This paper examines the transformation of Anglican identity during a particularly intense period of decolonisation and political activism in Aotearoa New Zealand: 1970s to 1980s. Particular focus is given to the Revd Dr George Armstrong, an icon of Anglican activism in this era. Being at the forefront of demonstrations against nuclear warships, the apartheid-era Springbok Rugby Tour, and racism against Māori, Armstrong redefined his priestly role and the place of liturgy through public resistance. I argue that Armstrong’s emergence as the nation’s foremost priestly activist is best understood within the context of a decolonising New Zealand with implications for how the broader Anglican Church was renegotiating its role with the nation. This paper explores the key events and theological influences shaping Armstrong’s witness, including the role of protests, liturgy, and shifting assessments of settler colonial Anglicanism.

2025 sees the thirtieth anniversary of Revd Auntie Lenore Parker’s ‘God of Holy Dreaming’ being included in the Anglican Prayer Book for Australia. In this article, she explores and describes the dreaming process which birthed this prayer. The analysis which follows compares the value of dreams in aboriginal culture with the privileged place given to dreams and visions as altered states of consciousness in the foundational texts of emerging Christianity. This comparison raises the question of how such experiences may be valued within Christian theology and spirituality, not least because Western and Northern resistance to such phenomena in the modern period has made such visions seem suspect.

A convenience sample of 2874 clergy and lay people from the Church of England was asked about the state of their congregation in 2024, some 3 years after the end of lockdown restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Perceptions were assessed by three distinct but correlated scales, one related to perceived changes in numbers, the second to the fragility of churches and the third to the general state of churches in terms of numbers, mood and finances. Scores on these scales were related to both subjective and objective factors. The main subjective predictor of pessimistic scores was emotional volatility, a measure of trait neuroticism. The main objective predictors were church tradition and congregation size. Evangelicals were generally more optimistic compared with those from Anglo-Catholic or Broad-Church traditions. Pessimism declined as congregation size increased, up to about 150, when it remained constant.

Despite its vast human and natural resources, Nigeria continues to grapple with many socio-political and economic crises that have challenged the nation’s internal security and territorial integrity. These challenges underscore a significant deficit of social justice. Using phenomenological descriptive and analytical research design, this study explores the role of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) in the pursuit of social justice in Nigeria. The study found that the church has risen to challenge the culture of social injustice in Nigeria, taking the lead and paving the way in the campaign of building “a nation where peace and justice shall reign”. The Anglican Church in Nigeria has played a significant role in promoting social justice through advocacy, education, and community development.

John V. Taylor was reluctant to acknowledge process theology flourishing in the 1960s; however, in reading a book by Norman Pittenger, God in Process, during a train ride, he had a ‘light bulb’ experience, triggering the writing of The Go-Between God in 1972. Though Taylor may not have studied the technicalities of the process philosophy of A. N. Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, he drew upon their characteristic understanding of God. By contrast with Classical Theism’s contention that God is absolute in all respects, they vigorously argued that God is relative to the natural universe and revealed in and through its creative processes. Taylor was also influenced by the Australian biologist Charles Birch, a proponent of process theology. The shape of the train-ride religious experience, which Taylor unpacks in The Go-Between God, bears a remarkable family likeness to the kind of religious experience articulated at length by Whitehead in response to the atheism of Bertrand Russell and the logical positivism of A. J. Ayer, in his book Modes of Thought. This was published in 1938, the year of Taylor’s admission to Holy Orders. It may be that Taylor was unwittingly much more of a process theologian than he himself was aware.

This article, the first of a two-part empirical–theological study, examines the significance of empathy within Anglican ministry through the perspectives of Archdeacons in the Church of England. Drawing on qualitative interviews with twenty-five Archdeacons, a suffragan bishop and the National Executive Officer for Archdeacons, the study situates archidiaconal testimony within contemporary research on emotional intelligence, personality and Anglican pastoral theology. Part One establishes empathy as a decisive marker of ministerial flourishing and a recurrent deficit among struggling clergy, often with serious relational and ecclesial consequences. Archdeacons consistently identify empathic attunement, self-awareness and emotional flexibility as foundational to healthy pastoral leadership, while persistent dysfunction is frequently associated with relational blindness, rigidity or defensiveness. This article develops the empirical and conceptual foundations for Part Two, which explores whether empathy is formable, how it may be cultivated through formation and supervision and why it is theologically integral to the Anglican understanding of the cure of souls.

Building on the empirical findings of Part One, this article examines whether and how empathy may be developed, sustained and restored within Anglican ministry. Drawing again on archidiaconal testimony, it explores the formative ecology of ministry, including theological education, supervision, contemplative practice and diocesan culture. Archdeacons express a qualified but persistent hope that empathy is not fixed, but formable through self-awareness, reflective practice, prayer and skilled oversight, even while acknowledging limits where defensiveness or relational harm persists. The article brings these insights into dialogue with psychological research on emotional intelligence and theological accounts of compassion, kenosis and the cure of souls. It argues that empathy is neither a purely psychological trait nor a dispensable pastoral refinement, but a spiritually grounded, vocationally essential capacity. The article concludes by considering implications for clergy selection, formation, supervision and episcopal oversight within the Church of England.

This article explores the doctrine of Scripture in Anglican evangelicalism. It critiques the defence of the clarity and perspicuity, truth and even the inerrancy and infallibility of propositional revelation, as proposed by Dr Mark Thompson, currently the Principal of Moore Theological College in Sydney. Thompson’s contention over nearly 20 years is that the ‘God who speaks’ cannot mislead or communicate in a way that is less than trustworthy and true. He argues that the historical tradition of apophatic theology, with its belief that finite human language falls short of the Infinite Reality of God and cannot therefore be reduced to clear and distinct literal or prosaic specification, not only undermines the Biblical doctrine of the ‘God who speaks’, but is responsible for contemporary agnosticism. This article defends the orthodox apophatic thesis that God transcends the metaphorical and analogical images of him of finite theological discourse and upholds an understanding of faith as a response to a God who does not compel assent but allows humans the freedom to respond or not to respond. Thompson’s quest for clarity and certainty replaces the free response of faith with ‘regenerate reason’ – reducing the human appropriation of the divine revelation to ratiocination.

Pusey is perhaps best known for his sacramental doctrine and his emphasis on the early Church fathers. His appointment as Regius Professor of Hebrew, therefore, may well seem an oddity given this reputation: it is easy to assume that, at most, his work as a biblical scholar was parallel, and unrelated to, his more familiar work. But in fact, Pusey’s biblical scholarship is intrinsically involved with the better-known aspects of his thought. This article examines Pusey’s engagement, as a biblical scholar, with three sets of questions: hermeneutics (which led to his engagement with the Fathers), philology and the nature of language (which informed his sacramental theology) and the centrality of the reader in interpreting Scripture (which is linked to his concern with Christian spirituality and sanctification). Appreciating Pusey’s perspective as a biblical scholar is therefore essential to understanding his theological project.