William Temple Foundation

The Religious Futures Network (RFN) was a William Temple Foundation initiative which ran from 2008 – 2010. The following archive material has been made available online for reference only.

The Religious Futures Network is an interdisciplinary and multi-faith network seeking to engage in the growing dialogue between religion and economics as to the future direction and structure of capitalism in the 21st century.

The network is part of a larger Religion and Political Economy project resourced by the Foundation.

The name Religious Futures has three dimensions:

• Our global future will be shaped by the values, insights and practices of religious traditions alongside secularisation processes
• Economics as a discipline will be partly shaped by the insights and research of religiously informed economists, theologians, businesses, not for profits and community level practitioners
• Religiously informed economists and analysts will increasingly contribute to specific questions concerning the restructuring of the ‘futures’ aspect of the Market, including the role of risk, regulation, derivatives and hedge funds

• Overview of New Capitalism Project – Chris Baker
• Introduction to New Capitalism Colloquium – John Atherton
• The New Capitalism – Robert Peston
• Response to Robert Peston – Phillip Jones
• Authoritarian Capitalism – John Reader
• Journeying Into Greater Wellbeing – John Atherton
• Seven New Middle Axioms – John Atherton
• “No one saw this coming” – Macro-economics for the future – John Reader
• Review of Caritas in veritate by Patrick Riordan
• ‘It’s not simply about the banks’ – Nicholas Baldwin
• ‘Can behavioural economics put Humpty Dumpty together again?’ – review of Animal Spirits – John Reader
• The Common– book review of Commonwealth by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri by John Reader
• Economics For Money or People? – paper by Phillip Jones
• The Potentially Moral Nature of Economic Actions – Ian Steedman
• Economics and Ethics; must they conflict? – lecture by Ian Steedman
• Bonfire of Illusions: The Twin Crises of the Liberal World – Alex Callinicos – Review by John Reader
• One More Step to Paradise – paper by John Reader
• Why Crises and What next? Taking Morality and Religion Seriously – paper by John Atherton