John Reader

Introduction to the Special Issue: Speculative Philosophies and Religious Practices

Abstract This article maps the political and theoretical landscapes that have led to this volume, which represents the first attempt to outline an open, yet strategic and critical, dialogue between certain traditions in philosophy of religion and practical/public theology. It identifies the speculative return of the Real within recent continental philosophy and the interest in the lived materialities and practices of religion as the shared points of connection and overlap between these two disciplines, together with a commitment to make a viable contribution to the current UK debates surrounding the Big Society and the Age of Austerity.

Technofutures, nature and the sacred: transdisciplinary perspectives

This book has emerged from the fourth biennial conference of the European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment held at the Sigtuna Foundation in Sweden in May 2013. As the title sugg...

Beyond in the Midst: Alternative Practices of Faith

Repeat the main themes of the book: local transcendences; assemblages; human and the non-human; plasticity and plastic autonomy, metastability; distributed agency; new Enlightenment; the apophatic and the relational; pharmakon; disjunctive synthesis and dissensus; the Beautiful and the Sublime; mapping and reassembling; material religious practices; otium and negotium.

Technology as Pharmakon

Practical example of how technology can be used to create new life chances for someone with disability through a Smart Home and Smart City. The Internet of Things as growing influence. Recent hack onto the Yahoo website affecting 500 million users. How young people are digitally tethered. Morozov on the non-neutral use of algorithms by big companies. Then the example of how high frequency traders manipulate the technology to their own financial advantage,

Introduction to New Materialism and Relational Christian Realism

Objective is to examine how ideas from Relational Christian Realism (RCR) can supplement and address potential weaknesses in current theological appropriations of New Materialism (NM). Issue of responses to environmental issues and the need to develop a new conceptuality. Initial focus on Deleuze and philosophy as inventing concepts. Deleuze as utilized by NM: matter-energy rather than matter as inert and passive further themes of flat ontology and difference, plus drawing on Simondon and his notion of metastability. Then examining how RCR draws on Deleuze, that is, to develop the notion of material religious practices and their rhizomatic structure; process rather than substance; a means of challenging the nature-culture divide; the contribution of assemblage theory. As with DeLanda, this approach is anti-essentialist and anti-determinist. How RCR then builds upon the work of Latour through his understanding of realism; truth as circulating references; the relationship between the human and the non-human; matters of concern rather than matters of fact. Links to RCR concept of entanglement. The chapter concludes with a summary of subsequent chapters.

Aesthetics after the Death of God

Criticism of theological appropriations of NM is that they lack political purchase. Unlikely as it seems, researching aesthetics as what fills the gap once religion has receded is a creative option. Rieger mentions the issues of inequality and social injustice and impacts of global financial crisis and neo-capitalism as needing to be addressed. Crockett and Reader have elsewhere offered NM and RCR as addressing environmental issues, plus other practical examples.

