Our People

Canon Vincent Strudwick

Emerita/Emeritus Fellow, Fellow, Honorary Fellow

MA (status) (Oxford); BA (Nottingham); Dip Ad Ed (London); DD (L)

From 1981, Canon Vincent Strudwick was Honorary Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, and Director of Education and Training (Diocese of Oxford) until 1988. He was the Principal of St Albans and Oxford Ordination Course (1988-97), and Member Faculty of Theology (1993-8). He was the Staff tutor and Director of Theology and Religion programmes (OUDCE, 1997-2000), and Select Preacher at University of Oxford in 1999. Vincent was Founding Director of the International Theology Summer School at Christ Church (1993-2000). At Kellogg, he was Kellogg Fellow (1993), Emeritus (2000), Honorary Fellow (2007-), and Kellogg College Chamberlain (1997-2008).

Vincent began teaching historical theology in 1959 and, believing that “while history doesn’t repeat itself, it often rhymes” (Mark Twain), has been concerned to contribute to political and cultural change with issues arising from his research and teaching. Richard Hooker, a 16th/17th century Anglican Divine, was an inspiration and the subject of his doctoral research. Hooker’s thought figures in his contributions to, for example, Women and Episcopacy (ed. Harris and Shaw, 2002) and Gays and the Future of Anglicanism (ed. Linzey and Kirker, 2005).

In the 1970s, while working in the new city of Milton Keynes, he was a founder and first Executive Secretary of the Christian Association for Adult and Continuing Education, which became associated with a Pan-European network of Churches. This opened up many opportunities to explore the theory and practice of adult religious education in UK and abroad. He has lectured in Milan, Berlin and Paris, and was a frequent lecturer for the Smithsonian Institute and Graduate Theological Foundation in the USA . He has also taught in Lesotho, Ghana and Canada, and tutored many overseas students for the Faculty of Theology. He was Associate Chaplain of Corpus from 1999 – 2007 and regularly assisted the Dean of Divinity at New College during the same period.

Vincent’s book The Naked God – Wrestling for a Gracious Humanity was launched at Kellogg in 2017.

Selected publications

The Naked God (2017)

Hill-top Village: Brill ‘Super Montem’ in Tudor Times (2010)

Is the Anglican Church Catholic? (1994)

Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln 1869-1885 (1987)

Essays in: The Bible in the Renaissance ed R Griffiths (2001), Voices of their Calling ed C Rees (2002), Women and Episcopacy ed H Harris & J Shaw (2002), Gays and the future of Anglicanism ed A Linzey and G Kirker (2005)