This blog is written the day after the Foundation published a Temple book entitled ‘Towards the Conversion of the Church of England by the rest of England’, and of course just a few days after the announcement that Bishop Sarah Mullally would become the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury marked a watershed moment—the first woman to hold this position in its 1,400-year history.
Bishop Sarah, 63, brings an unconventional background to Lambeth Palace, having served as England’s Chief Nursing Officer at age 37 before her ordination in 2001. When named Bishop of London in 2017, she spoke of having “always had one vocation: to follow Jesus Christ, to know him and to make him known, always seeking to live with compassion in the service of others”.
In these early days following her appointment, we share the findings of our book in the hope that it may offer some new and creative thinking as she contemplates this life-long vocation.
The premise of the book is the 80th anniversary of Towards the Conversion of England published in 1945. Back in 1943, at the request of the Church Assembly, Archbishop William Temple set up a commission under the Bishop of Rochester to “survey the whole problem of modern evangelism.” We wanted to set up a roundtable discussion from eleven key witnesses representing a variety of perspectives and walks of English life, meeting at the Royal Foundation of St Katharine in Limehouse earlier this summer. These included Simon Lee, Tariq Modood, Abigail King, Lawrence Goldman, Sarah Joseph, Al Barrett, Val Barron, Andrew Brown, Peter Robinson, and myself.
The aim was not to provide an historical review of the original report but to take the premise of its title and turn it on its head. Instead of the Church playing a pivotal role in spiritual revival of the postwar English nation, the premise of this roundtable is that the renewal of the Church of England relies on it listening to and engaging with the new forces that are shaping England. It is a reverse idea of mission that has an acute theological, historical and cultural relevance for these times.
The consensus from our contributors suggests that Bishop Sarah Mullally inherits a Church of England at a defining inflection point. Our conversations identified a stark reality: a profound disconnection between the established Church and the English nation, driven by multiple reinforcing crises of identity, trust, and vision. Here are some of our key findings.
Diagnosing the Loss of Identity
The problematic confronting Mullally operates across several interlocking dimensions. Historically, the disappearance of Imperial Britain has left the Church institutionally ‘orphaned’ without a clear organizing purpose—the seventy-year arc from Suez (1956) to Brexit (2016) represents not merely political decline but the erosion of the framework within which Anglican identity made sense. Culturally and sociologically, this dislocation manifests in the sharp decline of rural infrastructure—the regular loss of pubs, schools, banks, and shops creates a dangerous vacuum where both Church and State are perceived as having abandoned ordinary citizens.
The 2021 Census data reveals the scale of transformation: Christian affiliation has dropped from 72% in 2001 to 46%, whilst those identifying as having no religion have risen from 15% to 37%. Yet this trajectory toward a post-Christian society masks a more complex reality—England remains dynamically religious, with minority faith groups thriving. The paradox is striking: whilst sociological narratives emphasize secularization, government interest in faith as an indispensable partner for policy delivery has never been stronger.
Younger generations exemplify this paradoxical moment. Gen Z prizes authenticity, fluidity, transparency, and collaboration, yet their pursuit of these values occurs within a world that feels fragile and precarious, shot through with existential anxiety. Spiritual hunger roams through what one might call the crumbling ruins of institutional Christianity. Many young Christians report looking with envy at the depth of commitment their Muslim friends show toward religious identity.
Bureaucratically, the Church suffers from adherence to top-down centralized governance models that appear out of touch. Power is misaligned—those thinking they possess it often lack it, whilst actual power lies with Church Commissioners, wealthy parishes, and externally funded networks veering toward socially conservative agendas.
The Theological Crisis
Perhaps most surprisingly, it is the theological dimension reveals the clearest manifestation of identity loss. In a relentless quest for cultural relevance that might refill churches, the Church has lost sight of Memory and Tradition’s value. Anglicanism in the opinion of some or our roundtable members has ‘deliberately overlooked its past,’ missing opportunities to connect congregants to rich theological heritage that could provide meaning and continuity.
On the other hand, some of our number felt that the Church has lost its prophetic tradition and roots, with institutional self-preservation prevailing over prophetic risk-taking. This has allowed Christian message and identity to be increasingly co-opted by the Far-Right with disastrous consequences. The Protestant emphasis on personal belief contrasts sharply with minority religions expressing faith through shared practices. Christianity has evolved toward belief and good works whilst abandoning distinctive practices—yet other religions maintain practice-based identity even when belief may be uncertain.
Five Pathways to Reconnection
Against this diagnosis, five trajectories emerge from our findings toward rediscovering an Anglican identity that might be able to reconnecting with the English nation:
First, dig deep into theological and prophetic traditions. In an era of dangerous populism where the English flag is increasingly yoked to Far-Right agendas, the Church needs to reconnect itself to long-term memory (anamnesis) of roots and traditions. For Gen Z navigating paths toward grounded authentic life, the Church has opportunity to offer a more satisfying spiritual menu—something demanding, deep, and countercultural. The Church must outline confident, authentic approaches to Christian faith and English Christian traditions in ways that counter religious illiteracy about not only Anglicanism but religion and faith generally.
Second, act local as an expression of resilience and solidarity. In contexts where trust in national infrastructure has broken down, the local becomes the locus of organization and relationality. The Church’s value lies in its unique ability to connect across social strata. The model of broad-based community organizing brought to the table by some of our witnesses creates ‘relational power’ offering genuine alternatives to both elite indifference and far-right mobilization. The idea of ‘the parish’ needs reimagining beyond its bureaucratic status into something more akin to a terroir—representing a combination of physical attributes, local customs, artisanal skills, and traditions that give unique flavour to a place.
Third, hold the space for dialogue about what it means to be English. The Church needs to rediscover its confidence as a national institution by convening public debates about what it means to be an English people in times of great transition. Its greatest historical strength has resided in holding together a wide variety of disparate theological views in loose coalition. Within radically polarizing social discourses, the ability to stand back, listen, take a via media, and be a container for widely divergent views takes on an urgent political and cultural significance.
Fourth, give away power to gain greater influence. The future credibility of the Church lies in giving away resources—buildings, finance, people—to meet community needs rather than gathering people into Church structures. The call from our report is for a massive injection of resources and moral vision into creating a new national network of ‘community owned and created children’s centres and hubs’ with priority given to those areas with the highest rates of child poverty increase. Such moves would restore trust and credibility where reputation has been damaged by the inability to deal effectively with child and adult sexual abuse.
Fifth, create new coalitions across faith and secular partners. The Church’s public leadership role needs to reflect the decisive shift in how policy now regards faith. Faith communities are now seen as indispensable partners for government resilience planning and healthcare (as examples). The Church still has enough skin in the game to become a key generator of relationships across difference, facilitating and strengthening these relationships as a contribution to weaving more cohesive communities.
Paradoxes Confronting the New Archbishop
Our report concludes that Bishop Sarah faces several paradoxes that may frame her mission priorities. Loss of identity within the English nation is yet in a context of pockets of spiritual and religious revival, and a renewed search for meaning, especially amongst younger generations. Whilst there appears apathy towards some expressions of institutional Christianity, interest in faith from government has rarely been so marked. Trust in centralized authority is debased, yet the search for local solidarities across difference is vibrant and innovative.
