The Centre for Theology, Law, & Culture
An overview.
About
The Centre for Theology, Law, and Culture is an academic institute dedicated to enriching contemporary intellectual and cultural life by a rigorous engagement with Theology and related academic disciplines.
Based at Pusey House, the Centre draws upon Oxford’s longstanding and exceptional scholarship in Law and the Humanities, and in particular upon the Catholic tradition as received in the Church of England. The Centre hosts colloquia, lectures, and seminars, and supports scholars and scholarship in the pursuit of truth within the academy, and for the renewal of the Church within a pluralistic civic society.
The work of the Centre has recently been much extended by the generous donation of Mr Marek Matraszek.
Donations can be made online here.
The Centre's Director is Dr Jonathan Price, the Matraszek Fellow of Pusey House & St Cross College, University of Oxford.
Please see the 'Lectures' and 'Conferences' tabs on this website's banner to see the full range of our upcoming events, or consult our termcard.
Events
The Centre works within Pusey House to help organise academic events which bring together academics, students, clergy, public servants, and the general public.
Upcoming events
Natural Law & War
Thursday, 18 June 2026
In The Law of War and Peace (1625), Hugo Grotius revives two ancient questions: ‘What is war? What is law?’
The Dutch theologian-jurist thereby commences modern European discussions about just war and just peace, both of which were now meant to be conducted according to ‘law’.
Four hundred years later, war is still with us and peace seems just as difficult to make as it ever was. Law remains a contested domain, especially between jurisdictions and nations. It is unclear whether war is being waged or peace is being made according to any law. The questions are still with us. But we also enjoy the benefit of a welldeveloped tradition of natural law.
What can doctrines of natural law tell us about waging war and about peace-making? Are ancient sources that may have been unknown to Grotius’s age helpful in answering the questions? Do the ‘laws of nature’ that science has since uncovered help us? Can the theology, which undergirded both Grotius’s writings and the modern natural rights and human rights doctrines, help in answering these questions?
Join the Centre for Theology, Law, and Culture in Oxford for a two-day international conference, held in partnership with the Chase Center at Ohio State University, the School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Canterbury Institute, Oxford.
More details available on the conference page.
MacIntyre in the Conflicts of Modernity
Thursday, 11 June 2026
Presented in partnership with the Canterbury Institute and the Aquinas Institute of Blackfriars Hall.
The death of Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (12 January 1929 – 21 May 2025) provides all who are indebted to his work with an opportunity to consider how he has made them rethink those areas of philosophy to which he made outstanding contributions.
The Centre for Theology, Law, and Culture at Pusey House is partnering with the Canterbury Institute and the Aquinas Institute at Blackfriars Hall to organise a conference to consider how we ought to commemorate the work that MacIntyre began, whether that be by developing and deepening it, by refining and correcting what he overlooked or dismissed, or by sharply disagreeing with the positions he held. It will consider how his work provokes us to redefine our positions in light of the arguments he made.
As he wrote in his last book: ‘In philosophy it is only rarely that anyone or any argument has the last word. Debate almost always continues, and this is notably so with the topics and issues with which I am concerned in this book’ – MacIntyre, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity (2016).
There will be two keynote lectures in the Pusey House Chapel at 4pm on both days of the conference that will be open to the public and do not require registration to attend.
Keynote lectures:
Thursday 11 June, Professor Tracey Rowland (Notre Dame, Australia), 'MacIntyrean Insights for the Leonine Era'.
Friday 12 June, Professor Jason Blakely (Loyola Marymount), 'Last of the Utopians: Alasdair MacIntyre as Radical Humanist'.
The rest of the conference will take place in Campion Hall and Christ Church and registration is required to attend the other sessions. To register your interest in attending, please email: andreas.masvie@chch.ox.ac.uk
Evensong at 5:30pm after each of the keynote lectures will have a guest preacher. The preacher on Thursday, 11 June will be The Rev'd Dr Nicholas Austin SJ (Master of Campion Hall), and on Friday, 12 June, The Rev’d Dr Richard Conrad OP (Blackfriars Hall) will preach.
Past events
What makes a novel 'Christian'?
13 May 2026
Can a novel be Christian even though the author is not? What makes us consider Pilgrim's Progress and The Brothers Karamazov to be Christian novels? Is it because the authors professes certain beliefs or because the novels possess certain features of form or content? Is a novel Christian because it presents morality and mortality in a particular way? Should we accept Alastair MacIntyre's suggestion in After Virtue that Jane Austen and Dante wrote comedies precisely because of their Christian faith? Could a novel never be truly Christian if its story is a tragedy?
The Centre for Theology, Law, and Culture at Pusey House would like to organise a conference to discuss these questions on Wednesday 13 May in Oxford.
We will gather academics from English studies to speak about how they might answer some of these questions by talking about a particular novel or novelist. We also invite novelists to discuss how they consider some of these questions in their own writing and what it means to be a Christian novelist today.
For further details and information about how to purchase a ticket, please click here.
Speakers:
Professor Randy Boyagoda (University of Toronto): What is seen, what is believed: Belief in/and the Novel.
Professor Bonnie Lander Johnson (Downing College, Cambridge): Mysticism and the Modern Novel.
Professor Alison Milbank (University of Nottingham): What makes a Gothic novel Christian: From Dracula to Sarah Perry's Melmoth.
