Westar Institute

Institutional Affiliation
Charter Member

Don Cupitt

Institutional Affiliation

Life Fellow and former Dean

Emmanuel College

Credentials

Biography

Don Cupitt is a Life Fellow and former Dean of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He was born in 1934 at Oldham, England, and educated at Charterhouse and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he studied Natural Sciences, Theology and the Philosophy of Religion. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1959. From 1962-1965, he was Vice-Principal of Westcott House, an Anglican theological college in Cambridge, and became Dean of Emmanuel College in 1966. From 1968 to 1996 he also lectured in the Cambridge Faculty of Divinity.Don Cupitt is best known as a teacher and writer. He is often described as a “radical theologian,” or as “a liberal religious thinker.” Philosophically, he is a stalwart non-realist. Most of his books belong to a single series of twenty-three titles that reflect the development of his thinking, from Taking Leave of God (1980) to Emptiness and Brightness (2002). A frequent broadcaster, mainly for the BBC, he has made three TV Series, one of which, “The Sea of Faith,” (1984), also gave rise to a book and to an international network of radical Christians which is still growing. In his writing, and in the various societies he has tried to foster, Don Cupitt attempts to develop new thinking for a new epoch: a new philosophy, a new ethics, and a new religious thought.

Academic Appointments
Professional Service