Faith in the public square

The relative authority of the state and the church was a contentious issue for early Christians (c.f. Romans 13). Indeed, for much of its history Christianity has been entangled with secular power and polity, inhibiting its ability to be prophetic, even if it has often been able to exploit its relationship with the establishment to effect good. How religion and society, Church and state, should relate is an historical and perennial matter. Moreover, this is an issue facing all religions. How can a faith address matters of public morality? At the extremes, should government be theocratic or secular, and if so, what kind of structural relationship may citizen-believers and their communities have with the state? Once a moral basis has been decided upon, how should believers act to achieve their ends? Religious diversity even within national contexts, let alone internationally, makes these questions all the more complex. Rowan Williams wrestles with the very theme of this special issue in his book ‘Faith in the Public Square’ (2012). In this volume, he deals with complexities of the role of religion and unbelief in society, and its many aspects and influences. He points out the slipperiness of the categories ‘secularism’ and ‘secularisation’, and the resultant misunderstandings of these terms which creates a sense of loss, threat and anxiety amongst believers as their place in the world becomes seemingly eroded and insecure. Yet, he observes, the very basis for secularism lies within religion itself, and the influence of religion remains resilient in cultural and political life. Religious voices are far from silent, and though their cultural position may be altered and is altering, their power to shape social life is in reality far from diminished. This special issue of the journal arises principally from a conference hosted by the University of Worcester, UK, in 2016, jointly convened by the university with the William Temple Foundation. Specifically, the conference invited a range of perspectives on the theme of ‘social justice’, and in part it commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Anglican church’s Malvern Conference of January 1941. The original colloquium was held at the height of the blitz, and thus in safety away from London, at Malvern College, Worcestershire. From the privileged position as an established church, it drew together Anglican bishops and leading members of the laity with the aim of considering ‘how far the Christian faith and principles based upon it afford guidance for action in the world to-day’, and with a view to finding a Christian basis for a new social order (Malvern 1941, vii). Amongst the 400 present in 1941 were British-Christian leading lights of the mid-twentieth century: T. S. Eliot, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Sir Richard Acland. Later commentators have regarded this conference in somewhat negative ways, as marking the eclipse of Christian social radicalism in England (Norman 1976: 365), favouring a more moderate notion of state intervention rather than the more radical one of the common ownership of wealth (Grimley 2004, 205–206). In format the conference was said to have felt rushed, and the programme overloaded, ultimately lacking any real impact in and of itself (Machin 1998, 128). Notwithstanding these downbeat assessments, it is important to remember that this conference was at the end of a long chain of public intellectual interventions on the part of its convener and chair, William Temple, then Archbishop of York. Arguably, it was William Temple himself rather than Malvern per se that was being recalled in the Worcester conference. It was Temple’s intellectual spirit and approach which was invoked in so many of the papers presented, and this is reflected in the articles published here.

Social identities between the sacred and the secular

orientation to meaning, connects us to the world. If, however, these insights are to be harnessed in the provision of a persuasive account of the distinction and value of a Christian University – and surely they can be – the reader is left to do the work. Most immediately, in the British context, what is offered here would provide the basis for a theological grounding of the increasing attention which is being given to ‘education for sustainable development’ and to the accompanying notion of ‘global citizenship’. More generally it would facilitate a robust philosophical grammar concerning why the formation of persons should come before the transmission of particular information and skills. Helpfully this book roots itself in the concrete, lived specificity of the operations of human subjectivity, with the claim that one can test the validity of what is said by reference to one’s own experience of thought (e.g. 180). Yet the ideas it contains are commonly expressed in generalities. This, combined with the precise but often clinical and desiccated prose, can make the book daunting to read and more seriously detracts from the claim to reflect experiences verifiable by all. One should also treat its claim that this work is not for specialists in the area, nor that it requires prior acquaintance with its central dialogue partners (xi), with a degree of scepticism. This is not to say that the work will be impenetrable, far from it, but one does need a degree of wilful persistence to push on to the conclusion. Such persistence will, however, receive a more than adequate reward.

Entangled Fidelities: Towards a Relational Christian Realism for the Public Sphere

Abstract This article articulates a new concept within public and political theology, namely relational Christian realism, which it encapsulates within the notion of Entangled Fidelities. It proposes that the interlocking of a series of highly problematic areas of current human experience, reflected, for example, in the ongoing economic and environmental crises, require a reformulation of the Christian realism tradition. In this reformulation, aspects of this tradition are brought into close and critical dialogue with key voices from philosophy, sociology, and theology: namely, H Richard Niebuhr, Bruno Latour, and Manuel Castells. The dynamics and methodologies associated with relational Christian realism are further explicated with reference to a number of case studies. The article concludes by suggesting that this new (and as yet speculative) conceptual term needs fuller explication and development with regard to empirical research in a number of cross-over fields in which faith-based and no faith-based social actors are engaged in a new politics of postsecular rapprochement.