The glass, perhaps, is more than half-full. The future, though fraught and appearing fragile, is also one of opportunity for forging new connections and discovering new forms of public leadership. In doing so, the Church might rediscover its own rootedness and identity as it leads others in the same search—benefitting the Church whilst helping ensure stability and space for many more expressions of English identity to emerge, creating as they do a culture of hope, pride, and innovation.
By Chris Baker, Director of Research at the William Temple Foundation.
Read ‘Towards the Conversion of the Church of England by the Rest of England’ Temple Book here.
Sign up for our online book launch, featuring Linda Woodhead and John Denham, here. 7-8.15pm 28 October 2025.
This year sees the 40th anniversary of the 1985 publication of the Faith in the City Report (FITC) – a landmark moment on the Church of England’s engagement with urban poverty and social justice. It called the economic collapse, racial discrimination and social desolation of the UK’s post-industrial urban areas ‘a grave and fundamental injustice’ (p.xv) which had been systematically ignored by both State and Church.
Established by Archbishop Robert Runcie and his Commission on Urban Priority Areas (UPAs), the report’s stated focus was to observe what the Church was doing in these areas and how that mission might be more effective. The report located that work in a detailed, wide-ranging and authoritative review of the social and economic challenges facing urban Britain and pulled few punches in laying the blame for the calamitous decline of UPAs on neo-liberal government policies.
Thus alongside 38 recommendations to the Church of England for support on urban mission, the report also contained 23 recommendations to the Government on specific policies aimed at alleviating poverty. For example, increasing the level of the Rate Support Grant, increasing supplementary benefits for long-term unemployed, expanding house building and increasing resources for ‘care in the community’.
The Thatcher government of the day took offence at this approach together with the report’s enthusiastic endorsement of Liberation Theology. An anonymous briefing from a cabinet minister suggested it was ‘pure Marxist theology’. Whilst clearly untrue, my recollection of the time similarly resonates with historian Eliza Filby’s assertion that FiTC became ‘one of the most incisive and important critiques of Thatcher’s Britain’ (2015).*
The report resonates 40 years on with a number of national and local gatherings being held reflect on it. But what precisely is its legacy on church thinking on issues of social and racial justice and how it engages with the State? And if a similar report was to be commissioned today, how might it be different?A partnership between Ripon College, Cuddesdon and the Foundation convened a gathering of key voices across theology, sociology and policy (see below) at the college on the 15th/16th May to consider such questions. The following themes emerged.
Historical Context and Theological Foundations
The FiTC report emerged as a response to growing inequality in Britain’s urban areas. Many participants noted strong resonances with the tradition of Temple and Tawney, representing an Anglican socialist tradition of defending the welfare state. Its 23 detailed policy recommendations clearly wanted to move beyond the generality of the six policy areas generated by middle axioms that appear as a Suggested Programme in Temple’s Christianity and Social Order (1942), presumably on the basis that these would be more productive in effecting progressive change. Our roundtable reflected that 40 years on, few people remember the FiTC policy recommendations whereas over 80 years later, many still recall the contents and methodology of Temple’s approach that helped establish the foundation of the post-war welfare state, and that his language of service, renewal and transformation continues to resonate in policy discourse today.
A notable missed opportunity we identified was the failure to fully engage with the report’s radical theological roots. Whilst it did focus on incarnational and sacramental themes rather than atonement, it could have explored an indigenous English/Anglican theology more deeply rather than relying on liberation theology frameworks that never truly caught fire in the British context. And whilst its approach echoes biblical themes from Jeremiah (“seek the welfare of the city”) and Amos (“the plumbline” as a form of judgment), we noted that explicit biblical references were surprisingly limited, with the report instead taking the 1977 White Paper “Policy for the Inner Cities” as its starting point.
Methodological Strengths and Weaknesses
The roundtable highlighted both strengths and limitations in the report’s methodology. One strength was its commitment to listening to local communities, though some noted that it ultimately elevated “voices from above” over “voices from below.” The report tended to treat urban residents as objects of study rather than active participants, with few direct quotes or narratives from community members themselves. There were questions regarding the composition of the Commission, noting that gatekeepers with power shaped its findings. The Church Urban Fund (CUF) that emerged from the report was largely run by women, yet there has been limited feedback on how these experiences changed ecclesiology. The report had only four Black members on its Commission and was written before the emergence of Black Theology in the UK. Whilst well-intentioned regarding racial injustice, the patrician structure and processes of the report now would be seen as embedded in an Anglican and colonial culture, unaware of the way it excludes Black and Brown voices from its deliberations.
Changing Demographics and Ecclesial Diversity
We highlighted dramatic demographic changes since the report was published. The fastest-growing churches in Urban Priority Areas (UPAs) now include:
1. The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG)—a Yoruba church established in the UK in 1988 that now has over 1,000 parishes, 80% in UPAs
2. The New Testament Church of God (NTCG)—grown from 11,000 to 30,000 members across 134 churches, with roots in Jamaica
3. The Assyrian Christian Church—serving Iraqi refugees with its own cathedral in London
These changes highlight the report’s limited ecumenical vision, which focused on traditional denominations while missing the Orthodox, Pentecostal, and independent churches that would come to populate urban Christianity. The intercultural potential of these diverse communities remains largely unrealized.
Contemporary Challenges in Urban Mission
In the meantime, we identified several contemporary challenges that would require new approaches should a similar report be commissioned again:
Digital engagement: Millennial and Gen Z populations have different relationships with authority and institutions. They value authenticity, resist being told what to do, and navigate between individualism and digital connectivity.
2. Environmental justice: Access to nature and green spaces has become recognized as essential for human wellbeing in cities, especially following COVID-19 restrictions. Theological frameworks like those proposed by Sallie McFague (“The World as God’s Body”) offer resources for thinking about cities not as machines but as living organisms.
3. Intersectionality: Contemporary approaches to urban mission and ministry must account for multiple, overlapping forms of oppression beyond the class-based analysis that dominated FiTC (although it was recorded at our gathering that classism in the Church continues to exist to harmful effect) – for example race, gender and sexuality.
Towards New Models of Urban Engagement
Finally, our shared discussions highlighted successful models that have emerged since FiTC, particularly Community Organizing and Citizens UK. These approaches focus on:
Building collectives that counter the centrifugal forces of neoliberalism
Facilitating the articulation of suffering and finding others with common cause
Acting for social justice and achieving concrete wins
Listening with purpose rather than passively
Developing leadership capacity among community members
Preserving independence from the state through collective action
This suggests to me the importance of an ongoing search for an ecumenical, post-secular political theology that provides alternatives to a charity model that merely mitigates injustice through service rather than pursuing structural change.
Conclusion: An Unfinished Project
Our deliberations acknowledged that FiTC represented an important moment when the Church of England functioned as the “official opposition” to Thatcherism. However, the Christian project of urban transformation clearly remains unfinished and requires new tools of power analysis. Today’s urban mission requires attention to climate change, housing crises, asylum seekers, and the growing mental health epidemic—issues either not addressed or differently configured when FiTC was published. What remains constant, however, is the need for deep listening, authentic presence, recognition of transience and journey, and genuine collaboration. As one of us concluded, “It has to be ‘we’ if we are to make a difference.”
From l-r: Robert Pope, Tim Norwood, Alison Webster, Anthony Reddie, Ben Aldous, Chris Baker, Victoria Turner, Tim Middleton, Abby Day, Richard Davis, Joe Forde, Stephen Spencer, Paul Weller, Guy Hewitt, Greg Smith, Luke Larner.
