Stephen  Plant

Stephen  Plant

I studied theology at the University of Birmingham. After graduating I worked in a leprosy village in the Rufiji District of Tanzania – an experience that gave birth both to a love of travel and an interest in international development. I returned to the UK in 1987 to begin training for the Methodist ministry at Wesley House, Cambridge. While training, I undertook doctoral research with Stephen Sykes and Nicholas Sagovsky, on uses of the Bible in ethics. In 1991 I was appointed minister to two churches in West London and chaplain to Methodist International House; I was ordained a year later. In 1995 I became Europe Secretary of the British Methodist Church and later, Secretary to the European Methodist Council, positions in which I was working daily at the interface of faith and politics. In 2001 I became Senior Tutor and Director of Studies at Wesley House, Cambridge, part of the Cambridge Theological Federation, in which I taught theology and ethics. I was also an Affiliated Lecturer at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Divinity, teaching several papers in ethics, theology, and political theology. Since 2002 I have been a Senior Member of St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge. In the summer semester of 2008 I was the International Bonhoeffer Scholar at the Freie Universität, Berlin, sponsored by the Stiftung Bonhoeffer Lehrstuhl im Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft.