OOD-SER-002
Harvest
“Preached at Shipton under Wychwood, the earliest sermon preserved.”
Oliver O’Donovan
“We want to see the gospel preached in all its fullness. We’d like the work we have done to encourage that. Make it accessible to whom it may be used.”
Oliver and Joan O’Donovan
Nothing is public yet. Join the list and we will write when the repository opens.
What this is
A new initiative
Over six hundred and ten sermons, preached from 1969 onward, sit alongside the lectures, essays, biblical commentaries, and unpublished materials of more than fifty years’ work. Many materials have never been published.
Over that time Oliver and Joan O’Donovan produced a body of moral and political theology whose reach is hard to overstate. The Initiative exists to make that work accessible and to support the practice of ethics as theology: God has acted decisively for the world and humankind in the person of Jesus Christ. Ethics, grounded in that reality, offers a form of moral reflection confirmed and reordered by the gospel of Jesus for the sake of living freely with God, neighbor, and nonhuman creation in hope of the full appearance of Christ’s Kingdom.
The catalogue is built and every item is held digitally. The work now is rights, preservation and partnership.
Three strands
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Repository
Digitise, catalogue and open the written and spoken work of both O’Donovans, with the study tools that make a corpus usable — indexes by scripture, by theme and by year, and the O’Donovans’ own historical background notes on what they wrote.
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Formation
Support pastors, chaplains, educators and scholars in moral and political reasoning through educational programs and events.
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Moral engagement
Engage in Christian moral and political reflection on pressing questions in public life.
From the catalogue
More than a thousand records carry a note like this one, written by the O’Donovans about their own work. They cannot be reconstructed by anyone else.
Where things stand
The work so far
- The catalogue currently holds 1,359 items of primary literature, and it is ever-growing.
- Every item is held digitally, as a PDF or Word document.
- We are seeking an institutional partner to guarantee preservation of the original materials for the long term.
- Publication rights are being settled for parts of the unpublished material, which is why the archive is not yet open to all.
Publishing
Current projects
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Autumn 2026
Resurrection and Moral Order, Portuguese (Brazil) edition
A new translation, scheduled for publication in the autumn of 2026.
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In preparation
A new book of sermons by Oliver O’Donovan
We hope to publish a volume of sermons that will also include his unpublished lectures on preaching.
For researchers
Working on the O’Donovans?
A great deal of this material has never been published, and we would be glad to make it available where we can. If unpublished sermons, lectures or manuscripts would help your research, write to us and tell us a little about the project — we will do what we can to help.
Hear when there is something to read
We will write when the repository opens and when learning opportunities are announced. And if you work on the O’Donovans, or hold material we may not know about, we would love to hear about it.