Temple Books
Temple Books are accessible e-books of 20,000 to 35,000 words analysing key debates in religion and public life. Written by both established and up-and-coming authors, they engage theology with contemporary social ethics, politics, ecology, digital technology and philosophy. All our titles are available below.
‘Faith in the City‘ 40 Years On: Theological, Historical and Contextual Movements
Edited by Professor Chris Baker and Dr Victoria Turner
This roundtable emerged as a partnership between the William Temple Foundation and Ripon College Cuddesdon and a joint desire to provide some sort of critical and reflective analysis of the 40th anniversary of the publication of the Faith in the City Report. It was held at Ripon College Cuddesdon on 15th and 16th May. The Report addressed both Church and Nation called the economic collapse 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’. this volume is an exploration of the veracity of this recollection.
We are hugely grateful to the amazing range of continued interdisciplinary voices and expertise that invested and time and energy in contributing to this enquiry, and for the many that generously allowed their papers to be published in this digital volume.
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.
Towards the Conversion of the Church of England by the Rest of England: A William Temple Roundtable (2025)
Edited by Professor Chris Baker
This roundtable, curated by the William Temple Foundation, was held at The Royal Foundation of St Kathrine in Limehouse, London on the 24th of June, 2025. The aim of this roundtable was not to provide an historical review of a document (which whilst widely read in the immediate postwar period was then quickly ignored and forgotten). Rather, the aim was to take the premise of its title and turn it on its head in the context of the rapid social and cultural changes currently being experienced in England and elsewhere. A key element of this change is reflected in the rapid and profound changes within the religion and belief landscape of our nation. The title of this roundtable Towards the Conversion of the Church of England by the Rest of England is a deliberate subversion of the premises of the original report. The premise then was that somehow the Church of England should play a pivotal role in the spiritual revival of the postwar English nation. Instead, the premise of this roundtable is that the renewal of the Church of England, and a return to a spiritual, cultural and political relevance for the nation, 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. View Professors Linda Woodhead and John Denham’s reflections on the publication here.
Communicating Radical Hope in an Era of Poly-crisis (2025)
Edited by Dr Matthew Barber-Rowell
This Temple Book offers a record of a conference which took place at the Inner Temple, London, on the 30th April 2025. The conference was a partnership led initiative between the William Temple Foundation, Spaces of Hope and Virginia Theological Seminary, with contributions from a great many others, set out in the Contributors section and chapters to in the book. The conference carried the same title as this ebook Communicating Radical Hope in an era of poly-crisis, and was derived from two main sources. 1) dialogue in summer 2024 between Nicky Burridge, Vice President for Communications and Institutional Advancement at Virginia Theological Seminary and the General Theological Seminary, New York, and Dean’s Scholar and Temple Fellow Dr Matthew Barber-Rowell, and 2) the Radical Hope campaign, roots for which can be found in our 2024 ebook and a 2025 volume by Barber-Rowell Curating Spaces of Hope: Transformational Leadership for Uncertain Times published by SCM Press.
Finding Radical Hope in an Election Year? Reflections from a Roundtable at Liverpool Hope University (2024)
Edited by Dr Matthew Barber-Rowell
This Temple Book is an outcome of the Roundtable hosted by William Temple Foundation at Liverpool Hope University on the 26th April 2024. The gathering addressed the question of how we might find Radical Hope in an election year? This volume is both a record of the proceedings of the day and should be taken up as a basis for a possible agenda of Radical Hope for the future. The election year of 2024 is an important marker for the enactment of democracy at the voting booth. However that is in itself only one expression to which we believe Radical Hope might be applied. An understanding that is present across these papers is that Radical Hope might be ongoing, as both an emerging influence and as an effective driving force for ongoing change. We commend this volume to anyone seeking change in this time of crisis, which is rooted in hopeful alternatives to the status quo.
Re-envisioning the British State in a Time of Crisis:
A Critical Revisiting of the Balliol Connection of Temple, Tawney, and Beveridge for the 21st Century (2023)
Edited by Cris Baker and Ryan Heaeker
This tract consists of a collection of papers given for the occasion of the conference, ‘Reenvisioning the British state in a time of crisis: a critical revisiting of the Balliol connection of Temple, Tawney and Beveridge for the 21st Century.
80 years ago, the Beveridge Report set out the ideas which we associate with the Welfare State. Also in 1942, Archbishop William Temple had published his Christianity & Social Order, with a similar manifesto in an appendix. 40 years earlier, Beveridge and Temple had been undergraduates at Balliol, together with R H Tawney, before each lived and worked in Toynbee Hall in London. Each was influenced by the Master, Edward Caird, who was himself associated with the Idealist philosophy of Balliol’s T H Green. Beveridge and Temple were writing, of course, in wartime. As our age grapples with Russia’s war in Ukraine, with the after-effects of the pandemic, with the environmental and cost of living crises, with multiple challenges around equality, diversity, and inclusion, and with the breakdown of trust in political leaders, Balliol and the William Temple Foundation held a symposium in November 2022 for the 80th anniversary of these publications by William Beveridge and William Temple. It explored various themes including: the influence of Idealism & Ideas; did the Balliol ethos of the Victorian and Edwardian eras make a difference to UK society after the Second World War; are there lessons for the 21st century?
