On October 28, The Institute on Religion and Democracy’s John Wesley Institute was proud to begin its Anglicanism in the Public Square Conference. That Conference, which was split into five sections across two days, featured an international assortment of scholars attempting to delineate a coherent understanding of an Anglican political theology.
In various earlier posts, we shared materials pertaining to the first and second sessions of the Anglicanism in the Public Square Conference. The third session of the Conference featured such speakers as David Corey of Baylor University, Ephraim Radner of Wycliffe College, and Bradford Littlejohn of the Davenant Institute.
For his talk, Corey outlined a “Socratic Anglicanism,” arguing that a philosophy conducive to honesty about what truly can and cannot be known about God has implications for how one ought to develop a political theology. This method, Corey claimed, is itself conducive to Anglicanism.
Radner delivered a lecture on “Anglican Devotion and the Politics of Mortality,” which noted Anglicanism’s steadfast political and religious concerns for human mortality, remarking that this defied other developing political trends.
And lastly, Littlejohn, utilizing the political theory of Richard Hooker for his essay, “‘The Chiefest Stay of the Commonwealth’: Richard Hooker and the Necessity of Public Religion,” argued for the necessity of the Church in shaping the public, without it becoming subservient to the state or needlessly illiberal.
The video recording of the entirety of the Conference’s third session has been included below:
Comment by George on December 12, 2022 at 1:25 pm
I understand such “christian” intellectual pursuits an though I don’t enjoy them. They all seem to be, at best, an unspiritual cerebral exercise and ultimately a waste of time and energy. At worst, they can be a distracting substitute for “the gospel of Christ” the divinely authorized message. I imagine the apostle Paul warning them as he did the church in Corinth “.I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” If scratching an itchy intellect doesn’t distract too much and obscure the gospel of Jesus and his disciples perhaps its harmless even if unhelpful. But, over the years, I’ve seen it often fuels unbelief. The true gospel is still “foolishness to the Greeks!”