Why practical theology must go public

This is the author's post-print pdf version of an article published in Practical Theology. The article can be found at http://essential.metapress.com/content/122841/This journal article makes the case for a strong affinity between pastoral studies and practical theology as conceived in the UK and the emerging field of public theology

Manifestations of the post-secular emerging within discourses of posthumanism

This paper discusses the concepts of posthuman and post-secular in critical theory

Health, wealth or wisdom? Religion and the paradox of prosperity

This is the author's pdf version of an article published in International Journal of Public Theology 2009. The published version of the article is available at https://www.brill.nl/international-journal-public-theologyThis article discusses the role of religious values and participation in the 'happiness hypothesis'

Finding ourselves: Theology, place, and human flourishing

This is the author's PDF version of the book chapter.This book chapter is about being "lost" and "found" and of the significance of space and place for "finding ourselves" as fully human. Tim Gorringe's work on culture and the built environment will inform some of the author's reflection on this

What’s missing? Gender, reason and the post-secular

This is the author's post-print PDF version of an article published in Political Theology. The article can be found at www.politicaltheology.com/PT/This journal article discusses the role of gender in the contemporary debate around the post-secular

From where does the Red Tory speak?, Phillip Blond, theology and public discourse

This is the author's pdf version of an article published in Political Theology. The article can be found at www.politicaltheology.com/PT/This journal examines the role of theology in the public discourse of Philip Blond

Review of McClure, B. (2019). Emotions: Problems and Promise for Human Flourishing. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.

McClure undertakes an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural investigation into the role of human emotion in history, arguing that emotions are central to what makes us human. What unites all these perspectives is the way in which they set the measure of emotion against a set of value-judgements on the basis of emotions’ contribution to human virtue and well-being

Review of Shortt, R. (2019) Outgrowing Dawkins: God for Grown-Ups. London: SPCK.

This book is a direct response to Richard Dawkins’ book Outgrowing God: a beginner’s guide (Bantam Press, 2019) and continues Shortt’s long-standing engagement with New Atheism in such works as God Is No Thing (2015) and Does Religion Do More Harm than Good (2019). The substance of Shortt’s defence of religion is not that it does not have its destructive and dark sides, or even that atheism and religious doubt may not be legitimate intellectual positions. Rather, Shortt takes issue with charges that religious belief is illogical and intellectually specious, that religious commitment is deluded and infantile and religious institutions inherently barbaric and authoritarian

Feminist theory

This is the author's corrected Word version of a book chapter which appeared in The Wiley-Blackwell companion to practical theology.This book chaper discusses the ways in which the perennial feminist themes of protest, affirmation, and new creation have taken root in pastoral and practical theological scholarship

The final frontier? Religion and posthumanism in film and TV

This is the author's pre-print of a chapter proposed for publication in Palgrave handbook of posthumanism in film and television, 2015.This chapter aims to indicate how, in keeping with wider cultural trends, contemporary science fiction film and TV may be exhibiting a shift from a secular to a ‘post-secular’ sensibility. If the modernist paradigm within science fiction is beginning to dissolve, and with it a somewhat one-dimensional narrative of scientific triumph over religious superstition, then recent work on the emergence of post-secular paradigms opens up a range of new potential relationships between science, religion and science fiction. It is reasonable to expect that the resurgence of religion both as a geopolitical force and a source of human understanding would be reflected in contemporary examples of the genre, and that religious and spiritual themes would feature in contemporary science fiction narratives, including representations of the posthuman