With deep appreciation for all the contributions which we hope to publish as a digital book in September and especially to Dr Victoria Turner who hosted the event in such an enabling and hospitable way.
*Filby, Eliza. God and Mrs Thatcher: The battle for Britain’s soul. Biteback Publishing, 2015.
The William Temple Foundation is delighted to be hosting a roundtable on the theme of Faith in the City 40 Years on… Theological, Historical and Contextual Movements in partnership with Ripon College, Cuddesdon. The roundtable will be hosted at the College on the 15th and 16th May and has been curated by Dr Victoria Turner, Director of Mission and Pastoral Studies at Cuddesdon, and Professor Chris Baker, Director of Research at the Foundation. Participants include Anthony Reddie, Mark Chapman, Abby Day, Alison Webster and Paul Weller. A full list of contributors and details of the proceedings of the roundtable are available on our website
Director of Research Chris Baker says* ‘This anniversary is a big deal for the Foundation as we were a key resource for the Faith in the City report via the involvement of one of our previous Directors, Professor John Atherton who acted as an advisor to the report along with Michael Eastman, John Gladwin, Eric James and John Chilvers. The original report highlighted the forgotten issues of poverty and marginalisation in post-industrial Britain that was a stain on the conscience of both nation and church. We are thrilled to be able to critically explore the legacy of this landmark document in collaboration with Ripon College, Cuddesdon.’
*On the 8th May the above statement was released regards the publication of Faith in the City Report in 1985. The statement, and specifically the quote from our existing Director of Research Professor Chris Baker, emphasised the role of the former Director of Research for the Foundation, Professor John Atherton, without reference to the other commissioners involved in the production of Faith in the City Report. The statement and quote from May 8th have been amended above, and the full list of the Member’s of the Commission, as found in the Faith in the City Report itself, is included below.
It’s three weeks since Donald Trump won the 2024 US election to take the reins of the most powerful country in the world as the 47th President of the United States. Of course, his mandate to do so is unimpeachable having secured a big majority of the Electoral College (including all seven of the so-called swing states) as well as over 50% of the popular vote. The Republicans have secured the control of the Senate and a slim majority in the House of Representatives.
Trump was already claiming at a victory rally in West Palm Beach in the early hours of the morning after the polls had closed, that he had earned ‘an unprecedented and powerful mandate’ to do entirely as he pleases in a way that will meet little constitutional friction. He went on to say in the same speech,
‘I said that many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason. And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness, and now we are going to fulfill that mission together.’
In the light of this fact many in the US and across the globe are now anxiously casting their eyes over the Project 2025 document – a 900 page right wing manifesto produced by the Heritage Foundation who have been shaping Republican policies since the early 80s and who boasted that a year into Trump’s first term, the White House had adopted nearly two-thirds of its proposals. Their proposals cover four areas of American life: dismantling the administrative state; defending the nation’s sovereignty and borders; securing God-given individual rights to live freely; and restoring the family as the centrepiece of American life. In respect to this category, the manifesto proposes the department of Health and Human Services “maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family”.
Leaving aside the extent to which this document will actually shape policy content (it is already shaping the public discourse) what is clear is that religion is being summoned – indeed instrumentalised – in the service of Trump’s MAGA vision. The flip side of this perspective – which will also play out over the next few years – is the extent to which religion can act as a force for resistance against co-option.
This is a question for all faiths, but especially Christianity whose reputational future in the global North (including the States) is likely to take a massive hit because of its close ties to MAGAism. Trump talking about being God’s appointed leader of America will mean that political analysis and practice of his term will need to be refracted as much through a theological framing as it will be political and economic science ones.
The Power State
A number of theological tropes spring to mind. The first, watching Trump’s acceptance speech on the morning of the 6th November, was William Temple’s idea of the Power State. In his 1928 volume Christianity and the State Temple is reflecting on the liminal space in European history when a fragile peace was beginning to take hold at the end of World War 1 at the very same time when the first drumbeats of fascist nationalism were presaging the full horror of what was to emerge in Germany and Italy. The European nation state, in Temple’s view was at a pivotal crossroads, with a stark choice of directions of travel.
One was what Temple called the Power State – or the ‘idea of the State as essentially Power – Power over its own community and against other communities’ (1928, 70) This is the totalitarian and authoritarian state of the dictators – men who rely on a semi-divine cultic mythos of both themselves and their nation as a means of persuading the citizens of those nations to give up their hard-fought human rights and freedoms.
Along this trajectory lay the threat of another imminent European and global war. This description seems to appositely describe the nexus of authoritarianism, hyper inequality and fake (read propaganda) news that we see emerging from the court of King Trump and his entourage of sycophantic courtiers like Elon Musk, Nigel Farage and somewhat randomly Sylvester Stallone.
The other trajectory Temple identified was the Welfare-State, whereby the State is ‘the organ of community, maintaining its solidarity by law designed to safeguard the interests of the community’ (1928, 170). On this path lies the road to peace and human flourishing and the basis of a just social order and which he went to fully articulate in his book Christianity and Social Order published in 1942. The Foundation remains committed to arguing for this positive and hopeful vision for society, however hard that vision is to hold in the current climate.
The State of Exception
The second theological trope which will make an unfortunate comeback is Carl Schmitt’s political theology (that again emerges from this unquiet inter war period of the 1920s) that refers to the ‘state of exception’. Schmitt reflects that the State’s ability to decide to suspend or transcend its own laws is in effect akin to a secular divine miracle as the State imbues itself with God-like powers to override human structures.
From the famous opening lines of his Political Theology (1922) ‘Sovereign is he who decides on the exception’ (p5) follows the key reflection that ‘All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts’ and that ‘the exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology’ (36).
Giogio Agamben in his book Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and the Bare Life (1998), notes Schmitt’s subsequent endorsement of National Socialism and argues that the only place a doctrine of State exception leads is ‘a space devoid of law, a zone of anomie in which all legal determinations … are deactivated’ (168-169). When the state of exception becomes the rule Agamben says, we become exposed to ‘the camp’ (exemplified by Nazi death camps) as ‘the fundamental biopolitical paradigm of the West’ (181). These chilling images are set to return to the ‘home of the free’ if Trump attempts to implement his policy of rounding up millions of illegal migrants in the US (as opposed to those with criminal records) and sending them to deportation camps. These truly will be spaces of exception where all legal rights are suspended, and one is condemned to the bare life.
A Confessing Church
All of which makes one wonder the extent to which the sight of men but especially women and children being rounded up in their thousands into hastily constructed and doubtless filthy immigration processing camps and centres will be a trigger for mass civil unrest, both violent and peaceful. How much of this will the American public (especially those ‘floating voters’ who voted for Trump) be able to stomach?
I know from pastor colleagues in the States that strategies of civil disobedience and stand off are being discussed and will include no doubt the time-honored tradition of offering sanctuary to innocent citizens in danger of being deported as well as protesting outside the camps themselves.
It reminds us powerfully of historical precedents (perhaps too few) where the Church and other faith traditions have pitted themselves against the State’s blasphemous creation of spaces of exception and bare living.
For example, the South African Council of Churches through the leadership of figures such as Desmond Tutu and Brigalia Bam spearheaded the struggle against apartheid in South Africa via the Rustenburg Declaration of 1990. This affirmed the church’s role as an agent of social justice by denouncing apartheid as a sin and condemning the discriminatory laws as unjust. It further affirmed the role of the church to seek justice through compassion and co-responsibility.
