Staff Type: Emeritus
Program of Study: Liturgical Studies
Professor Spinks taught courses on marriage liturgy; English Reformation worship traditions; the eucharistic prayer and theology, Christology, and liturgy of the Eastern churches; and contemporary worship. Research interests include East Syrian rites, Reformed rites, issues in theology and liturgy, and worship in a postmodern age.
His most recent books are Do This in Remembrance of Me: The Eucharist from the Early Church to the Present Day, SCM Press (London 2013); The Rise and Fall of the Incomparable Liturgy. The Book of Common Prayer 1559-1906, SPCK (London 2017) and Scottish Presbyterian Worship. Proposals for Organic Change, 1843 to the Present Day, Saint Andrew Press (Edinburgh 2020).He coedited, with Teresa Methodologies and Material in the Writing of Liturgical History Today (2016).
Other recent publications include: ‘Some Brief Preliminary Observations on the First Anaphora of Jacob of Sarug and its Relationship to the Writings Attributed to Jacob of Sarug, in Worship. Studies in Memory of Robert F. Taft sj, POI, Rome 2022, pp.287-298. ‘Baptism’ in Melanie C. Ross and Mark A. Lamport, Historical Foundations of Worship, Baker Academic, Grand Rapids 2022, pp.3-17; ‘An Unusual Mrs. Murphy: Sleuthing Dorothy L. Sayers’s 1942 Address on Anglican Worship.’ Worship.98, (2024) pp.28-46. [The 2022 Kavanagh Lecture] ‘Chaplain to God’s Bordello,. Reminiscences and Reflections more than 25 Years On’ Churchill Review 61 (2024) pp.180-184‘The 1662 Book of Common Prayer and Its Adaptation in Eighteenth Century Rational Dissent’. in (eds) Kazimierz Bem and Bruce Gordon, Antitrinitarianism and Unitarianism in the early Modern World, Palgrave Macmillan, Switzerland 2024, pp.337-161; ‘Contextualizing Luther’s Formula Missae 1523, Deutsche Messe 1526, and the Roman Canon Missae : Then, Now, and a Modest Ecumenical Suggestion’ in Ex Fonte 4 (2025) pp. 67-93.; and ‘The Sixteenth-Century Context of Peterhouse Chapel and Latin Books of Common Prayer’, in Scott Mandelbrote (ed.), Music, Politics and Religion in Early Seventeenth Century Cambridge. The Peterhouse Partbooks in Context, Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge 2025, pp.228-248.
Professor Spinks is a former president of the Society for Oriental Liturgy, former coeditor of the Scottish Journal of Theology, a former member and consultant to the Church of England Liturgical Commission, president emeritus of the Church Service Society of the Church of Scotland, and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of Churchill College, Cambridge. He is priest in Charge of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Northford. Professor Spinks is a fellow of Morse College.
B.A. (Hons), Dip.Th. University of Durham; M.Th. University of London; B.D., D.D. University of Durham
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