On Wednesday 30th of April 2025, William Temple Foundation and Virginia Theological Seminary cohosted a pioneering interdisciplinary conference at the Inner Temple, London. The conference, titled Communicating Radical Hope in an Era of Poly-Crisis, was established by Foundation Research Fellow and Communication’s Officer Dr Matthew Barber-Rowell, who was awarded a Dean’s Scholarship with Virginia Theological Seminary in summer 2024. The conference built upon the agenda set out in Barber-Rowell’s new book, Curating Spaces of Hope: Transformational Leadership for Uncertain Times, developing a search for what Barber-Rowell referred to as 5 spaces of radical hope which can be found in his work from the last 15 years. These are as follows:
The search for radical hope was inspired by the search initiated by Bishop George Bell in 1940 through his volume Christianity and World Order, which recognised the degradation of society in the darkness of world war two and the fact that paradoxically, people participated in a ‘spatially united world’. Our search sought to consider a dynamic agenda which drew on a 21st Century expression of the Temple Tradition via Curating Spaces of Hope and sought to establish a 21st Century response to Bell’s work in the face of the many crises shaping our world today.
Our gathering was also shaped by the death of Pope Francis on the 22nd April. Care for our common home, the synodal process and pilgrims of hope agendas established by Pope Francis which are being enacted by the Catholic Church find great resonance with contemporary expressions of the Temple Tradition and the recent work of Foundation including this conference.
In session 1 we explored how we might Communicate radical hope. For this we are indebted to our key note speaker Nicky Burridge, Vice President for Communications and institutional Advancement at Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS) and the General Theological Seminary in New York, for her keynote address. Nicky explored authentic communications and set out stories from both digital and physical spaces in the VTS context to evidence this case, from supporting VTS alumni Bishop Budde of Washington as she stood in Washington Cathedral and called for President Trump to ‘have mercy’, to the viral social media content that followed, to a pioneering reparations programme where VTS are returning to their own roots and seeking to respond to the sin of slavery which has shaped their history, as they look to the future of their institution.
In session 2, we were privileged to hear papers from Chair of the Foundation Professor Simon Lee and Dr Kerim Balci from the Hizmet Movement and Respect University in USA, who set out diverse perspectives on the current context for faith based organisations operating around the public square. In session 3 we heard papers exploring themes of integral ecology from Dr Emma Gardner, Director of the Laudato Si Centre in the Diocese Salford, freedom of religion and belief from Professor Mark Hill KC, Master at the Inner Temple, and propaganda and information warfare from Professor Emma Briant, Visiting Professor at University of Notre Dame. These papers were then set in dialogue with one another to begin exploring the conditions for radical hope. In session 4 we turned to case studies that we felt were already expressive of radical hope from Canon Grace Thomas, Canon Missioner at Manchester, Julie Guegan President of the Global Collaboration Institute, and Dr Francesca Bernardi FRSA, Founder of the Antonio Gramsci Society. Finally, in session 5 we were incredibly grateful to Professor Martyn Percy from University of St Joseph’s, Macao, and Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Salford John Arnold who responded as critical listeners on the day.
Bishop John said,
“It has been very interesting to hear from so many with expertise and experience talking about reasons why we have to be so concerned with radical hope in our lives … I have been really please by the number of times that Pope Francis has been alluded to … we have heard the quote ‘everything is connected’ a number of times, which is so important for our understanding of the global context we are in from the environment, to refugees, to poverty, or even down to waste, all these things have an impact on everything else. We cannot take things in isolation [and] using that phrase of Pope Francis ‘each and everyone of us has our part to play”.
Prof Percy said,
“[Today] we have had lots of samplings of intriguing and different ways of approaching politics and theology and the analysis of social and cultural life today. I think we have been able to savour each and every one of these … there has been a pull towards honesty and integrity in public life … those are the things we hunger for and we mourn their absence from political discourse at the moment and maybe even from ecclesiological discourse. … today we have heard a dialogue between despair and a word that is uncommon today which ‘respair’ [or] the recovery of hope. Can we recover hope after it has been smashed to pieces? [Well] there is evidence from the presentations and places people have come from today to show that there is a counter cultural move afoot”.
In the coming weeks, we are excited to share outputs from the conference, with videos from the gathering, a podcast series, and a publication of conference proceedings.