The other example, given the parallels between our present geo-political instability and the 1930s, is the emergence of the Confessing Church in response to Hitler’s attempt to combine all the Protestant churches in Germany into a single pro-nazi Church called the German Evangelical Church. Key figures in this network of some 3000 dissenting churches were Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a leading light in the resistance movement, for which he was arrested in 1943 and executed by hanging in the last days of the war in Flossenbürg concentration camp in April 1945.
He also ran the underground theological seminaries that trained leaders and pastors for the Confessing Church from the mid-30s onwards, most notably in Finkenwalde. When that was shut down by Gestapo, he spent two years mainly in Eastern Germany as a single-person ‘seminary-on-the-run’ teaching and mentoring his trainee pastors.
Time to discover a new theology of resistance?
All these historical precedents I think leave us who identify as members of faith communities with a series of uncomfortable questions. Will Christian communities and other faith groups create alternative networks of mentoring and support for acts of peaceful resistance and sanctuary that are very likely to emerge in the face of these mass deportations? What level of persecution will they face from Trump’s new state of exemption and its compliant allies on the Evangelical and Catholic Right? Will churches and faith groups in the UK and Europe stand in solidarity with their US brothers and sisters? Could we ever foresee a time in the next few years when we are called to take a stand against an idolatrous state of exception closer to home when forces riding on the coat tails of MAGAism sweep into our own body politic? Is it time to now blow the dust from the covers of books like The Cost of Discipleship and begin to formulate a theology of resistance for the current times?
Some reading this will doubtless think I am over-reacting and indulging in gesture politics. An increasingly shrill voice in my head says you are right, and I am wrong. The gut clenching feeling in my stomach, and the expressions on the faces of my friends, tell me otherwise.
On the 5th of July we witnessed a once in a 25-year event, namely the landslide election of a Labour government under the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer. It almost, but not quite, paralleled the scale of Tony Blair’s landslide victory of 1997.
The key question now is what the implications are of this decisive switch in political allegiance towards the centre left for religion and belief, when for so long that conversation about faith has been dominated by the Right. Does the Left have a policy perspective on Faith and Belief, and what might it look like?
There are three elements to this conversation which reflect different types of space.
Secular space
The first is anecdotal and emerges from a secularly framed space. Over the weekend I attended the New Organising Conference (NOC) in Nottingham with 250 other delegates from the UK. The conference, now in its second year is organised by the Ella Baker School of Organising and the Network for Social Change. Both are networks of the Left and attendance at the conference is made up of TUC members and many activist groups and charities seeking better rights for workers, migrants, LGBTQIA communities, women, housing tenants and the environment.
I was part of a group of delegates that had planned two events for the conference: one called Me, My Faith and I explored issues of faith identity in the workplace aimed at counteracting stereotyping. The other was entitled, From Accommodation to Celebration and launched a new Faith at Work Charter. At the welcoming event to the conference, a specific mention was made that over 40% of the conference participants had identified with a faith or belief affiliation. The information was welcomed with warm and sustained applause.
I am not sure if numbers of faith-affiliated delegates to such events are increasing. Or whether there have always been these high numbers, but people of faith have felt uncomfortable publicly identifying themselves as such in gatherings. The current conflict in Gaza is certainly highlighting religious visibility and activism. All the faith groups represented at NOC which included Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, Christians and Pagans were clear that faith was integral to their activism and participation in the Labour movement.
However, I am reasonably sure that these events would not have occurred even five years ago, and for whatever reasons, religion and belief have become more visible and influential within the grassroots activist and organised Left.
Published in the immediate build up to the election, the Letter calls on an incoming government to radically recalibrate the relationship between Faith and the State as Britain moves into a new political era. It advocates a new settlement which will enable the innovation, leadership, resources and vision for social renewal of faith groups to be channelled into the formation of policies aimed at transforming resilience, inclusion and inequality.
Christian space
The third space is primarily a Christian space. The Radical Hope in a Year of Election initiative by the William Temple Foundation served to remind all political parties of the foundational role of religious values in creating a vision of a just and sustainable society. Through several blogs and a major publication, we have explored the nature of radical hope, understanding that radical is expressed in ‘rooted’ ontologies and narratives about what it is to be human and promote the opportunity for all life to flourish.
But radical is also expressed within faith traditions in the sense of ‘alternative’. From radically ontological roots, different visions of society emerge that sometimes challenge normative assumptions presented by politicians and policy makers. Radical practices of solidarity and resilience also emerge that reconnect the most vulnerable and marginalised with society and a reason for living.
The Foundation held two public gatherings to explore the practical outworkings of Radical Hope earlier this year. The first, curated by Dr Val Barron, was in held in Newcastle and explored the importance of moving current church models of public engagement from charity to organising and activism.
The second, organised by Dr Matthew Barber-Rowell, was held in Liverpool and explored how visions of radical hope are consciously expressed on forms of dialogue and partnership across faith and secular divides in key policy areas. These included climate crisis, poverty and inequalities, education and institutional change, and politics. Contributors were asked to respond to the questions of ‘what gives you hope?’, ‘what are the barriers to hope that you see?’ and ‘what are the ways forward?’.
The new centre left narrative on religion and belief?
The overlapping picture presented by these secular, interfaith and Christian spaces is that the visibility of religion and belief is increasing. There is the growing recognition, for positive as well as negative reasons – and despite rather unnuanced debates about the UK becoming an increasingly secular society – that religion has a hugely significant contribution to make to public life.
Many on the Left will still feel awkward and reticent in acknowledging this new post COVID resurgence in faith-based activism and care, and its accompanying discourse. But are the early indications of the new centre left narrative on religion and belief beginning to emerge?
I think it is fair to say that the early signs are promising.
First, at the heart of Starmer’s contract with the British people are two key concepts: that of ‘service’ (the government is here to serve the needs and interests of the people, and not itself), and that of ‘national renewal’ (as opposed to merely levelling up).
Both these words are deeply redolent of the language of reconstruction from the 1940s and recall in their tone the rhetoric of Archbishop William Temple. The ideas of service and national reconstruction are central to his vision for postwar welfare state which he lays out in Christianity and Social Order in 1942.
Perhaps this tone is more than unintentional. It turns out Starmer’s deputy speech writer is former speech writer for Justin Welby, the present Archbishop of Canterbury. Starmer at the very least seems to be allowing some this ‘Templesque’ rhetoric to shape the public presentation of his government. But it may be more than that. It maybe that he wishes to connect Labour policy more explicitly to this strand and tradition of Anglican and ecumenical social thought.
Second, in his letter to Britain’s faith communities published on June 10th, he thanks faith groups for the resilience and compassion they have contributed to British society in the past few years of crisis and trauma. But he goes on to ask faith groups to, in his words, ‘engage’ with Labour to help deliver their five policy objectives in the areas of environment, justice, education, health and the economy.
The meaning attached to this word ‘engage’ is essential.
Will it involve a view of religion, encapsulated somewhat in the Bloom Review, and which reflects a view from the Right, whereby religion is commended for its good work in caring for the broken and down-hearted in society?
Or does Starmer’s letter anticipate a form of engagement that offers a generous invitation to faith and belief communities to shape the policy development of Labour’s agenda in these key areas, what I have referred to elsewhere as a partnership based on co-creation as opposed to implementation?
