David Holgate

Tel: 01722 424817
E-mail: daholgate@stets.ac.uk

 

 

 

 

Brief Biography

I grew up in South Africa: childhood in Johannesburg, adolescence on the tropical South Coast of Kwazulu-Natal and young adulthood in Cape Town. I read English and Economics at the University of Cape Town and then worked in that city in educational publishing. Editing religious studies textbooks, active lay ministry in a large Charismatic church and voluntary chaplaincy duties during compulsory stints in the army all prodded me towards the study of theology and mission. Mission training in the UK at All Nations and ordination training at St Paul’s College in Grahamstown, South Africa followed. After ordination in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa in 1982, I served for 11 years in industrial, suburban and rural parishes in the Eastern Cape.

While doing my PhD, I taught Biblical Studies at the College of Transfiguration in Grahamstown and Rhodes University, before moving to the UK in 1993. After 4 years of dual-role ministry as a parish priest and CME officer in the Diocese of Chelmsford, I became Dean of Studies of STETS in 1997 and Vice Principal in 2001. I am married to Patricia and we have two adult daughters.

Teaching and Research

My academic interests are rooted in biblical studies and biblical interpretation in the service of the ministry of the church and the mission of God. As a curate I did further Biblical Studies at a local Afrikaans-language university in an ecumenical, multi-racial year group. These studies concluded with a dissertation on interpreting Galatians in the turbulent context of South Africa in the 1980s. Changing tack, my doctoral research examined the influence of Greco-Roman moral philosophy on the Parable of the Prodigal Son. I remain committed to encouraging the church to learn from the academy and the academy to learn from the church—and both to learn from the world! At STETS, I teach the New Testament, mission and ecclesiology (historical, contemporary and, hopefully, future!

Publications

Articles:

‘Making the Text Our Own’, Expository Times, 104/8, 232-236, 1999.

Chapters in Books:

‘A Copernican Revolution in Theological Education: Lay Ordination Courses’, in Oekumenisches Lerner von Stadt zu Stadt: Creating an Urban Church Network, Sebastian Borck, Gisela Gross, Uta Pohl-Patalong and Dietrich Werner, eds. Hamburg, EB-Verlag, 2000.

‘Sarah to Abraham’, in Yours Faithfully: Virtual Letters from the Bible, Philip R. Davies, ed. London: Equinox, 2004.

Books:

Prodigality, Liberality and Meanness: the Prodigal Son in Greco-Roman Perspective, JSNTS, 187, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999

The SCM Studyguide to Biblical Hermeneutics, with Rachel Starr, London: SCM Press, 2006.  

Leisure interests:

I enjoy dance (jive, salsa and ballroom) though an injury has currently placed this on hold. I am obsessed with music (roots and jazz mainly, with the best of the rock canon) and vintage hi-fi (valve amplifiers and turntables from the 1950s and 60s). As time allows, I review modern hi-fi for the international website http://www.tnt-audio.com. I am an intermittent blogger on these topics and the emerging church. DIY, floorboards to the rafters, is something I actually enjoy. Outdoors, I enjoy cycling, have a growing interest in natural history, and would like get into wild swimming. Having grown up as a ‘beach boy’, I love being beside or in the sea. Perhaps I should be asking Father Christmas for a wetsuit?