Scott Holland Symposium 2026 | Meeting-Join | Microsoft Teams
09.00 Welcome (Venerable Dr W.M. Jacob)
09.15 Keynote Lecture (Chair: Venerable Dr W.M. Jacob)
Professor Paul Hedges (Professor of Interreligious Studies, Nanyang Technological University Singapore):
‘Incarnation, Social Justice, and the Diversity of Religion and Non-Religion’
An emphasis on the doctrine of the incarnation, often expressed as an incarnational theology, has been said to be typical of Anglican theology. Certainly, an incarnational approach has played a role in how at least some Anglican theologians have approached the question of religious diversity. In this lecture, drawing some inspiration from the work of Henry Scott Holland, the combined issues of incarnation, social justice, and religious pluralism will be brought together. It will begin by sketching some aspects of the connections of incarnational theology and theories about religious diversity in the history of Anglican thought. Starting in the nineteenth century, mention will be made of Holland, Charles Gore and the Lux Mundi group, as well as other theologians and missionaries. Moving through the twentieth century and beyond, we will look at some significant figures such as William Temple and Rowan Williams. This will lay the groundwork for thinking about how we may contemplate questions of religious pluralism, social justice, and incarnationality in the contemporary context. The lecture will argue that we cannot separate reflection on religious diversity, including today non-religion, and social justice within a theological worldview. Moreover, by taking these questions up within an incarnational frame, we may be led in new directions that continue from, even if going radically beyond, what Holland and others have previously contemplated.
Our keynote speaker
Dr Paul Hedges is a Life Member at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, and Professor of Interreligious Studies and Associate Dean (Scholarly Ecosystems) at RSIS, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Previously he was Reader in Interreligious Studies at the University of Winchester, UK, and has lectured in various European, Asian, and North American universities. He frequently works with stakeholders outside academia, which has included the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Ministry of Community, Culture and Youth (MCCY, Singapore), the Anglican Communion Network for Interfaith Concerns (NIFCON), the Dialogue Society (UK), Netflix, and the BBC.
He is co-editor of Interreligious Studies and Intercultural Theology, editor-in-chief of the Occasional Paper series Interreligious Relations, and sits on the editorial board of numerous journal and book series. He works in such areas as interreligious studies, theory and method in the study of religion, intercultural and interreligious dialogue, religion and politics, prejudice studies, intercultural theologies, and decolonising academia. He has published fifteen books and over ninety scholarly papers. His most recent books are Christian Polytheism? Polydox Theologies of Multi-devotional and Decolonial Praxis (Routledge 2025), Understanding Religion: Theories and Methods for Studying Religiously Diverse Societies (University of California Press 2021), and Religious Hatred: Prejudice, Islamophobia, and Antisemitism in Global Context (Bloomsbury 2021).
10.30 Break
10.45 Short Papers and discussion (Chair: Revd Dr Stephen Spencer, Anglican Communion Office)
Dr Samuel Tranter (University of Oxford), ‘“The bearing of the religion of the Incarnation on political, social and economic life”: Anglican Christian Socialism as a resource amid the “fourth Industrial Revolution”’
Central within the legacy of Henry Scott Holland is the ongoing invitation to discern ‘the bearing of the religion of the Incarnation on political, social and economic life’. It is noteworthy that Holland’s own enquiry into this question is formed in part by a rich tradition of Christian Socialist response to the fundamental issues raised by the industrial revolutions of the preceding decades. In our own time, both academy and wider publics are abuzz with the possibilities and perils represented by the advent of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ – most acutely, artificial intelligence (AI) – and religious traditions are once again being turned to as sources of wisdom in the midst of turmoil. In particular, Catholic Social Thought, not least with the precedent of papal encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891) and publication of Nova et Antiqua (2025), has rightly seemed to many a deep source of moral reflection and theological vision. This paper begins to ask what resources might be found in the parallel, though less defined, tradition of Anglican social theology – and in particular the Christian Socialism of Holland and his forebears. Among the key exploratory questions: How did these f igures evaluate emerging and influential economic systems as embodiments (for good or ill) of a ‘moral economy’? How did they respond to e ects of technological ‘progress’ with a theological account of the person-in-relation and the common good? And: How did they imagine and create institutions and initiatives that sought to nurture agency, foster co-operation, dignify labour, and seek justice for the poor?
Dr Scholastica Jacob (Durham University), Incarnational Experience of Religious Life in the Context of Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Encounter
Monastic/Religious Life is, by its very nature, incarnational. Its members seek to imitate Christ’s sacrifice and live the Gospel invitation of the Evangelical Counsels. Long understood in this sense in the Roman Catholic Church, the proponents of the Oxford Movement in the nineteenth-century perceived consecrated community life as a particular expression of Christ’s mystical body. In encouraging the foundation of religious orders within the Anglican tradition the founders sought not only to incarnate the Kingdom of God on earth but also to express its true catholicity.
Historical and theological study of the convents and monasteries in England across the Anglican/Catholic communions reveals that, in the desire for a Christian radical renunciation, what united was greater than what divided them. Remarkable similarities in both external expression and interior piety are apparent in a period when ecumenical dialogue was viewed with suspicion. The development of religious life, both Catholic and Anglican, from the mid-nineteenth century may be seen as the first spontaneous medium for Christian Unity.
This paper will explore the incarnational doctrine within the context of religious life and the contribution this continues to make to Christian Unity. Moreover, it will propose that, in addition to an ecumenical dimension, the paradigm of religious life can be extended to wider inter-religious encounter.
11.45 Break
12.00 Short Papers and discussion (Chair: Revd Dr Stephanie Burette, University of Oxford)
Andrew Carruthers (Durham University), ‘The Incarnation in the Social Theology of Rowan Williams’
Williams’ perspective on the Incarnation is deeply ambiguous. He has been critical of those who understand it as “the crown of God’s purpose in creation rather than a divine response to sin and fallenness”. Particularly in his earlier writings, he distanced himself from the ways in which it was invoked by the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Christian socialists, especially F. D. Maurice. However, he has also called on the concept in a more constructive mode, particularly in relation to ethics and political theology, recently describing the Incarnation as “the ultimate model of solidarity”.
This paper sketches some of this ambiguity, drawing out the different ways in which Williams discusses the term. It argues that, for all his criticism of the way the doctrine has been understood, the Incarnation is central to core aspects of Williams’ social theology: his emphasis on the body as a site of theological meaning and the demands of attentive encounter with others.
As well as shedding light on this vital, yet under-studied, aspect of a hugely influential contemporary theologian, this paper also seeks more broadly to contribute to the retrieval of a distinct strand of Anglican social theology. By locating Williams within this tradition - to which Henry Scott Holland and his contemporaries contributed so much - we can identify some important lines of continuity with their thought, as well as several new directions developed by Williams.
12.30 Response (Professor Paul Hedges)
12.45 Thanks and concluding remarks (Venerable Dr W.M. Jacob)
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