Only time will tell whether Sir Keir’s letter is a brave new reset in the relationship between faith groups and policy in the UK or whether it engages with faith only to the extent that it provides a patina of respectability and endorsement to what Labour want to achieve.
This extended blog is an extract from a speech given by Professor Chris Baker at events in Durham and Newcastle in March 2024 to mark the launch of the Foundation’s Radical Hope series of public events. The events, attended by leaders of faith institutions, charities and public sector bodies across the North East, were curated by Dr Val Barron, one of our Research Fellows who is pioneering strategic and partnership-based approaches to deal with severe structural problems of poverty and lack of flourishing in the region.
This blog also builds on one written on the same theme by our Chair of Trustees Professor Simon Lee last year in respect to Higher Education. It also expands, in its later references to ‘assemblages’ and ‘pop-up spaces of hope and radical solidarity’, on the many ideas and practices developed in his PhD thesis by Dr Matthew Barber-Rowell entitled, Curating Spaces of Hope: Towards a Liminal, Rhizomatic and Productive Paradigm of Faith Based Organisations (FBOs), who is himself a pioneer of understanding how faith-based organisations are engaged in creating and curating such spaces using assemblage theory. Dr Barber-Rowell will be sharing his latest thinking and practice at our next Radical Hope in a Time of Election event at Liverpool Hope University on the 26th April from his forthcoming book with SCM Press, Curating Spaces of Hope: a political theology of leadership for uncertain times.
Radical Hope
In this election year of 2024, we at the Foundation are asking the question: If what we need to rediscover for society is a sense of radical hope, then what might that look like? And how might we feed this hope into the policy areas that are already shaping the forthcoming election debates?
In short, how do we define and locate a sense of radical hope in what feels for many an era of deep anxiety and uncertainty about the future?
For me Radical Hope embraces three dimensions
Radical rootedness – rooted in ontologies
The word radical is derived from its Latin etymology of radix, meaning roots. For me, hope is anchored in deep roots that are attached to existential values and beliefs which are clearly both religious and philosophical. They invite us to excavate into the very depths of what we think is the basis of our shared human experience and the essence of life itself.
In this sense hope is ontologically rooted. This ontological connection to political thought can allow a long-term perspective and therefore more resilient viewpoint to emerge as an antidote to short-term and reactive thinking. The German philosopher and social theorist Jurgen Habermas, who is fearful for the secular legacy of the liberal democratic nation state, uses a rare word ‘autochthonous’ (or self-originating and preceding subsequent cultures) to describe what he defines as the ‘pre-political’ power of religious and philosophical ideas and wisdom. This ability to be self-originating provides a proper ethical and intellectual balance to the ravages of a deracinated capitalism, and its attempts to co-opt important ideas for narrow political gain or exploitation.
From radical ontologies to radical but pragmatic alternatives
Which leads me to the second dimension of the word radical which is associated with ideas of ‘alternative’ or ‘counter hegemonic’. It refers to the ability, based on our deep-rooted beliefs and values, to call out the toxic assumptions and practices of despotic and authoritarian governments and articulate a more just and humane vision of a shared social life. However, a common critique of what are often religiously-based calls for alternatives is that they are simply that – i.e. ‘calls’ that merely tend towards the grandiose and rhetorical. What is also required therefore are a series of well-thought through and credible broad policy ideas that are capable of not only articulating a new ontological basis for change and transformation, but also providing a road map for the implementation of that transformation.
As we know, William Temple, in his book Christianity and Social Order, published in 1942, not only articulated an alternative vision for the future of British Society that broke profoundly with the Victorian and Edwardian traditions of laissez-faire economics. He also provided, through his use of middle axioms, broad policy ideas that would help ensure this vision was enacted as actual legislation. These included the right to access lifelong education and decent housing, through to the importance of belonging to what he called ‘intermediate groupings’ that lie beyond the power of the State and the Market. So radical hope for me is a forward-facing political and policy agenda that reaches out across difference and generates a sense of joyful expectation that things can and will be different. However, the truly radical nature of that hope is only fully realised when it comes with ‘data-backed solutions’ so that real structural change has a realistic chance of being implemented, rather than just simply protested.
Radical Solidarities
I want to go back to Temple’s ideas of intermediate groupings and contextualise them a bit. A term that I am currently working with – and which I hope is not too obscure – is the idea of creating – or perhaps better curating – assemblages of radical solidarity.
‘Assemblages’ is a bit of post-structuralist theory which I think captures the current zeitgeist well. It implies that things are constantly in flux, constantly changing – nothing is stable, nothing is fixed. Any event – political, cultural, spiritual, natural -is made up of whatever is bringing to bear on that event at that time – things assemble, disassemble and then reassemble according to the way that various actors come together and influence one another.
Another term that is used in this regard – for understanding that everything is in flux and in the process of becoming – is derived from the work of French political philosopher Gilles Deleuze who talked about things being de-territorialised (i.e. being evicted from the assemblage or losing power and influence) but then also being re-territorialised – or gaining traction and influence in a new assemblage.
Now if we apply this thinking or imagery to two issues (or assemblages) that I think lie at the heart of the debate we are having today – namely the welfare state and church/faith institutions – where does that take us? The current model of the comprehensive and universal welfare that Willam Temple and William Beveridge – both lifelong friends and ‘Balliol men’ – imagined and bequeathed, was already being de-territorialised within 20 years of its origins – especially in health care. The rigid, bureaucratic ‘one-size-fits-all’ Fordist mass production framework for the NHS was already struggling to cope with social changes and advances in medicine, as well as the growing complexity of modern disease.
Of course, since the late 70s the notion of well-invested and comprehensive public services free at the point of delivery through a national insurance scheme has been further de-territorialised politically and ideologically through a belief in de-regulation and the unfettered operation of the free market.
However, since the financial crash of 2008 and the pandemic, belief in the market as a tool of delivering welfare has itself perhaps been somewhat de-territorialised, allowing for a renewed appreciation of some of the principles behind a comprehensive and universal welfare safety net.
But the big question is ‘How best to deliver a much fairer and more just system for human flourishing?’
And then let’s look at the role of faith and belief in our society. A simplistic narrative – although also clearly observable – is that institutional Christianity is the process of rapidly de-territorialised from British public life. Is the Church of England, or the Methodist church or the URC or the Catholic church – like the Welfare state – too centralised, too bureaucratic, too one-size-fits-all to meet the social, cultural and technological innovations of our age?
But I firmly belief that faith (rather than religion perhaps) is also being re-territorialised for a depressed and anxious world in new and exciting ways: through the more confident participation of other faiths in British public life; through the spiritually aligned and values-driven living of the non-religious; and the evolution of Christian witness and mission in our society, which is strongest I believe, when the church dares to engage in confident and non-hubristic ways in public leadership and partnership based on a manifesto of radical hope.
Is it possible perhaps to imagine the place and impact of Christian faith being re-territorialised by the current trajectories in social change and the deep desire for political, spiritual and social renewal?
So, to return to the language of radical solidarity.
I didn’t come across this concept at a theological gathering or mission rally, but at a recent conference for urban sociologists and urban historians in Antwerp. They were interested in the trajectory of decline (what we might call the de-territorialisation) of welfare in European societies and the way that notions of human solidarity predicated on classic modern sociology have proved fragile in the current context. For example; Durkheim’s ideas of collective conscience that help you feel as though you are morally integrated into a community of norms and values, De Tocqueville on civil society, Ulrich Beck’s idea of reflexive individuals, Robert Putman’s ideas of social capital, Marx and the unity of the working class in the shared struggle against the bourgeoisie, living with strangers in the public space as theorised by the Chicago school.
