On October 28, The Institute on Religion and Democracy’s John Wesley Institute was pleased to begin its 2022 Anglicanism in the Public Square Conference. That project, split into five sessions across two days, featured an international assortment of scholars attempting to delineate a coherent Anglican political theology.
The first, second, third, and fourth sessions of the Conference were introduced in earlier posts. This fifth and final session of the Conference included such speakers as the Most Rev. Dr. Eliud Wabukala, the fifth Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Kenya, Dr. Jonathan Chaplin, a Wesley House fellow with the Cambridge Theological Federation at Cambridge University, Dr. Jonathan Askonas, Assistant Professor of Politics at the Catholic University of America, and Professor Nigel Biggar, the Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford.
In his talk, “A Value-Based and Integrity Driven Society: A Kenyan Perspective,” Wabukala discussed the efforts to achieve said value-based society politically, legally, and institutionally from his own Kenyan perspective.
Chaplin, for his part, critically analyzed Rowan Williams’ Anglican political theology, arguing that while it is correct for critiquing “programmatic secularism,” the framework is incomplete for not considering the political community as an “agent of just adjudication.”
Askonas’ lecture, “‘Whose Service is Perfect Freedom’: Towards an Anglican Technopolitics,” noted that many of the key figures of the Industrial Revolution and of the development of capitalism and scientific civilization in general were Anglican or otherwise influenced by the English-speaking Protestant world. Building on C. S. Lewis and George Parkin Grant, Askonas asked whether an Anglian political theology has a role in mediating the excesses of technological development in the future.
And finally, Biggar reflected on Anglican political theology as reflected in the Church of England, noting that because of the established nature of the denomination, it has often taken on a realistic character.
The entirety of the fifth session of the 2022 Anglicanism in the Public Square Conference can be viewed below:
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