Don Cupitt former Dean of Emmanuel College Cambridge was born in 1934 at Oldham England. He was educated at Charterhouse and Trinity Hall Cambridge where he studied the natural sciences theology and the philosophy of religion. In 1959 Cupitt was ordained to the Diocese of Manchester (Church of England); from 1962 to 1965 he was Vice-Principal of Westcott House an Anglican theological college in Cambridge and became Dean of Emmanuel College in 1966. From 1968 to 1996 he lectured in the Cambridge Faculty of Divinity.

Cupitt is known as a gifted writer and teacher whose insight and clarity have contributed greatly to the study of both religion and philosophy. Most notably Cupitt has argued for a philosophical system which when applied to the philosophy of religion seeks to reinvent metaphysics to reconcile the scientific vision of the world with the mythological/artistic vision of the same. Cupitt’s contribution to the Gifford Lectures as a participant in the Glasgow Centenary Gifford Lectures was entitled ‘Nature and Culture’ and was published along with the other centenary lectures in a volume edited by Neil Spurway entitled Humanity Environment and God.

Among Cupitt’s most representative works are: Christ and the Hiddenness of God (1971); The Leap of Reason (1976); Taking Leave of God (1980); The New Christian Ethics (1988); Only Human (1985); Creation Out of Nothing (1990); After All: Religion Without Alienation (1994); The New Religion of Life in Everyday Speech (1999); and Way to Happiness: A Theory of Religion (2005).