As sociologists they are interested in any signs of social solidarity reforming itself in the light of the existential challenges facing humankind. What they are observing is a desire for reconnection and a sense of ‘doing something about something’, but in ways that don’t fit institutional models or grand theories, but are more like pop-up spaces of hope and radical solidarity. There are however a series of common features which they observe.
First, these pop-up spaces of radical solidarity are being curated by faith groups and are centred on relational care of migrants and those facing food poverty and mental health projects – in general servicing groups who are insufficiently supported by established welfare organisations.
These spaces are entrepreneurial and innovative – reclaiming perhaps the language of the market for pro-social and pro-justice aims.
These spaces are adept at introducing new social actors into the welfare mix but also are good at establishing new points of contact with established welfare systems and other charitable initiatives.
According to these sociologists, these faith-inspired pop-up spaces or assemblages steer the welfare and human flourishing debate towards the following outcomes.
They offer what they call ‘proximity and presence’ with vulnerable groups as a critique of the ‘distanced approach’ of many professional welfare services.
They offer ‘debordered’ or ‘networked forms’ of solidarity.
They possess the power to articulate moral intuitions with regard to marginalised urban groups and can contest technical and instrumental language.
The sociologists do however point out the issue of upscaling these practices of innovation. For example, there can be a lack of follow-up of clients or effective monitoring of the quality of the support offered by these assemblages, and indeed a lack of investment in these services by secular providers. At the moment there are limitations being placed on the growth of these of faith-based social enterprises that need to be addressed
So to conclude, the type of radical political hope our broken politics and economic requires is expressed in three ways. Digging deep by being radically rooted in deep ontologies of life and being; offering radically pragmatic policy solutions by curating local and national conversations about the sort of society we want to build (and the toolkits we need to develop them); developing spaces or assemblages of radical solidarity and working to out scale them in partnership with others.
Being radically rooted, offering radical alternatives, practicing radical solidarity.
Three critical questions emerge for me from this analysis.
How is faith being re-territorialised in the face of these injustices and shifts?
How does institutional religion connect to these yearnings for justice and belonging?
How do we upscale the innovation and entrepreneurialism that comes from faith-based social action?
At the start of this election year of 2024, we at the Foundation are asking the question: If what we need to rediscover as a society is a sense of radical hope, then what might that look like; and how might we feed this hope into the policy areas that are already shaping the forthcoming election debates?
This task is as palpable as it is formidable and daunting. Most people you speak to in our country are chronically or acutely traumatised by the challenges they face on a daily basis. These are challenges that we thought we had banished for ever within a smooth and untroubled narrative of technical and ethical progress and evolution.
And yet as a result of a decade and a half of broken economic and political nostrums, and more recently exacerbated by unparalleled and systematic levels of government corruption and unaccountability, old ghosts are once again stalking our land. Poverty, hunger, mental health, public disease, lack of hygienic waterways, inadequate housing, decrepit schools and failing hospitals, dangerously high levels of infant mortality at childbirth, lack of transport and other infrastructure that inhibits growth and connectivity – all conditions that we in the West used to patronisingly refer to as Third World conditions – are now perniciously embedded in several parts of British society and affecting millions of our fellow citizens.
A passing anecdote relayed by Dr Val Barron, one of our Research Fellows and a former Foundation Scholar, sums up our predicament as the UK stumbles into 2024. Val works as a community organiser in the North-East and recently appeared in a cameo role as a vicar in Ken Loach’s latest film The Old Oak. The film centres on the arrival of a group of Syrian refugees to a poor ex-mining village and the feelings of resentment and hostility their arrival prompts amongst some of the locals. They see these new arrivals as receiving preferential treatment when their own lives are so impoverished and forgotten. A Syrian refugee appearing as an extra in the film wondered aloud to Val if there was a local civil war going on. The degradation of the physical environment and the impoverished nature of people’s daily lives in the ex-mining village had reminded her powerfully of the context from which she had just fled.
In other words, for many people in this country, the sense of brokenness, and the feelings of disempowerment and hopelessness that flow from it are palpably present and pervasive.
History tells us that where this sense of disempowerment and hopelessness take hold then two reactions tend to follow. One is a depressive apathy which allows one to be gaslit into believing that the lack of decent services and opportunities to expand your family’s wellbeing is your fault for not trying hard enough, rather than the state of corrupted inequity and injustice that has held sway in this country in recent years. The other is to allow one’s emotions of frustration and powerlessness to be channelled into a sense of grievance bordering on a hatred of The Other. In this instance it is migrants and asylum seekers, 75 percent of whom, when their case is eventually heard, were granted the right to settle in this country based on the validity of their claim in 2022.
Recent European history shows how this manipulated sense of fear and hopelessness drives many into the arms of far-right or far-left authoritarian and so-called populist regimes, whose tactic is to leverage power and loyalty on the basis of ‘othering’ a minority group in society. Historically this has been Jewish people, LGBT + and Gypsy and Roma communities. In more recent times one can add Muslims and members of the trans community. Unfortunately, religious (usually Christian) narratives and tropes are also co-opted into these authoritarian narratives.
So where to define and locate a sense of radical hope in what feels for many an era of deep anxiety and uncertainty about the future? First, definitions. Radical for me has two meanings, derived from its Latin etymology of radix, meaning roots. For me, hope is anchored in deep roots that are attached to existential values and beliefs which are clearly both religious and philosophical. They invite us to excavate into the very depths of what we think is the basis of our shared human experience and the essence of life itself. In this sense hope is ontologically rooted. This ontological connection to political thought can allow a long-term perspective and therefore more resilient viewpoint to emerge as an antidote to short-term and reactive thinking. The German philosopher and social theorist Jurgen Habermas, who is fearful for the secular legacy of the liberal democratic nation state, uses a rare word ‘autochthonous’ (or self-originating and preceding subsequent cultures) to describe what he defines as the ‘pre-political’ power of religious and philosophical ideas and wisdom. This ability to be self-originating provides a proper ethical and intellectual balance to the ravages of a deracinated capitalism, and its attempts to co-opt important ideas for narrow political gain or exploitation.
Which leads me to the second dimension of the word radical which is associated with ideas of ‘alternative’ or ‘counter hegemonic’. It refers to the ability, based on our deep-rooted beliefs and values, to call out the toxic assumptions and practices of despotic and authoritarian governments and articulate a more just and humane understanding of a shared social life. However, a common critique of what are often religiously-based calls for alternatives is that they are simply that – i.e. ‘calls’ that merely tend towards the grandiose and rhetorical. What is also required therefore are a series of well-thought through and credible broad policy ideas that are capable of not only articulating a new ontological basis for change and transformation, but also providing a road map for the implementation of that transformation.
As we know, William Temple, in his book Christianity and Social Order, published in 1942,not only articulated an alternative vision for the future of British Society that broke profoundly with the Victorian and Edwardian traditions of laissez-faire economics. He also provided, through his use of middle axioms, broad policy ideas that would help ensure this vision was enacted as actual legislation. These included the right to access lifelong education and decent housing, through to the importance of belonging to what he called ‘intermediate groupings’ that lie beyond the power of the State and the Market. (You can find further references to this historical legacy of Temple’s radical hope from beyond the UK in references from Australia and America). So radical hope for me is a forward-facing political and policy agenda that reaches out across difference and generates a sense of joyful expectation that things can and will be different. It also creates a renewed solidarity in the common articulation and pursuit of that expectation. However, the truly radical nature of that hope is only fully realised when it comes with ‘data-backed solutions’ so that real structural change has a realistic chance of being implemented, rather than just simply protested.
