Daphne Hampson - Biography

Biography

Hampson's background was in politics and modern history. Her Oxford doctorate on 'The British Response to the German Church Conflict, 1933-39' was not without its impact on her: she was later to write that a Church which discriminated against women was no more to be considered 'Christian' than one that discriminated against non-Aryans. From her early teens she had herself envisaged ordination. Following a year teaching British history, she went to Harvard as a Knox scholar (the second woman ever to enter the advanced degree programme in systematic theology). In 1974 she took up a post at the University of Stirling; from 1977 in theology at the University of St Andrews. Asking for baptism, she was also confirmed in the Anglican Church without being consulted! Now an insider, she took a lead in arguing in fundamental theological terms for the ordination of persons without respect to sex, writing the statement circulated to members of the Synod of the Church of England before the vote in 1979. With a growing feminist consciousness, in 1980 she left the church and, shortly after, Christianity, behind her as incompatible with human equality. It did not however occur to her that she should thereby cease to believe in God: indeed she comments that the move took her back to what essentially had been her formation at home and at her school.

A frequent lecturer and occasional broadcaster, from the 1980s Hampson became known to a wider public. Many in the burgeoning women's movement in the church were challenged, or encouraged, by her thought. She was the first ‘iconoclast’ in the BBC Radio 4 series of that name. In 1986 she held a major debate with Rosemary Ruether on the compatibility of Christianity with feminism in Westminster Cathedral hall. At St Andrews, Hampson set up one of the first two courses on ‘Feminism and Theology’ in the UK. From 1985-88 she was the founding president of the European Society of Women in Theological Research, with branches in Eastern and many Western European countries. After taking a degree in Continental philosophy at the University of Warwick in 1992-93, she expanded the range of her teaching at St Andrews to include courses on ‘Challenges to Christian Belief’, ‘Theology and Recent Continental Philosophy’ (the first such undergraduate course in the UK) and a cross-disciplinary course in the Faculty of Arts in ‘Feminist Theory’. In 2002 she was awarded a personal chair and shortly afterwards, worn out from the situation she had for many years encountered in her job, took early retirement. Hampson has since lived in Oxford, where she is an Associate of the Faculty of Theology, undertaking some teaching and continuing to publish. In 2005 Hampson was a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and is now a Life Member.