Cafe Theology

Cafe Theology

About the Author

Michael Lloyd

The Cafe Theologian!

Michael Lloyd read English at Downing College, Cambridge, which is why the Café Theology is peppered with quotations from Shakespeare (whose every play Mike has now seen on stage at least once each – including Edward III!), Herbert, Hopkins, Eliot and Traherne. After that, he went and worked as a flight dispatcher for hospital aircraft providing an air ambulance service round the Northern Newfoundland and Labrador coastlines. From there, he went to Cranmer Hall, an Anglican vicar factory in Durham, to train for the ordained ministry. After three years at St. John’s, Locks Heath, he went to Oxford to do a doctorate, focusing on the problem of evil, and in particular natural evil, i.e. why a good God would allow earthquakes, diseases etc. He went back to Cambridge as a College Chaplain at Christ’s and Fitzwilliam. He then spent seven years as Director of Training at St. James the Less, Pimlico before taking up his current post as Tutor in Doctrine at St. Stephen’s House in Oxford, where he runs the Masters’ programme.

He is a passionate devotee of Handel, and, now that he has achieved his goal of seeing every Shakespeare play on stage, is set upon doing the same with all of Handel’s operas – of which there are over 40. There are no other symptoms of madness in him or his family. (Well, not many.) He loves cricket and occasionally blocks his way through over after over of runless forward defensive strokes on behalf of some clergy team. He comes from a close and loving family – hence the dedication of Café Theology to his brothers and sisters-in-law – who nevertheless amuse themselves by insulting each other. On one occasion, his Dad asked him what sort of woman he was after. He replied, ‘Well, obviously she’d need to be blind.’ To which his Dad added, ‘Yes and without a sense of smell!’ (The editors wouldn’t let that one in the book – said we’d get letters.)

List of Publications

Café Theology is Mike’s first book, but he has had some academic articles published in a number of other books.

The Fall in Dictionary of Ethics - Book cover

‘The Fall’ in Dictionary of Ethics, Theology and Society, edited by Paul Barry Clarke and Andrew Linzey, Routledge, London, 1996.

Are Animals Fallen? Book cover

‘Are Animals Fallen?’ in Animals on the Agenda, edited by Andrew Linzey and Dorothy Yamamoto, S.C.M., London, 1998.

Humanity and Fallenness - Book cover

‘The Humanity of Fallenness’ in Grace and Truth in the Secular Age, edited by Timothy Bradshaw, Eerdmans, 1998.

The Fall and Sin - Book cover

A review of The Fall and Sin by Marguerite Shuster in Theology, Vol. CVIII, No. 841, January/February 2005.

His writing projects for the future include turning his doctoral thesis into the first of three volumes on the problem of evil – the first on the past tense of evil and how it arose in the first place (the fall), the second on the present tense of evil and what God is doing about it now (providence), and the third on the future tense of evil, and what God is going to do about it (eschatology). He would also like to write a devotional commentary on the book of Job.


Copyright Michael Lloyd, 2005.
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