Brilliant historian, political philosopher and theologian, J. N. Figgis CR was one of the great minds of the early twentieth century.
He was also a lovable if slightly eccentric priest whose own scepticism helped him to understand the problems that other people had with belief, but whose sense of the absolute priority of God and the love of God lent rare power to his writing and preaching. Although Figgis died before the worst manifestations of twentieth-century totalitarianism, he was implacably opposed to all forms of absolutism. He favoured a broadly distributist and bottom-up view of authority that respects the integrity of individuals and of the communities and institutions that make up civil society, including the Church. Figgis is a prophet of modern pluralism.
Academic Speakers: Paul Avis, William Cavanaugh (USA), Mark Chapman, Elaine Graham, Andrew Grosso (USA), Jeremy Morris, Ephraim Radner (Canada), Peter Sedgwick, Stephen Spencer
The conference starts with tea at 4 pm on Tuesday 2nd April and ends with lunch at 1 pm on Thursday 4th April 2019.
Residential prices starting from £185.00
Day delegate rates available on application
Neville Figgis brochure
Neville Figgis poster
Speaker Biographies:
Paul Avis is honorary professor in the Department of Theology and Religion, University of Durham and honorary research fellow in the Department of Theology and Religion, University of Exeter, UK. He was General Secretary of the Church of England’s Council for Christian Unity (1998-2011), Theological Consultant to the Anglican Communion Office (2011-12), Chaplain to HM Queen Elizabeth II (2008-17) and consecutively Prebendary, Sub-Dean and Canon Theologian of Exeter Cathedral. He is a member of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order. Paul is the Editor-in-Chief of Ecclesiology and the editor of Brill’s series Anglican-Episcopal Theology and History. He is the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Ecclesiology (2018) and jointly with Benjamin M. Guyer of The Lambeth Conference: Theology, History, Polity and Purpose (2017). Recent books include In Search of Authority: Anglican Theological Method from the Reformation to the Enlightenment (2014); Becoming a Bishop: A Handbook of Episcopal Ministry (2015); and The Vocation of Anglicanism (2016), all Bloomsbury T&T Clark.
William T. Cavanaugh is Professor of Catholic Studies and Director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University in Chicago. He is the co-editor of the journal Modern Theology. He is the author of seven books, and editor of four more. His books include Torture and Eucharist (Blackwell, 1998), The Myth of Religious Violence (Oxford U.P., 2009), and Migrations of the Holy (Eerdmans, 2016). He has lectured on six continents, and his work has been published in fourteen languages.
Mark Chapman is Vice-Principal of Ripon College, Cuddesdon, Professor of the History of Modern Theology at the University of Oxford and Canon Theologian of Truro Cathedral. He has written widely on modern theology, Anglicanism and church history. His recent books include Theology at War and Peace: English Theology and Germany in the First World War (Routledge, 2017); Theology and Society in Three Cities: Berlin, Oxford and Chicago, 1800-1914 (James Clarke, 2014); The Fantasy of Reunion: Anglicans, Catholics and Ecumenism, 1833-1882 (Oxford University Press, 2014). Mark will speak on ‘Figgis and the First World War’
Elaine Graham is Grosvenor Research Professor of Practical Theology at the University of Chester, a position she has held since 2009. In March 2014, she was installed as Canon Theologian at Chester Cathedral. She is the author of several major books, including Transforming Practice (1996), Representations of the Post-Human (2002) and Words Made Flesh (2009); with Heather Walton and Frances Ward, Theological Reflection: Methods (2005); with Zoe Bennett, Stephen Pattison and Heather Walton, Invitation to Practical Theology Research (Routledge, 2018). Her most recent work considers public theology as a form of Christian apologetics: Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Public Theology in a Post-Secular Age (2013) and Apologetics without Apology: speaking of God in a world troubled by religion (Cascade, 2017).
Andrew Grosso currently serves as Canon to the Dean at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral (Columbia, SC); he has also been the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Nashotah House Theological Seminary (Nashotah, WI), Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church (Atchison, KS), Canon Residentiary at Grace Episcopal Cathedral (Topeka, KS), and Dean of the Bishop Kemper School for Ministry (Topeka, KS). He is also the Vice President of the Polanyi Society and Associate Editor of the Society’s scholarly journal, Tradition & Discovery. He is the author of Personal Being: Polanyi, Ontology, and Christian Theology (Peter Lang: 2007), and has published articles and reviews in Tradition & Discovery, Syndicate Theology, and the International Journal of Systematic Theology. He holds a PhD in Religious Studies from Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI), an MDiv from the School of Theology of the University of the South (Sewanee, TN), and an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL).
Jeremy Morris is Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, UK. He was previously Dean of Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge. He is a specialist in modern religious history, including the Anglican tradition, the ecumenical movement, and arguments about secularization. His books have included F. D. Maurice and the Crisis of Christian Authority (2005), Renewed by the Word: The Bible and Christian Revival since the Reformation (2005), The Church in the Modern Age (2007), The High Church Revival in the Church of England: Arguments and Identities (2016), and as editor and contributor, The Oxford History of Anglicanism, Vol. 4. Global Western Anglicanism c.1910-2000 (2017). He is Director of the Archbishop’s Examination in Theology, and was formerly Deputy Chair of the Faith and Order Commission of the Church of England.
Ephraim Radner is Professor of Historical Theology at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, where he has served since 2007. He holds a BA from Dartmouth College, an MDiv from Yale Divinity School, and a PhD from Yale University. His many books include Church (2017), Church, Society, and the Christian Common Good: Essays in Conversation with Philip Turner (editor, 2017), A Time to Keep: Theology, Mortality, and the Shape of a Human Life (2016), Time and the Word: The Figural Reading of Scripture (2016), A Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church (2012), Hope among the Fragments: The Broken Church and its Engagement of Scripture (2004), The End of the Church: A Pneumatology of Christian Division in the West (1999).
Peter Sedgwick was Principal of St Michael’s College, Llandaff, the theological college for the Church in Wales, having previously taught at the Universities of Birmingham and Hull, and was Theological Consultant to the North-East Churches from 1979- 1994, the Church of England’s policy officer on criminal justice and mental affairs 1996-2004. He has been on the Anglican – Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) since 2011, as an Anglican ethicist. He has written widely on Anglicanism, political economy and theology. His study of Anglican moral theology, The Origins of Anglican Moral Theology, will appear in late 2018, published by Brill. In retirement, he runs a charity for destitute asylum seekers, Home4UCardiff. His wife is a parish priest on a large council estate in Cardiff.
Stephen Spencer is Director for Theological Education for the Anglican Communion and was previously Vice-Principal of St Hild College, Mirfield. He has served in parishes in England and Zimbabwe and has worked in theological education. His doctoral studies were on the philosophical foundations of William Temple’s social thought and his publications include William Temple: A Calling to Prophecy (2001), SCM Studyguide: Anglicanism (2010) and Christ in All Things: William Temple and His Writings (2015).
