Christopher Southgate

Christopher Charles Benedict Southgate (born 26 September 1953) is a British theologian and poet. He is Professor of Christian Theodicy in the Department of Classics, Ancient History, Religion and Theology at the University of Exeter, where he has taught since 1993.

Life and work Education and early career Southgate trained originally as a research biochemist, completing a PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. Following postdoctoral research he later undertook theological training, subsequently becoming a lay chaplain at the University of Exeter, where he was invited to begin teaching the science–religion debate for the Department of Theology. His research interests include the problem of suffering in evolution, the concept of divine glory in the natural world and in religious poetry, the science of the origin of life, and pastoral responses to tragic events in church congregations.

Southgate gave the 2014 Sarum Lectures on divine glory, the 2016 Gowland Lecture on science and poetry, and the 2022 Boyle Lecture on natural evil.

Southgate has appeared as a contributor on the Closer to Truth public television series on science, philosophy, and religion.

(of ‘Rain falling by the River’) Dr Mark Oakley writes: ‘Southgate’s poems are not for a church of the warm shallows. They are serious, sometimes wry, always reverential… Though the snow has indeed begun to thaw in Southgate’s poetry, fighting both illusion and disillusion through faith, we can still see our breath in the cold air and feel the draw of home.’

(of Easing the Gravity Field: poems of science and love) John Arthur Nunes writes: ‘sheer delight permeates this encounter with tangible things, terrible things, true things;

Selected bibliography

Theology

God, Humanity and the Cosmos: A Textbook in Science and Religion, ed. Christopher Southgate (T&T Clark, 1999; 2nd ed. 2005; 3rd ed. 2011) The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil (Westminster John Knox Press, 2008) Ecological Hermeneutics, ed. David G. Horrell, Cherryl Hunt, Christopher Southgate, and Francesca Stavrakopoulou (T&T Clark, 2010) Greening Paul: Rereading the Apostle in a Time of Ecological Crisis, David G. Horrell, Cherryl Hunt, and Christopher Southgate (Baylor University Press, 2010) Theology in a Suffering World: Glory and Longing (Cambridge University Press, 2018) Tragedies and Christian Congregations, ed. Megan Warner, Carla Grosch-Miller, Hilary Ison, and Christopher Southgate (Routledge, 2019) Monotheism and the Suffering of Animals in Nature (Cambridge University Press, 2023) God, Struggle and Suffering in the Evolution of Life, Christopher Southgate, Paul S. Fiddes, Michael Lloyd, Neil Messer, Bethany Sollereder, and Mark R. Wynn (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Poetry (selected)

A Love and its Sounding: Explorations of T.S. Eliot (Salzburg, 1997) Beyond the Bitter Wind: Poems 1982–2000 (Shoestring Press, 2000) Easing the Gravity Field: Poems of Science and Love (Shoestring Press, 2006) Rain Falling by the River: New and Selected Poems of the Spirit (Canterbury Press, 2017) Losing Ithaca (Shoestring Press, 2023)