Temple Books
Temple Books are accessible e-books of 20,000 to 30,000 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.
Finding Radical Hope in an Election Year? Reflections from a Roundtable at Liverpool Hope University (2024)
Edited by 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 Chris Baker and Ryan Haecker
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?
