Sarah Coakley

Early life and education Born as Sarah Anne Furber on 10 September 1951 in the affluent area of Blackheath, London, Coakley attended the fee-paying Blackheath High School. Her education continued at New Hall, Cambridge (now Murray Edwards College; BA, first-class honours, 1973), and at Harvard Divinity School (ThM, 1975), to which she went as a Harkness Fellow. Her PhD on Ernst Troeltsch is also from the University of Cambridge (1983).

Career Academic career Coakley has taught at Lancaster University (1976–1991), Oriel College, Oxford (1991–1993), and Harvard University in the divinity school (1993–2007; as Mallinckrodt Professor of Divinity, 1995–2007). She was a visiting professor of religion at Princeton University (2003–2004).

In 2006, she was elected the Norris–Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge (the first woman appointed to this chair) and took up the position in 2007. In 2011, she became deputy chair of the School of Arts and Humanities with a four-year appointment on the general board of the university. She retired as Norris–Hulse Professor in 2018 and was made professor emeritus. She has been an honorary professor at the Logos Institute and the University of St Andrews since 2018 and a visiting professorial fellow at the Australian Catholic University since 2019.

Coakley's teaching and research interests cover a number of disciplines cognate to systematic theology, including the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of science, patristics, feminist theory, and the intersections of law and medicine with religion. Her contributions to these areas have generally been by way of co-ordinating research projects and editing or co-editing collections of papers. It was through these collaborative projects that her profile initially gained a level of international prominence. At the time of her appointment to the Norris–Hulse chair in Cambridge in 2006, Coakley had published her doctoral thesis and her widely discussed monograph Powers and Submissions.

From 2005 to 2008, Coakley 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. 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).

She delivered the Gifford Lectures in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 2012.

She holds honorary degrees from Lund University, St Andrews, University of St Michael's College, Toronto, and Heythrop College, London.

Ordained ministry Coakley was ordained in the Church of England as a deacon in 2000 and as a priest in 2001. She has assisted in parishes in Waban, Massachusetts, and at the Church of St Mary and St Nicholas, Littlemore, Oxford, England (where she served her title). Her training for the priesthood included periods working in a hospital and a prison. In 2011 she was appointed an honorary canon of Ely Cathedral where she assisted with the morning office and Eucharist until 2018. Coakley now lives in the US, but returns to the UK every year for a period in the summer during which she has permission to officiate at St Barnabas Church, Jericho, Oxford.

In 2005 Coakley co-founded, with Sam Wells, the Littlemore Group of scholar-priests. The group writes accessible theological texts from the perspective of parish ministry. In 2012, she was invited to speak to the House of Bishops regarding a vote on consecrating women bishops.

Major themes Coakley works within the fields of systematic theology and philosophy of religion, along with interdisciplinary work on natural theology with scholars from the fields of biology and mathematics. She writes on Christology, particularly themes around the identity of Christ and apophaticism. Coakley publishes on theology of the body and mystical theology, particularly looking at feminism and postmodern secular culture from this perspective. She is a scholar of Gregory of Nyssa and patristic theology. Most recently, Coakley has been working on a series of systematic theology texts she calls théologie totale, which began with God, Sexuality and the Self published in 2013.

Personal life Coakley's father, F. Robert Furber, was a lawyer, and her mother, Anne Furber, was a teacher. In 1975, Coakley married James F. Coakley, a Syriac scholar and fine printer. They have two daughters, Edith Coakley Stowe and Agnes Coakley Cox, who are respectively a lawyer and a classical singer. Her mother, Anne Furber, died in July 2015. Her father, the London lawyer F. Robert Furber, died in June 2016. One of her brothers was a legal advisor to the Duchy of Cornwall and clubman. Her other brother is a barrister.

Published works Books authored

Books edited The Making and Remaking of Christian Doctrine: Essays in Honour of Maurice Wiles. Edited with Pailin, David. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1993. . Religion and the Body. Editor. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 1997. Re-Thinking Gregory of Nyssa. Editor. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. 2003. . Pain and Its Transformations: The Interface of Biology and Culture. Edited with Shelemay, Kay Kaufman. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 2007. . Praying for England: Priestly Presence in Contemporary Culture. Edited with Wells, Samuel. London: Continuum. 2008. Re-Thinking Dionysius the Areopagite. Edited with Stang, Charles M. Chichester, England: Wiley-Blackwell. 2009. The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity. Edited with Gavrilyuk, Paul L. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 2012. . . Fear and Friendship: Anglicans Engaging with Islam. Edited with Ward, Frances. London: Continuum. 2012. . Faith, Rationality and the Passions. Editor. Chichester, England: Wiley-Blackwell. 2012. . Evolution, Games and God: The Principle of Cooperation. Edited with Nowak, Martin A. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. . For God's Sake: Re-Imagining Priesthood and Prayer in a Changing Church. Edited with Martin, Jessica. Norwich, England: Canterbury Press. . Spiritual Healing: Science, Meaning and Discernment. Editor. Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2020. The Vowed Life: The Promise and Demand of Baptism. Edited with Bullimore, Matthew. Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2023.