7 minute read
Research at Regent's
Centre for Baptist Studies
DR CHRISTINE JOYNES, DIRECTOR OF THE CENTRE FOR BAPTIST STUDIES & TUTORIAL FELLOW IN THEOLOGY
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2021 was a busy year for the Centre as we continued to connect via Zoom. In March we enjoyed a day conference ‘Blake and the Baptists’, attended online by friends from Australia to America and featuring papers by Paul Fiddes (‘Freedom from the Law: Is Blake also among the Baptists?’), Nicholas Shrimpton (‘Blake and John Linnell’), and Susanne Sklar (‘Praise is the Practice of Art’).
We were also delighted to co-sponsor (with the Baptist Historical Society) a special lecture by William H. Brackney: ‘Perticular or Particular? In Search of When the English Calvinistic Baptists became Particular’ (available to access on the Baptist Historical Society website).
A significant highlight of 2021 was the launch of Project Violet, a CBS research project exploring women’s experiences in ministry, by project co-leaders Helen Cameron and Jane Day in July. The first phase of the project (inviting feedback from Baptist women ministers) produced a strong response rate. In November this was followed up by a seminar ‘Discernment, dialogue and the Church Meeting’, with speakers Rachel Muers and Ruth Moriarty. Make sure to check out the Project Violet website at www.baptist.org.uk!
Our termly lunchtime lectures have continued to bring together church and academy for fruitful discussion. We welcomed alumnus Jack Wakefield (Theology, 2013) and María Alejandra Andrade from Tearfund to explore a Christian response to Climate Change and COP26 and Eleasah Louis to discuss the Baptist Union’s Visions of Colour initiative, sponsored by the Sam Sharpe project in which the CBS is a partner.
Our second conference (‘Sacred Song through Eighteenth-Century Hymnody’) was particularly apt given the absence of singing for much of the pandemic and attracted participants from Korea to Canada. Topics discussed included Anne Steele’s pursuit of happiness (Nancy Jiwon Cho) and holy tears in Steele’s hymnody (Cindy Aalders)! Papers by Tim Whelan on the religious poetry of Hannah Towgood Wakeford (1725-46) and Mary Steele Wakeford (1724-72) and J.R. Watson on Simon Browne and Dissenting Hymnody extended the discussion to other hymn writers.
The Centre has continued to publish a variety of literature ranging from David McLachlan’s 2021 Whitley Lecture (Does This Cross Have Disabled Access?) to a Festschrift for Rob Ellis (Being Attentive: Explorations in Practical Theology, ed. Anthony Clarke).
Details of our forthcoming activities can be found via the College website, or our Twitter account @CBS Oxford. Many events will continue online in 2022 so we hope that you will join us in the coming year!
The Angus Library and Archive
EMILY BURGOYNE, ANGUS LIBRARIAN
The Angus has started to look more like its normal self since October 2021, when we finally welcomed visiting students and researchers back, albeit with Covid precautions in place.
Throughout 2021 we worked tremendously hard to help the many people who couldn’t visit while we were closed. We received enquiries on topics covering every century from the 1600s onwards and ranging from the history of abolitionism and the hymns of English Baptist hymn writer and essayist Anne Steele (1717-1778) to coffee plantations in the Congo and the papers of British Nonconformist minister and politician John Clifford (1836-1923).
The Friends of the Angus ‘Opening the Angus’ online seminars in 2021 covered a variety of fascinating subjects. Two of the most popular talks were given by members of the Regent’s community: Dr Lynn Robson discussed three women whose works are held in the Angus, Ann Askew, Martha Gurney and the unknown compiler of an antislavery commonplace book; while Dr Julian Thompson and I spoke together about Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and its links with the work of the Baptist Missionary Society in Congo. 2021 saw the launch of the William H. and Kathryn E. Brackney Angus Travel Bursary, awarded to Landon Adams of William Carey University in Mississippi. Landon will be joining us in 2022 to work on William Ward (1769–1823), one of the first Baptist missionaries in India. Last year also witnessed a significant bridging of the gap between the 17th and 21st centuries, when thanks to a generous grant from the Baptist Historical Society, the records of Cripplegate Baptist Church and Hexham and Hamsterley Baptist Church were digitised and made available to view on the digital library JSTOR.
We hope to digitise more material in this way and plan to carry out a number of conservation projects. 2022 promises to be another fantastic, interesting, and busy year!
The Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture
DR ANTHONY G. REDDIE, DIRECTOR OF THE OXFORD CENTRE FOR RELIGION AND CULTURE
The highlight event of 2021 has been the online day conference ‘Dismantling Whiteness: Critical Whiteness’, organised by me and colleagues through the Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture. This conference, the very first theological conference of its kind in the UK, was attended by over three hundred participants from across the globe.
As a part of the follow up, I am coediting a book with SCM Press entitled Deconstructing Whiteness, Empire and Mission. Including academic scholars from the UK and internationally, the volume will offer a critical look at Christian mission, its history, and the ways in which this legacy has unleashed notions of White supremacy, systemic racism, and global capitalism on the world. My co-editors on this project are all Council for World Mission colleagues: Carol Troupe, my research associate on the ‘Legacies of Slavery’ project, Revd Dr Michael Jagessar, CWM Mission Secretary - Europe-Caribbean, and Revd Dr Peter Cruchley, Mission Secretary - Mission Development. The book should be published in the summer of 2023!
In 2021, the OCRC planned a series of remote and in-person events exploring decolonial theological education, mission, and ministry. These collaborative events were organised in partnership with Ripon College Cuddesdon and looked primarily at initiatives related to decolonising the theological curriculum in a variety of perspectives. The culmination of these smaller events was the conference ‘Will the Sun Ever Set? Decolonising Theological Education in Anglicanism and Beyond’. Details of this event can be found at: www.rcc.ac.uk/events.
The OCRC seminar series for Michaelmas 2021, ‘Creative Arts, Performance and Religion’, provided the first opportunity since the OCRC relaunched to invite audience members into College as well as streaming the talks live online. This proved very successful, and it was wonderful that people were able both to engage in-person and watch remotely.
In November 2021 not only was the annual Nicholls Memorial lecture held for the first time since 2019, but the speaker was myself and the title of my talk was ‘Dealing with two Deadly D’s: Deconstructing Whiteness and Decolonising the Curriculum’. Again, this event was able to be held in-person at Regent’s Park College, with thirty people in Helwys Hall and even more people accessing the event remotely. I am indebted to colleagues who assisted with the technology and the layout of the room, as well as the hospitality and the meal afterwards.
For the Oxford Prospects and Global Development Institute, Hilary Term 2021 brought a continuation of our online ‘In Conversations’, inaugurated the previous Michaelmas to cross-culturally address Covid-instigated concerns. In a special ‘Restoring’ series, Professor Sir Malcolm Evans (University of Bristol Law School), Professor Dennis Snower (Blavatnik School of Government) and Professor Ian Goldin (Oxford Martin School) each engaged in conversations with counterpart experts on revitalising global cooperation through international law, reversing degradation of the ecosystem, and reforming the global trading system, respectively.
A fourth conversation, on rebuilding trust in law and order, engendered a Restorative Justice seminar series led by Dr Myra Blyth, with intensively participative online sessions that will continue into 2022, as the foundational stage for an in-person Symposium planned for late 2022 – so stay tuned for updates! Criminal justice scholars and practitioners in the UK, Europe and China have entered a year-long collaborative discussion and deliberation on this important socio-legal topic.
The year’s highlight was the inauguration of the Oxford-Beijing Normal University Creative Writing Award, under the auspices of the OPGDI’s Mo Yan International Writing Centre, chaired by Regent’s Honorary Fellow and Nobel laureate Mo Yan. This competition for a short story attracted seventy highstandard entries from students across the collegiate University. Twenty-two pieces were submitted to the UK Judging Panel, chaired by Boyd Tonkin (FRSL) and including judges Liz Trubridge (Executive Producer of Downton Abbey), Regent’s Dean Dr Lynn Robson and author Davis Bunn. The winning stories will be published by OPDGI in due course.
Several the OPGDI’s research efforts came to fruition of scholarly publication in 2021. Two of the Covid-themed ‘In Conversations’ – on ethical, legal and social considerations in using technology for pandemic response management, and on blended learning in higher education - were published alongside an introductory article in IEEE Technology and Society Magazine. We were immensely proud and privileged to dedicate our new book, Technology, Society and Ethics, to outgoing Regent’s Principal Rob Ellis – this volume features contributions from cross-global scholars on sociotechnology, equitable vaccine distribution, cybersecurity, digital currency, modern slavery, all addressed within a framework of conceptual ethical values.
As within the College as a whole, the OPGDI sustained its undergraduate exchanges throughout an otherwise inhospitable year. Our Visiting Students Programme brought twenty-seven students to the University for the current academic year, five of them joining Regent’s Park College!
DR SHIDONG WANG, FRSA, DIRECTOR OF THE OXFORD PROSPECTS AND GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE
