Richard Whately, an early reviewer of Jane Austen (1775-1817), remarked that she was ‘evidently a Christian writer: a merit which is much enhanced, both on the score of good taste, and of practical utility, by her religion being not at all obtrusive’. Austen’s Christianity is, in fact, so unobtrusive that critics and readers now tend to neglect its importance entirely. Many assume that Austen is mostly interested in satirising the church through characters like Mr. Collins. Even scholars who admit that Austen was a devout Anglican, such as Claudia Johnson, take her faith to be entirely separate from her artistic…

William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In his paintings, Hunt fused rich iconography and colourful realism to offer a new symbolic language to replace what he saw as the dead symbols of the past. Hunt attempted to communicate spiritual or transcendental ideals, to present and analyse the social and moral challenges which came with industrialization and urbanization, and to satisfy the hopes and longings of the human heart. In this, the goals of Hunt and his Pre-Raphaelite colleagues helps us to see both the broader significance, and the theological and social importance, of…

Prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude — these four, cardinal virtues have been at the centre of pagan and Christian forms of virtue ethics. How do we exercise them when using money, or is money always something corrupting, leading us inevitably to the vice of avarice instead of virtue? How do we use money in a way that serves our flourishing?

Faith, hope, and love will abide, according to St. Paul, when all else passes away, and the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13). 'If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.' (1 Cor 13:3). And yet, St. Paul often uses the language of profit, gain, and loss (Phil 3:7-9), the language of accounting, when speaking of the supreme value of knowing Christ in comparison to everything else. Does the new orientation given to us by faith, hope, and love offer us a better…

A Study Day led by Russell Jefford, providing an introduction to the origin of the Nicene Creed and the formation of the Doctrine of the Trinity to help those unfamiliar with the topic to prepare for the House’s Conference Receiving Nicaea on 12th and 13th November. ‘Begotten not made, of one being with the Father’ is a crucial but perplexing phrase in the Nicene Creed. What does it mean, why was it so important (and controversial) and how did we end up with the doctrine of the Trinity? We will explore these questions with the help of some key sour…

The public lecture, part of the House's Receiving Nicaea Conference, will set Nicaea in its historical context, before focusing on the reception of the Council and Creed in subsequent centuries, and especially in the Anglican tradition. It will argue that the legacy of Nicaea has profound relevance to the Church’s life today, both as a rich statement of orthodoxy, and as a worked example of how continuity with the apostolic faith is expressed amid challenge and change.