Personal profile
The Rev’d Steele was initially educated and ordained as an Anglican clergyman in Zimbabwe. After teaching, parish ministry and school chaplaincy in Zimbabwe, he served in the British Army as a chaplain for 21 years, deploying on operations, mostly with the Parachute Regiment, to Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and Afghanistan.

Prior to teaching at Selden College, he worked as a part-time distance-learning Associate Tutor teaching Philosophy and Christian Worldviews to undergraduate students reading for a BA in Theology at Spurgeon’s College, London.  He has a wide variety of interests and hobbies and, arising from this, an eclectic collection of ‘extra-mural’ qualifications in deer stalking, tracking, mountaineering, bushcraft, and book-binding, as well as unpublished research on the Dead Sea Scrolls comparing the military organisation and tactics described in 1QM, The War Scroll, with extant Graeco-Roman tactical manuals.

The Rev’d Steele’s last role in the Army was as the Army’s Ethics Subject Matter Expert, which entailed developing a practicable model of moral decision-making and ethical training for the Army, delivering ethics lectures to a wide variety of audiences, from soldiers with few educational qualifications to academics doing post-doctoral research in ethics. He also lectured foreign nation military chaplains, humanist groups, Sikh conferences, and Moslem religious leaders, both from within the UK and abroad.

Married to Avril, they have two adult children.

Academic History