The Centre for Theology, Law, and Culture at Pusey House invites you to a colloquium on 11 February to discuss what can be learnt from Anglo-Catholic socialism as a tradition that still bears relevance for our time. An impressive number of socialist priests and intellectuals were formed by the Anglo-Catholic tradition in the first half of the twentieth century, including Percy Dearmer, F.D. Maurice, R.H. Tawney, J. N. Figgis, Henry Scott Holland, Frank Weston, Conrad Noel, Albert Mansbridge, Charles Gore, Ken Leech, and John Hughes.

The conference will be preceded by a public lecture by Dr Jon Cruddas, former MP for Dagenham and Rainham, and author of The Dignity of Labour (Polity, 2021), at 4pm on Tuesday 10th February on "Catholicism and the Labour Party". More details available here.

This colloquium will gather an ecumenical array of speakers from these different traditions to consider some of the pastoral challenges and contemporary issues that are being faced by clergy today in the ministry of hearing confessions, and by the Church and Christians more generally. This will include, among other concerns, how confession relates to the commitment to safeguarding and the protection of the vulnerable, to the inviolability of the seal, and to the wider significance of confession in a culture that preaches tolerance without practicing forgiveness. The colloquium includes a public lecture at 4pm on Wednesday 25th February by The Rev'd Fr Ben Jefferies on ‘Dr. Pusey on the Effects of Absolution: Catholic but not Roman’. More details available here.

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.

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.