publications

• Christ Without Absolutes: A Study of the Christology of Ernst Troeltsch (1988)
• The Making and Re-Making of Christian Doctrine (co-ed, 1993)
• Religion and the Body (ed., 1997)
• Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender (2002)
• Re-Thinking Gregory of Nyssa (ed., 2003)
• Pain and Its Tranformations: The Interface of Biology and Culture (co-ed, 2007)
• Praying for England: Priestly Presence in Contemporary Culture (co-ed, 2008)
• Re-Thinking Dionysius the Areopagite (co-ed, 2009)

References

1. ^ The Jericho Press

External links

• "God, Providence and the Evolutionary Phenomenon of Coooperation": Faraday Institute Lecture (including video).
• "Sacrifice Regained: Reconsidering the Rationality of Christian Belief": Inaugural lecture as Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity
• Interview with Sarah Coakley by Rupert Shortt from The Church Times
• Faculty page at Cambridge
• List of Coakley's publications (.pdf)

Persondata
Name	Coakley, Sarah
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1951
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death