One month on from the launch of his book Theology and New Materialism: Spaces of Faithful Dissent, Associate Research Fellow Dr John Reader convened a meeting of colleagues and interested parties to progress the ideas and themes emerging from his latest work.
Gathering back at Trinity College, Oxford, the meeting focused on the themes of technology and the environment, drawing on the insights and questions posed in Reader’s latest book.
You can watch the opening presentation from John’s book launch here:
John has since been invited to attend an international conference on ecology at Campion Hall, Oxford in December: Connecting Ecologies: Rehabilitating Our Common Home.
John was joined at this first follow-up meeting by Maggie Savin-Baden, Martin Hodson, Hugh White, Adrian Evans, Jason Boyd, Andrew Bevan, Tina Hearn and John Bridgeman.
“What I have been attempting to address for some years is the need for a new conceptual framework which will enable religion to address environmental questions in particular. The connections/non-connections between the relational and the apophatic and the role of khora/spaces are recurrent themes within the book. So this is the development of Relational Christian Realism working with some ideas from New Materialism.”
The principal concepts for discussion included Transcendence, Human Agency and Environment, concepts related to Technology and concepts related to Practice and Public Theology.
The group will be re-convening later this year with a view to producing a piece of work based on these ongoing discussions – watch this space!
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