Graham John Ward (born 25 October 1955) is an English theologian and Anglican priest who has been Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford since 2012.

Early life

Ward was educated at Salford Grammar School and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he studied English and French literature, and then at Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he studied theology while training for ordination at Westcott House.

Career

Ward was successively a chaplain and fellow at Exeter College, Oxford, a part-time lecturer at the University of Birmingham, and Dean and Director of Studies for Theology at Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was ordained deacon in 1990 and a priest of the Church of England in 1991. He transferred his teaching career to the University of Manchester, where he was Senior Fellow in Religion and Gender (1997–98), then Samuel Ferguson Professor of Contextual Theology and Ethics (1998–2009). In 2012 he was appointed as Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford, in which capacity he is ex officio a member of the College of Canons and the cathedral chapter of Christ Church, Oxford. Ward has engaged in different fields of theology, especially postmodern theology, and other disciplines such as philosophy, psychoanalysis, gender studies, and queer theory. He has written on the theology of language, postmodernism, cultural analysis, and christology. His contemporary research focuses on Christian social ethics, political theory and cultural hermeneutics. He is editor of three book series: Radical Orthodoxy (Routledge), Christian Theology in Context (OUP) and Illuminations: Religion & Theory (Blackwell).

Views

In Cities of God (2000), Ward declared his support for same-sex relationships: "... I am a male, Christian theologian who openly advocates same-sex unions, who has friends dying or living with the fear of AIDS, and a family who lives the shadows, embarrassments and sufferings of a genetic disorder. But each of us moves out from where we are placed and place ourselves, and in doing so understands that we are also elsewhere."

Books and edited volumes