Tractarianism was famous, in its own period, for the intensity of its friendships. Notably, the founding of the theological movement grew out of the friendship of John Keble with several of his students and his determination to help them develop in godliness and good learning. Several of these students, when they themselves became Oxford tutors, attempted to formalise Keble’s method of instruction; notably under Robert Wilberforce and Hurrell Froude at Oriel and under Isaac Williams at Trinity. The controversy attached to John Henry Newman’s involvement in the attempted reforms of tutoring at Oriel have perhaps obscured the Kebleian influence and…

Nineteenth-century scholarship often argued that Christianity succeeded through the Hellenization of its theology, replacing Jewish national and terrestrial eschatology with Platonic spiritual interpretation. Robert Wilken's The Land Called Holy (1992) fundamentally disrupted this narrative for the patristic period, demonstrating that Christian engagement with Jerusalem and sacred geography intensified after the fourth century rather than disappearing. By contrast, New Testament scholarship’s consideration of eschatology long maintained the spiritualization thesis with a surprising consistency, arguing that earliest Christianity systematically reoriented Israel's territorial hopes toward Christological and ecclesial categories. This lecture sets out to interrogate this assumption of a unilateral Christianization or spiritualization…

The Icelandic sagas have been used as a comparative literature for the narratives in the Old Testament ever since they became accessible in editions and translations towards the end of the nineteenth century. Scholars such as Hermann Gunkel, Gerhard von Rad, George Coats, Meir Sternberg and John Barton have all used the sagas to reflect on stories in the Hebrew Bible, ranging from single episodes like Jacob wrestling with an angel, to the entire span of the ‘saga’ of King David. Yet the sagas of Icelanders belong in a very different context: they were written down in the thirteenth century…

The lecture will seek to address a major omission in the history of the Labour Party: the lack of substantial work on the Roman Catholic contribution to it. Within the study of the origins of the Labour Party, this omission is often accounted for by factors such as the politics of Irish nationalism and home rule, prior to 1922 and the achievement of Irish self-government, the instruction of the clergy and traditional clerical suspicion of socialism, opposition to Labour Party policy over issues such as Catholic schooling prior to the 1918 Education Act, and the product of a restricted franchise…

'Guilt as a response to personal wrongdoing is healthy. But false guilt is not. ... Today we are again succumbing to a fresh and more general bout of false guilt about our colonial past, which is misshaping the policies of our governments and cultural institutions and weakening our international standing.' — Lord Biggar, Reparations: The Tyranny of Imaginary Guilt.

Lord Biggar will speak about his latest book, why he chose to write it, what its argument is, how it builds on his previous book, Colonial: A Moral Reckoning, and what impact he hopes it will have.

The Revd Dr Rosalind Lane was a Prison Chaplain from 1996-2012. She was awarded her Doctorate in 2016 for a thesis entitled 'Imprisoned Grief: A theological, Spiritual and Practical Response'. In her research, she highlights the role of the Prison Chaplain as one who 'shepherds away from home' and argues that Chaplains are uniquely placed to support those who are disenfranchised in their grief whilst in prison. Her epistemological standpoint is one of a practitioner/researcher as a practical theologian, and arises from theological reflection on the experiences of those in her care. Her research highlights that those in prison as…