A statement from Chair of the Board, Simon Lee:
In 2022, we rounded off a year of marking the 80th anniversaries of William Temple’s Christianity and Social Orderand of the Beveridge Report, with a conference in Blackburn Cathedral, the mother church of a diocese created out of the diocese of Manchester when Temple was the Bishop of Manchester. That conference was held in partnership with Liverpool Hope University. The then Bishop of Burnley, now the Bishop of Blackburn, participated. The proceedings were published in late 2023 in a special issue of the Journal of Church & State, co-edited by our trustee, Dr Yazid Said of Liverpool Hope University. In early 2024, the William Temple Foundation recruited new trustees across the North, joining existing trustees based in Liverpool and Yorkshire.
We are now well-placed to reflect on the centenaries of various events in the arc of William Temple’s journey across the North, from Manchester to York from the 1920s throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s, before his famous service in war-time as Archbishop of Canterbury. Most importantly, we wish to bring together social justice activists and theologians from diverse traditions and communities, indeed all who are interested in faith in the public square, to address the issues of our age in this part of the world.
So I am pleased to announce that Dr Matthew Barber-Rowell is becoming our Northern Temple Network Lead, developing our mission across the North as envisaged by, and in liaison with, those trustees. In particular, we look forward to joining in the celebrations of the centenary of the diocese of Blackburn and to deepening our partnership with Liverpool Hope University while seeking meaningful partnerships with other dioceses, communities, educational institutions and faith foundations. Other arrangements are being made to take forward the communications work that Matthew has led, and there is much else happening in the Foundation through the work of our Digital Learning Lead, Dr Katya Braginskaia, and our Director of Research, Professor Chris Baker, together with the wider trustee body, our research fellows and friends of the Foundation, as for example in recent roundtables and conferences in Cuddesdon, Sheffield and Limehouse.
Matthew can be reached at matthew@williamtemplefoundation.org.uk.
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