Meet Dr Barnabas Palfrey, our new Director of Studies
We’re delighted to welcome Dr Barnabas Palfrey as our new Tutor in Christian Doctrine and Spirituality and Director of Studies here at St Augustine’s College of Theology.
Barnabas isn’t new to the college. He’s been part of our teaching staff for several years, bringing with him a mix of experiences, from academic theology to NHS social prescribing. We caught up with him to talk theology, community, and why sometimes the most Christian thing you can do is simply pay attention.
Theology beyond the bubble
Barnabas’s PhD explored the work of Roman Catholic theologian David Tracy, whose influence still inspires the way Barnabas approaches theology. For Barnabas, faith isn’t meant to be sealed off from the world. “Christianity isn’t about retreating into private spaces. The Church isn’t a private club,” he says.
From Tracy, he learned that “faith is also the best reason. Faith humbles reason only to enlarge reason in the service that reason gives to love and justice.” That conviction still guides him: for Barnabas, this also means that, vice versa, doctrine and spirituality belong together:
“With doctrines, we go wrong when we think of them as dead things on a shelf, when they have always really been ways of praying and thinking. Prayer and thought belong together, and prayer as such expires if not related somehow to thinking. Doctrine is a way of living in the world.”
That understanding also influences how he teaches. Barnabas believes academic institutions exist to encourage “a greater and richer form of love” that reaches beyond our own communities.
From academia to the NHS and back again
In 2019, Barnabas stepped away from academia for a while to work as an NHS social prescriber, a role that surprised him with how deeply it connected to his Christian faith.
Most of the time, his prescriber role wasn’t about finding solutions at all – it was just about being there and listening.
“If all I did was take them for a coffee and let them be listened to – if people could tell their story and understand themselves better – then it was worth it,” he says. “It’s important for any Christian, especially those in public-facing ministry, to be a plausible human being. Giving attention is an ancient practice, and it’s a crucial part of living as a Christian.”
Asking questions from the start
Growing up in a conservative yet lively protestant Anglican church with other young people, Barnabas’s love for theological questioning started young, at home in conversation with his father and at school with excellent GCSE and A-Level teachers.
“I had an excellent teachers who encouraged me to ask critical questions,” he said. “It got me thinking, ‘what happens if you cut the strings, take yourself out of that context of belief into a wider setting? Where would my faith go?”
That curiosity took him from undergraduate theology study, through volunteer and community work in Scotland, Newcastle, and London (where he met his wife, Mira), to a PhD at Oxford and then a teaching post at Sarum College in Salisbury.
An accidental Methodist
Today, Barnabas and Mira live in Cookham, Berkshire, the birthplace of artist Stanley Spencer. They moved there from London three years ago to live in half of the house where he grew up, alongside his mother, in her late 80s. Unexpectedly, this opened a new twist in his faith journey.
“When we moved back to Cookham, I became an accidental Methodist because of the church we knew here, over the hedge. Now I’m a local preacher in training for the Methodist Church. It’s an interesting move for someone who has recently been more in the Anglo-Catholic end of things!”
Looking ahead at St Augustine’s
Barnabas joins St Augustine’s during a season of change, with several new staff members arriving alongside him.
“I work in a really lovely team,” he says. “My new role as Tutor of Christian Doctrine and Christian Spirituality, alongside Director of Studies, brings new opportunities. For most things, I’m discovering them as I go!”
It’s hard to leave a conversation with Barnabas without feeling inspired to think more deeply and listen more closely. We can’t wait to see how his teaching and pastoral care will shape our learning community at St Augustine’s.
