Priestly Life and Teaching

Online Teaching Series

What is the Good of the Church?

In this four-part video series 'What is the Good of the Church?', Sarah Coakley examines afresh the fundamental question of how we should think of, imagine, and hope for the life of the Church today.

Prayer in a Time of Pandemic

In this four-part series from Summer 2020 'Prayer in a Time of Pandemic', Sarah Coakley and others consider how we can pray in a time of crisis, and look to traditions from across the Church to help us live out our faith.

The Littlemore Group and Its Publications

Sarah Coakley and Samuel Wells founded the ‘Littlemore Group’ in 2005. It is named after the parish outside Oxford where Sarah ‘served her title,’ and where John Henry Newman originally built the church and founded a little religious community in his Anglican phase. The group has been devoted to the creative integration of pastoral ministry, prayer, and theological reflection done from a parish context. It has usually consisted of about twelve Anglican clerical members (which change from time to time as some go on to more senior posts), and at least one Anglican religious. Most of the members have doctorates in theology; all are committed to thinking afresh about the enduring significance of parish life for Anglican theology and spirituality. In an era when academic theology and parish life seemed to be drifting apart, our project has been to re-root theology into the life and prayer of the parish, and indeed to re-enrich it thereby via our own theological fellowship and writing, and by our reflection both on the riches of Anglican tradition and on the particular parochial challenges of our ‘post-modern’ era. We have aimed for a ‘light touch’ in our reliance on the liveliness of parish vignettes, but also at a depth and rigour of theological analysis that nonetheless shuns academic obfuscation.

Since our inception we have produced five, accessible, books together:

Praying for England: Priestly Presence in Contemporary Culture, eds. Samuel Wells and Sarah Coakley, 2008
Fear and Friendship: Anglicans Engaging with Islam, eds. Frances Ward and Sarah Coakley, 2012
For God’s Sake: Re-Imagining Priesthood and Prayer in a Changing Church, eds. Jessica Martin and Sarah Coakley, 2016
Holy Attention: Preaching in Today’s Church, eds. Frances Ward and Richard Sudworth, 2019
The Vowed Life: The Promise and Demand of Baptism, eds. Sarah Coakley and Matthew Bullimore, 2023