Ms Grace Oliver (Wilson Hill Academy): Elizabeth Gaskell and the Christian Imagination: Prayer, Scripture, and Character Formation in Gaskell’s Works.
Professor Lori Peterson Branch (University of Iowa): What if the Novel is Secular? The Novel as Secularism’s Theology.
Professor Holly Ordway (Word on Fire Institute): ‘Fundamentally religious’ – or Not? J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and the Question of Authorial Intent.
Ms Beatrice Scudeler (Fairer Disputations): The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Eschatological Hope in Dorothy Sayers' Detective Fiction.
Professor Clare Walker Gore (Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge): Revealed Truths and Reserved Plots: Charlotte M. Yonge and the Tractarian Novel.
Christian Revival: Our Post-Liberal Hope?
11 March 2026
The long post-war consensus in the West—politically defined by liberal democracy, economically by globalisation, and morally by a shared repudiation of past horrors—has broken down.
In its place, a new cultural and moral moment is emerging. In this post-liberal moment, a trans-denominational Christian restoration is gathering force—intellectually, spiritually, and culturally. The work of various contemporary thinkers, such as Rod Dreher, Paul Kingsnorth, and Iain McGilchrist, point toward a renewal that is not merely reactionary but creative: a re-enchantment of the world through the recovery of Christian metaphysics—not as private consolation, but as public truth. This conference will gather some of the leading voices in this emerging renewal to ask:
· What form is this Christian re-enchantment taking?
· How should faith engage political life in a disenchanted world?
· What does it mean to be Christian after secularism?
· Can the Christian tradition not only criticise but also lead?
In doing so, we aim to connect Eastern and Western Christian traditions in common cause, and to investigate the appropriate relationship between Church and State in the post-liberal context.
The conference will also seek to articulate strategies for advancing Christian cultural and institutional renewal in this new and unsettled era.
Click here to view the dedicated page for this conference. Please check it regularly for more news about confirmed speakers.
A Genealogy of Post-Liberalism
4 March 2026
This afternoon mini-colloquium will consider the following questions:
What is 'post-liberalism'?
What is the origin of this idea?
And how can we better understand our own political moment by grasping the genealogy of this idea?
João Pinheiro da Silva (University of St. Andrews) and Jacob Williams (Oxford) will introduce their essay, 'Postliberalism: A Genealogy' (Telos, no. 212, 2025), why they wrote it, and what its thesis is.
There will be two respondents: Professor John Milbank (University of Nottingham) and Professor Paul Kelly (LSE), author of Against Postliberalism: Why 'Family, Faith and Flag' is a Dead End for the Left (Polity, 2025). More details available here.
Lectures
The Centre works with the Principal and Chapter to co-ordinate the House's flagship the Recollection Lecture series: recalling the major themes and thinkers of Christian history.
Recollection lectures take place in the Ursell Room at Pusey House at 4pm generally (unless noted otherwise). Tea and coffee is served in the Hood Room between 3.15 and 3.45pm.
You can see our lectures, given by scholars including John Finnis and Wim Decock, on our YouTube channel. Follow us to see upcoming series on early modern theology and law, the soul, and moral and political theology, as well as the co-organised Theological Conference on the theme of the work of the Holy Spirit.
Support and Contact
Please consider sponsoring one of our scholars or an upcoming colloquium or lecture series or book discussion group. It is only through the generous support of donors like you that the next generation of Oxford students, as well as interested scholars and policy-makers, might receive ancient wisdom in a setting of Christian life and worship. Donations can be made here.
Alternatively, donations can made by bank transfer with the following details:
Pusey House Chapel
Barclays Bank
Sort code: 20-65-18
Account no.: 10748455
Reference: Pusey Centre
For enquiries about the Centre, please contact Dr Jonathan Price at: jonathan.price@stx.ox.ac.uk
Pusey House, St Giles', Oxford, OX1 3LZ
Who we are
The centre's current scholars.
Dr Jonathan Price
Research:
Theological origins of modernity; philosophical anthropology; virtue ethics; philosophy of Private Law.
Dr Ryan Blank
Research:
Modern British History, Ecclesiastical History, History of Intimacies, History of Masculinities.
Dr Clinton Collister
Research:
Theology and Literature; Moral Theology; Systematic Theology.
Miss Isabelle Heinemann
Research:
Intellectual History; the high middle ages; Dante Alighieri.
Mr Phillip Quinn
Research:
philosophical theology (especially in connection with moral theology); analytic theology; late antique philosophy and theology, patristic philosophy
Dr William Simpson
Research:
Philosophy of nature, metaphysics of physics, history and philosophy of science.
The Revd Professor Nigel Biggar CBE
Research:
Please follow this link to Prof Biggar's university profile.
Dr Mehmet Ciftci
Research:
Political theology; the intersection of liturgy and ethics; constitutionalism in the Commonwealth realms.
Dr Euan Grant
Research:
Contemporary interpretation of scholastic theology; the theology of human nature.
Prof Agnieszka Nogal
Research:
Human rights; natural rights; the organic metaphor of "political body"; biopolitics.
Dr John Ritzema
Research:
Visionary experience and cult in the Hebrew Bible; the Bible and Humanities; Christian theology and the British Constitution.
Miss Matti Veldhuis
Research:
Plato and the will, Platonic metaphysics, Persianate Neoplatonism.