To that end, the Foundation is holding a series of regional events that will explore experiences of activism and partnership, alongside fresh thinking and ideas on this theme of radical hope. These events are designed to influence the political debates about the future of our society in the run-up to the General Election. Part of this initiative is driven by the fear that major, upstream questions that reflect a hopeful narrative for our society will be drowned out by counter-narratives based on short-termism and fear – particularly on complex issues such as immigration and climate change, freedom of speech and human rights in an increasingly pluralised and digital world. As well as a Westminster event, we will be curating programmes in the North East and North West of England as well as Northen Ireland where some of our current research and thinking is contextually rooted.
The calls for change are growing more insistent and expectations are rising. However, there is always a danger that the opportunity for real change at a 2024 General Election will be missed, unless the ideas of radical hope are fully embedded and expressed in agendas and policy frameworks that are visionary, alternative but also practical. It is into this agenda that the Foundation is hoping to make a substantive contribution in 2024 and beyond. Come and join us in the debate!
If you are interested in further material relating to the theme of Hope and our Radical Hope agenda, you can access it here:
Director of Research, Professor Chris Baker, offers a personal reflection on the life and contribution of a dear friend and colleague, whose sudden death earlier this week has left many of those who knew, loved and deeply respected John with a profound sense of loss and shock….
It is with a deep sense of shock and a profound feeling of sadness that we at the Foundation have learned of the sudden death of Revd Dr John Reader. We are stunned at the unexpected passing of someone who has been so deeply influential on the trajectory of the Foundation’s work for so many years.
John was a staunch supporter of the work of the Foundation and an integral part of our output thanks to his prodigious talent and gift for communicating in accessible ways the very latest ideas from Continental Philosophy, environmentalism and science including of course the digital and the post-digital. His thinking gave the Foundation an ability to always be intellectually ahead of the curve whilst at the same time being true to the liberal, progressive and inclusive Anglican vision that the Foundation believes is the enduring legacy of Archbishop William Temple himself. One vehicle for doing this was established by John himself in the form of our Ethical Futures Group. This is a network of around 20 global scholars working in the areas of theology, environmentalism and ethics which he curated and led with great delight and enthusiasm. Just a few weeks ago the Foundation hosted a very successful panel at Greenbelt 2023 on AI and the future of theology and society, based on his and Professor Maggi Savin-Baden’s inspirational research, and we were able to remind several hundred people there of their latest book published just two years ago on Post digital Theologies: Technology, Belief and Practice and which has already had a big impact on thinking both within and outside theology and the church.
John’s writing career spanned some 30 years starting with and including early on in his career volumes such as The Earth Beneath (1992), Local Theology (1994) and Beyond All Reason: The limits of Post-modern Theology (1997), all of which had a huge impact on the development of my own theological research. His legacy comprises several books and innumerable articles, book reviews and blogs, several of which are still available on the Foundation’s website on www.williamtemplefoundation.org.uk
One of the reasons for his abiding loyalty to the Foundation was his huge love and respect for the work and person of John Atherton. John, a former canon theologian at Manchester Cathedral, lecturer in Christian Social Ethics at Manchester University and former Director of Research at the Foundation was a mentor and profound encourager to John’s work – as indeed he was to mine. The Foundation has arguably lost two Johns whose ground-breaking work and thinking it has been a profound privilege for the Foundation to act as a platform and conduit for.
In between all this he, as ever, found time to be a conscientious parish priest, rooted in the rich mysteries and vagaries of rural parish life, and always managed to move between the two worlds of the parish and academia effortlessly and authentically. His first commitment however was always his family and his grandchildren to whom he will have passed on so much knowledge and learning. He was a fanatical sports fan and indeed sportsman – Southampton FC drove him mad, but cricket was arguably his first love and whenever he got somewhat stressed or frustrated – which could occasionally occur as the world, the church and the Foundation itself often struggled to keep up with his prodigious output and thought – he would seek solace either watching or playing it.
There is so much more that needs to be said, and will be said, regarding John’s long and illustrious career as a priest and as an intellectual thinker and writer whose work was, and will be, valued across the globe as well as on these shores. Much more on his remarkable contributions to knowledge, learning and networks will emerge in the days to come.
John was a funny, warm, generous, passionate but above all loyal friend. We were due to meet next week for a long-overdue catch-up pint in Oxford. It seems inconceivable that he is no longer with us, and that I will no longer receive an email from him, usually within 10 minutes of me having sent one to him! His intellectual legacy and pastoral ministry are immense and touched the lives of so many people.
Comments Off on Hyperdigital Designs: A Report on Cybernetic Grammar at its Highest Point
With the heaven-sent speed of Hermes, computers calculate in writing to shape the grammar of the world. Although analysable into binary algebra, the calculations of computers are more than mathematical, and more than mechanical. For if computers can be said to write the script of their mechanical operations, and to do so with a grammar that is uniquely their own, then the grammar of cybernetic engines must exceed beyond, and enter in so as to shape the motion of any machine. And if, in shaping this motion, computers continuously gesture beyond the immanent frame of their mechanical operations, then we should investigate the cybernetic grammar of the digital from its highest points.
It is this higher way of writing of the grammar of computers that we have begun to investigate. On Wednesday 14 June, we convened the Hyperdigital Designs workshop at the University of Cambridge for the purpose of exploring the hyperbolic cybernetic grammar of computers. This workshop was hosted by Cambridge Digital Humanities, and co-sponsored by the William Temple Foundation and the Diverse Intelligence Summer Institute (DISI).
During the workshop, the ‘How to Play with Fire’ team of DISI 2022 hosted sixteen invited guest speakers to contribute papers reflecting on the significance of what we have begun to call the ‘hyperdigital’ for theology, philosophy, ethics, politics, and the arts.
The hyperdigital designates a higher or hyperbolic reflection on the creative origins and free use of the cybernetic grammar of computers. It can be called ‘hyper-digital’ in the sense of a ‘hyperbole’ (ὑπερβολή) or excess of signification, in which cybernetic judgments both exceed beyond and enter in to animate the free creation and use of digital techniques.
The hyperdigital can be doubly contrasted with the ‘digital’, which scripts the algebraic calculation of mechanical operations, and the ‘postdigital’, which reflects upon an indefinite bricolage of conceptually evacuated relations of material entanglement.
Beyond both the ‘digital’ and the ‘postdigital’, the ‘Hyperdigital’ is a hyperbolic cybernetic grammar, which, in the sense of a hyperbole, exceeds so as more radically to enter and accelerate the free use of digital computation and communication – whether among the creators of digital systems, or from the oldest creator of the idea of the digital itself.
The ‘hyperdigital’ had been conceived at the 2022 Diverse Intelligence Summer Institute (DISI 2022) at the University of St. Andrews by the ‘How to Play with Fire’ team, consisting of Ryan Haecker, Jenny Liu Zhang, and Brandon Yip, with the later addition of Olivia Thomas.
