News
What's new?
John Reader (Senior Research Fellow) and Chris Baker (Director), together with Daniel Whistler from the University of Liverpool, have just edited a special edition of the journal Political Theology. Published in April 2012, it is entitled Speculative Philosophies and Religious Practices, and it emerged from the first ever meeting of philosophers of religion and practical/public theologians held at the Centre for Faiths and Public Policy conference earlier this year of the same name. Contributors include Graeme Smith, Katharine Moody, Elaine Graham, Beverley Clack, John Reader, Anna Strhan.
Dispatches from the Frontline - read the first in a new series of response papers from the WTF Council to current social, polititical, economic and religious issues entitled, Spiritual Progression in Economic Recession?
Dispatches from the Frontline no 2 - read the second in our series of response papers from the WTF council to current social, political, economic and religious issues entitled Sex and the City.
An updated version of William Temple's Christianity and Social Order has been completed by John Reader, John Atherton and Chris Baker for SPCK Press. Entitled Christianity and the New Social Order, it uses Temple's original book as a springboard for an engaged enquiry about a renewed role for Christian social ethics in response to contemporary debates concerning the future of politics, economics and the welfare state. The book was published in September 2011, and has a foreword by Lord Layard, as well as endorsements from Robert Peston, Lord Alton and Frankie Ward, Dean of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, amongst others.
The Centre for Faiths and Public Policy has been established in September 2010 as part of the new research agreement between the William Temple Foundation and the University of Chester (visit www.chester.ac.uk/cfpp) and an inaugural conference was held on March 17th 2011, entitled Spiritual Progression in Economic Recession? (click here for pictures and report). A further event was held on the 1st June 2011 entitled Speculative Philosophies and Religious Practices - the first meeting of its kind between philosophers of religion and practical and public theologians. Some of the papers will be published in a special edition of Political Theology in January 2012. Report and pictures here.
The overall aims of the research partnership are to develop and harness the synergies between empirical research, public policy, urban life and public, practical and systematic theology. This initiative is in addition to the existing contribution by the Foundation's Director, Chris Baker, to the groundbreaking Professional Doctorate of Practical Theology Programme at the University (click here for further details). The conference also marks the final phase of WTF's Leverhulme project on religious and spiritual capital (please click on Activities to read the annual reports of this project)
Recent publications by WTF staff include:
- Transfiguring Capitalism - An Enquiry into Religion and Global Change (2008 - SCM Press) by John Atherton
- What makes a Good City? - Public Theology and the Urban Church (2009 - DLT) by Elaine Graham and Stephen Lowe
- Building Utopia?: Seeking the Authentic Church for New Communities (SPCK,2008) co-edited with Laurie Green See image
- Entering the new theological space - blurred encounters in faith, politics and community (Ashgate,2009) co-edited with John Reader See image
- Remoralizing Britain?: Social, Ethical and Theological Perspectives on New Labour, (Continuum,2009) - Peter Scott, Chris Baker and Elaine Graham See image
- The Hybrid Church in the City - Third Space Thinking 2nd edition (SCM/Canterbury Press - paperback edition - June 2009).See image
- The Practices of Happiness - political economy, religion and wellbeing (Routlegde, 2010) - edited by Joth Atherton, Elaine Graham and Ian Steedman.
- Postsecular Cities - space, theory and practice, (Continuum, 2011) - Justin Beaumont and Chris Baker
- Christianity and the New Social Order (SCM, 2011) - John Atherton, Chris Baker and John Reader