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Sarah Coakley

Norris-Hulse Emeritus Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge; Anglican priest

Sarah Anne Coakley FBA is an English Anglican priest, systematic theologian, and philosopher of religion with interdisciplinary interests. Since 2018 she has been an Honorary Professor at St Andrews University, and from 2019 a Visiting Professorial Fellow at the Australian Catholic University (Melbourne and Rome).

As an Anglican priest, systematic theologian, and philosopher of religion, she has led research projects on theology and the biological concept of evolutionary cooperation and written on theology and feminism. Coakley began teaching at Lancaster University, moving on to Oriel College, Oxford in 1991, becoming Mallinckrodt Professor of Divinity at Harvard. She was the first woman elected as Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and later became Deputy Chair of the School of Arts and Humanities.

Elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2019, she holds honorary degrees from Lund University, St Andrews, University of St Michael’s College, Toronto, and Heythorp College, London. Her publications, spanning journal articles, edited volumes, and books, include The Making and Remaking of Christian Doctrine (1993) Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender (2002), Praying for England: Priestly Presence in Contemporary Culture (2008), The New Asceticism: Sexuality, Gender and the Quest for God (2012), and The Oxford Handbook to the Reception History of Christian Theology (2013).

Coakley received her PhD on Ernst Troeltsch from the University of Cambridge. She has taught at Lancaster University; Oriel College, Oxford; 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.


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Books

The Broken Body: Israel, Christ and Fragmentation

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God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay 'On The Trinity'

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Spiritual Healing: Science, Meaning, and Discernment

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The New Asceticism: Sexuality, Gender and the Quest for God

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Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender

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Christ without Absolutes: A Study of the Christology of Ernst Troeltsch (Clarendon Paperbacks)

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Religion and the Body (Cambridge Studies in Religious Traditions)

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Praying for England: Priestly Presence in Contemporary Culture

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Re-Thinking Dionysius the Areopagite

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In Defence of Realism

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Fear and Friendship: Anglicans Engaging with Islam

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Sacrifice Regained: Reconsidering the Rationality of Religious Belief

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Pain and Its Transformations: The Interface of Biology and Culture (Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative)

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