During the course of DISI 2022, we argued that the postdigital had failed to accommodate the higher reflections upon the creative source of the idea and calculation of the digital. Instead, it had recirculated the grammatical rupture and ontological violence of the digital in an apocalyptic rhetoric of the crash and release of the coherence of digital systems.
Since the conclusion of DISI 2022, the How to Play with Fire team has continued to meet for monthly discussions of recent developments in the philosophy of technology, especially as it relates to information, cybernetics, and the cybernetic grammar of computers.
At the conclusion of our year-long collaborative project, the How to Play with Fire team convened the Hyperdigital Designs workshop at the University of Cambridge, with financial and administrative assistance generously provided by Cambridge Digital Humanities.
We enjoyed a wonderfully thoughtful day examining the hyperdigital, as well as imagining solutions to promote human flourishing. Some key points of discussion included:
The rupture and possibilities of technology unaccounted for by current definitions of the postdigital, and how the hyperdigital is a more specific solution.
The propensity of technology to bring people together emotionally and spiritually, in both digital and physical spaces.
The value of community, particularly in-person gathering, to foster discussion and dialogue — and what this could look like at scale in our cities and universities.
Methods for achieving the above through tools that co-interpret the world with us, are highly interactional, and allow us to exercise our imaginations and playfulness to examine, taste, and sculpt our world.
Visions for prototyping games, digitally augmenting methods in very traditional fields like city planning and architecture, and leveraging design and speculative fiction to propose alternatives and transpose them onto our material world.
The videos, presentations, and photos from this workshop can be found in the links below:
Following the Hyperdigital Designs workshop, Ryan Haecker, a research fellow of the William Temple Foundation, has published a new peer-reviewed article in Postdigital Science and Education, titled ‘Via Digitalis: From the Postdigital to the Hyperdigital’. He argues three theses: the postdigital has failed; postdigital theology is incompatible with Christian theology; and, for mystical theology, the hyperdigital is the truth of the postdigital.
With the publication of this article, he has presented a summary of the year-long collaboration of the ‘How to Play with Fire’ team at the Diverse Intelligence Summit 2023 at the University of St. Andrews. A video recording of his talk can be found at the link below:
In the future, we hope to publish the proceedings of the Hyperdigital Designs workshop in an edited volume. We invite expressions of interest in collaborating on this future project.
Finally, to continue engaging with the lively threads inspired at this workshop, please join us in our new community Discord server, Hyperdigital Designs. We will use this as an online hub to discuss ideas, share publications and projects, and stay connected about all things related to human flourishing while navigating the hyperdigital.
As 600 innocent people drown in the search for a better and safer life, will compassionate pragmatism ever replace hostility?
Our new Temple Takes feature offers the chance for those associated with the William Temple Foundation to reflect ethically and politically on those events that have made the news in a particular week.
This week’s news has been particularly grim: the report by the Parliamentary Privileges Committee into the deliberate misleading of Parliament by Mr Johnson over lockdown rules, and the subsequent undignified infighting amongst the Conservative party, makes me despair at how low the standards in our public life have become.
There was the tragic and senseless murder of three innocent citizens in Nottingham and the 6th anniversary of the Grenfell Tower disaster. Then there were the latest strikes by junior doctors, which however justified, nevertheless puts countless lives on anxious and potentially fatal hold. I have had two conversations with a close friend and family member this week. Both are living with cancer knowing that their treatment is facing constant delay and cancellation. It is a heartbreaking and unacceptable situation, and I am haunted by what they are having to face.
As ever in recent times, the global, national and personal seem interlaced in increasingly visceral ways.
But last night’s BBC 10 pm bulletin (June 15th) put even these harrowing events into a new perspective. The lead item was the coverage of the political fallout from the aforementioned Parliamentary Privileges Committee report involving Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. The item showed images of Mr Sunak accompanying a police raid on what was loosely described as a ‘crackdown on illegal immigration’. Dressed in heavy boots and stab vest, the Prime Minister looked somewhat self-conscious and out of place as he watched from the sidelines. Nevertheless, the visual narrative we were being invited to consume was that of a leader on top of the fight against illegal immigration and ‘stopping the boats’ in the wake of an admittance by the UK Government that it has no realistic chance of meeting its own targets.
The next item covered the unbearable tragedy unfolding in the Mediterranean Sea of the coastline of Greece. An old and overcrowded fishing boat carrying 750 refugees and migrants had capsized en route from Libya to Italy. The people on board where from Pakistan, Syria and Kurdistan and included over 20 women and up to 100 children, apparently quartered below deck.
Whilst 100 have been rescued, there is now a clear expectation that the rest will have perished on top of the 78 already pronounced dead. Apparently, no life jackets had been issued. The boat was dangerously overcrowded but for those who had already paid $5000 for the journey there could be no turning back. The vessel was heading towards Italy rather than Greece (a longer and more perilous journey) because Greece is surrounded by more ‘migrant-hostile’ Balkan states. There is speculation that the Greek coastguards should have intervened earlier in saving people within the 15 hours from when the boat entered Greek waters to when it capsized. The fear and terror experienced by those children and adults over that 15-hour period prior to their deaths is unbearable to imagine.
What links these two stories is they appear to show how a politically expedient hostility to refugees and migrants is deadening our collective compassion and sense of empathy.
One would hope that the awful scale of this tragedy might be the impetus for a strategic think on immigration in the UK and across Europe as a whole. The Prime Minister and some of the political and media establishment should at least feel queasy about the juxtaposition of these two events. If the PM chooses to express regret at the tragic loss of human life in the Mediterranean he needs to remember that, at the very same time this tragedy was unfolding, he was presiding over a media stunt purporting to show the toughness and efficacy of the ‘hostile environment’ towards so-called illegal migrants in this country.
Of course, immigration is a complex and global issue. The UK is clearly not alone in attempting to impose draconian laws that attempt to restrict migration. But the tone currently being set by our political leaders appears to be cruel, inaccurate and often baseless, and aimed primarily at covering up for the lack of political will to solve a global issue.
A change of government is looking increasingly inevitable, and potentially with may come some more pragmatic and compassionate responses. As others have argued we need to reopen safe routes to counteract the people traffickers and invest in a professional and efficient border control system and a well-equipped social infrastructure. We need to remove the rhetoric of hatred from the policy framework and recognise both the moral and economic arguments for welcoming those who wish to settle here and contribute to British life. The tides of human misery created by climate change, and wars over dwindling resources, are only set to increase.
Our best resilience in the face of these existential crises is not to draw up a drawbridge which cannot hope to withstand the overwhelming tide of human need. Rather it has to work with the flow of these changes, seeing people flocking to our shores as fellow human beings (a moral approach) and as a vital resource for own economic and social resilience and as a global contribution to problem solving (an economic and technical approach).
Not everyone who wants to settle in the UK will be allowed to do so. Exploitation or criminality need to be swiftly dealt with and provided that clear criteria for asylum seeking are transparently and fairly applied, then some people will not have a strong enough claim on the grounds of political or economic sanctuary.
But the current default culture of demonisation and othering must change. Our system is broken and needs radical re-imagination and investment. Its brokenness is not caused by those people seeking refuge or a better life. It is broken by a lack of political will, vision and up-stream thinking from those whose mindset can countenance no change, however much the evidence points to such a necessity.
We must not let these hundreds of children and adults, whose lives have been cut short in this horrific and tragic accident, die in vain for the sake of an outdated and inefficient ideology of managing global flows of human survival and need.
