John Oakes

Research Fellow

The Rev. Dr. John Oakes was an Adjunct Professor in the Department of History at Simon Fraser University (2016-2022) prior to becoming a Research Fellow at Wycliffe. He earlier completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard Divinity School following a year as a Visiting Fellow at Yale Divinity School.

John has a PhD. in History from Simon Fraser University (2008). He was also educated at Magdalen College, Oxford (B.A. and M.A. in Classics), Regent College (M.C.S. in Church History and MDiv.), University of British Columbia (M.A. in History) and Vancouver School of Theology (Anglican ordination studies). His primary areas of academic interest are American colonial and revolutionary religious and political history, and the history of Anglicanism and evangelicalism. He has taught at Regent College and the Vancouver School of Theology.

John has been in active pastoral ministry for some 30 years, serving parishes in the Dioceses of New Westminster and Massachusetts, as well as Toronto. His longest incumbency was at Holy Trinity, Vancouver (2002–2012). He has been an Honorary Assistant at St. Paul’s, Bloor Street, Toronto since 2022 and is currently serving as Interim Priest in Charge of St. Cyprian’s, North York.

John was born in the UK and has been married to his wife, Kirsten, for 40 years. Together they have two adult daughters and three grandchildren.

Conservative Revolutionaries: Transformation and Tradition in the Religious and Political Thought of Charles Chauncy and Jonathan Mayhew. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016; Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2018.

 “Congregationalism,” “Councils (Ecclesiastical),” “Foxcroft, Thomas” and “Mayhew, Jonathan,” in Kenneth Minkema, ed., A Jonathan Edwards Encyclopedia. New Haven, CT & Grand Rapids, MI: Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University & William Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2017.

“Beyond the ‘Democrat’/’Conservative’ Dichotomy: John Wise Reconsidered,” The New England Quarterly (September 2015), 88:3, 483–508.