Archbishop of Canterbury confers education and scholarship award upon Dean of Chapel
The Rev’d Dr Mark Oakley is honoured for building bridges between the Church and poets ‘with enormous energy and skill’
The Rev’d Dr Mark Oakley, St John’s College Dean of Chapel, has been presented with a prestigious award for ‘outstanding’ education and scholarship by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The Lanfranc Award was conferred upon Dr Oakley by The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Justin Welby during a ceremony and reception at Lambeth Palace in London on 22 June 2023. The presentation, which was also attended by other awards recipients, was due to be followed by a service of Evening Prayer in the Archbishop’s Chapel.
The Archbishop makes specific awards each year in the form of Lambeth Degrees and a suite of non-academic awards to recognise outstanding achievement in various fields. The Lanfranc Award for Education and Scholarship is named after Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1070 to 1089, who was a scholar and teacher. First awarded in 2016, its design incorporates an open bible.
A Tutor and Fellow of St John’s as well as Dean of Chapel, Dr Oakley received the honour ‘for writing and speaking, leading retreats and conferences and being in huge demand for helping church people and those not of faith to understand the relationship between poetry and faith’.
A citation read at the awards presentation continued: “For nearly 30 years Mark Oakley has been a very popular speaker and writer on poetry and faith. He has toured Canada, Australia, the USA, Europe and the UK, ceaselessly and with enormous energy and skill, helping to build bridges between the Church and poets.”
Dr Oakley said: “I am very honoured and humbled to receive this award from the Archbishop of Canterbury and to find myself amongst remarkable recipients from around the world. I am delighted the award recognises the value of poetry, in life, society, and faith. Such an art of attention and resonance is urgently needed in our present days.”
Not one but two Poets Laureate have praised Dr Oakley’s work. In 2010, the former Poet Laureate, Sir Andrew Motion, wrote a poem dedicated to him entitled In Winter and said: “It’s extremely unusual to meet anyone who isn’t a specialist who has such a subtle feeling for language as he does.”
When Dr Oakley’s book The Splash of Words was published in 2016 the Poet Laureate Dame Carol Ann Duffy wrote: “This beautiful and wise meditation, centred around the soul language of poetry, opens new windows in the shared house of both poetry and belief.”
In 2019 the book received the Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing. When Dr Oakley published a collection of sermons, By Way of the Heart, the same year, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams commented in a review: “Mark Oakley is one of the most distinctive, intelligent and refreshing voices in the Church of England, always illuminating, never stale or second-hand.”
The awards citation added that Dr Oakley’s contribution to education, both formal and informal, ‘has been and continues to be outstanding’.
Published 22/6/2023