Rachel Mann


Rachel Mann is a British Anglican priest, poet and feminist theologian. She is a trans woman who writes, speaks and broadcasts on a wide range of topics including gender, sexuality and religion.

Early life and education

Mann was born in 1970. From 2003 to 2005, she trained for ordained ministry at Queen's College, Birmingham, an ecumenical theological college. She undertook postgraduate studies in the Bible and 19th-Century literature at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her doctoral thesis was titled "The representation of fecundity and barrenness in the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and the Bible: a critical and creative interrogation of a Christian-feminist poetics", and was completed in 2017.

Ordained ministry

Mann was ordained in the Church of England as a deacon in 2005 and as a priest in 2006. She served her curacy at St Matthew's Church, Stretford in the Diocese of Manchester. Between 2008 and 2017, she was Priest-in-Charge at the Church of St Nicholas, Burnage, before being appointed its Rector in 2018. Between 2009 and 2017, she was also Resident Poet at Manchester Cathedral. In 2017, she was made an honorary canon of Manchester Cathedral. Since February 2018, she has been a member of the General Synod of the Church of England, having been elected by the clergy of the Diocese of Manchester.
Mann belongs to the modern Catholic tradition of the Church of England, though she was brought up an Evangelical-Charismatic Christian. She supports the full inclusion of the LGBT people in the church.

Author

She is the author of Dazzling Darkness: Gender, Sexuality, Illness & God and The Risen Dust: Poems and Stories of Passion & Resurrection, both published by the publishing arm of the Iona Community. Mann is also a contributor to Fear and Friendship: Anglicans Engaging With Islam and several books on liturgical theology, including Presiding Like a Woman. Her book about the First World War and Ritual, Fierce Imaginings: The Great War, Ritual, Memory & God was shortlisted for the 2019 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing.
In 2018, she was appointed Visiting Teaching Fellow in Creative Writing and English at the Manchester Writing School, Manchester Metropolitan University.
In 2019, Carcanet published her debut full poetry collection, A Kingdom of Love.
Mann is a regular contributor to The Church Times and contributes to BBC Radio 2’s Pause For Thought and BBC Radio 4's The Daily Service and Prayer For The Day. She also writes about progressive music, metal and folk for Prog Magazine, an offshoot of Classic Rock Magazine, and The Quietus.

Selected works