27th Eric Symes Abbott Memorial Lecture
Mis-establishment - Locating, and Re-locating, the Church of England
Speaker: The Right Reverend Dr Peter Selby, President of the National Council for Independent Monitoring Boards, Visiting Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King's College, London; formerly Bishop of Worcester and Bishop to HM Prisons
Thursday, 10th May 2012 at 6.15 PM
The well-rehearsed arguments about the establishment of the Church of England require revisiting at a time when the nature of sovereignty and location of power have substantially shifted. Unless the issues arising from those shifts are examined the established church may find itself, while imagining it occupies a place close to the levers of power, is actually remote from them, while at the same time alienated from those who lack power. This lecture discussed these issues, taking seriously, as key examples, the remoteness of the Church of England from places of financial power and the growing numbers who as migrants lack any part in the institutions of democratic authority.
Read the lecture transcript (PDF on the King's College London website)
