Recent events in the USA and the UK reveal how theological education is changing, reflecting wider issues in global higher education as well as local and ecclesial concerns. Those responsible for seminary leadership and governance might pay closer to attention to those wider developments, and not neglect wider benefits to the Church of theological discourse generated in these institutions beyond vocational training.

The Church of England is experiencing a significant decline in membership and in other forms of influence and engagement, whose implications may have consequences for the Anglican Communion as a whole. The qualitative as well as quantitative changes suggest the need for a renewal of Anglican public theology that maintains a positive account of the relationship between church and world while letting go the expectation of privilege and power. Articles in this issue of the Journal of Anglican Studies address the public character of Christianity in Britain after Christendom.

Fr Arthur Gabriel Hebert SSM is perhaps best known for his role in the Parish Communion Movement (PCM), a predominantly Church of England based offshoot of the wider liturgical reform movement of the early and mid-twentieth century. The PCM made the case for Holy Communion to be the main act of Sunday morning worship, rather than the then more widely used Matins service.

Today Hebert's name is most often associated with liturgical reform, and the systematic theology which underpinned his work has fallen largely into obscurity. This paper explores the theology that informed Hebert's liturgical arguments, drawing out his understanding of a faith that transcends denominational and stylistic differences, and makes the case that Hebert's theology has much to contribute to present-day ecumenical and missional dialogue.

Matthew's story of the Canaanite woman is an unusual and disturbing story in the Gospel tradition. Alongside other Gentile stories in Matthew's very Jewish Gospel, it signifies the opening of the doors on the Gentiles and their inclusion in the community of faith. The woman's language and the silence of Jesus speak powerfully to the contemporary context within Anglicanism. The liturgical language she employs teaches us how to speak in worship, while Jesus’ silence addresses our own experience of suffering and the seeming deafness of God. In the end, the narrative, for all its exegetical difficulties, is a powerful story of communion and the ultimately gracious response of God. As Anglicans we need to recover the depths of our own speech, grounded in Scripture and the Book of Common Prayer, as expressions of the grace of an inclusive God who teaches us how to speak and how to wait in faith.

Four articles based on presentations from the Lincoln Theological Institute’s 2013 Conference on ‘Churches, Communities and Society’ deal with issues facing the Church of England and other faith communities in the UK, and reflect the legacy of the Institute and the previous Lincoln Theological College.

This article provides a detailed empirical assessment of British public opinion on the issue of the disestablishment of the Church of England, one of the most important questions concerning relations between church and state. It uses a nationally representative survey conducted in 2011. It finds that, in socio-structural terms, those more supportive of disestablishment are men, those living in Scotland and those with a degree-level education. In political and ideological terms, Liberal Democrat party identifiers and those with left-wing and liberal policy preferences are more supportive of disestablishment. There are also significant differences on the basis of newspaper readership, with Guardian readers most supportive. The findings contribute to existing empirical research on this topic and demonstrate the need for further analysis of how religious orientations shape public attitudes on this debate.

This paper critically examines the role of Charles Riley, Bishop of Perth, in the foundation of the University of Western Australia in 1913. Riley advocated a modern university devoted to applied science, which would also include a humanities/arts component that would be able to deliver a liberal education. It goes on to explore what a ‘liberal education’ meant to Riley in connection with a theological education for clergy. It argues that Riley, and his successor Archbishop Le Fanu, desired a theological education for clergy connected with the university as productive of such a liberal education. Such an education would enable clergy to be leaders in society, capable of understanding modern issues in the context of faith, and able, by virtue of their education, to engage sympathetically with people of diverse backgrounds and views.

The paper investigates the roots of a virtue-based ethics within Anglicanism starting with the Caroline tradition in the seventeenth century. In the twentieth century there was a rebirth of ‘Anglican Moral Theology’ with the work of Kenneth Kirk, Robert Mortimer and Lindsay Dewar. Issues of perfectibility are examined. The recovery of the Orthodox tradition of deification at the present time and the rebirth of virtue ethics through the work of Alasdair McIntyre are explored. Anglicanism is rooted in an approach where grace is already present in the natural order but which is enhanced by an integralist approach to theology bringing together doctrinal, ascetic and moral theology in one compass.

In this polemical paper, produced for the Churches, Communities, and Society conference at the Lincoln Theological Institute, University of Manchester, I argue that the Church of England has failed to develop a coherent or convincing theology of architecture. Such a failure raises practical problems for an institution responsible for the care of 16,000 buildings, a quarter of which are of national or international importance. But it has also, I contend, produced an impoverished understanding of architecture’s role as an instrument of mission and a tool for spiritual development. Following a historical survey of attitudes towards church buildings, this paper explores and criticizes the Church of England’s current engagement with its architecture. It raises questions about what has been done and what has been said about churches. It argues that the Church of England lacks a theology of church building and church closing, and calls for work to develop just such a thing.

This article argues that for good practice, well-being and fruitful ministry, decisions by and about clergy married to clergy (CMC) in the Church of England require a clear quantitative picture of their ministry, and offers such a picture in early 2013 drawn primarily from published data, compared with national Church of England statistics. Over 26 per cent more clergy dyads were found than previously thought, with many active in ministry. A wide variety of ministry patterns were identified, including a higher than normal percentage in non-parochial roles, supporting previous research noting high levels of boundary enmeshment and absorptiveness. Considerable gender inequality prevailed in shared parochial settings in spite of women having been ordained priest for nearly 20 years, with very few wives holding more senior positions than their husbands, while female CMC are more likely to be dignitaries than other ordained women.

A critical conversation between the Church of England's response to the Government's consultation on Equal Civil Marriage 2012, questions arising from professional parish practice as a priest, and literature in this area of research. The article explores the theological significance of ‘equal marriage’ (equal access to marriage and equality within marriage) as a Christian possibility within the Church of England, with contemporary approaches to gender and sexuality.

The new Muslim presence in the West has become the source of multiple anxieties. This article, by focusing on one city in the north of England with a Muslim presence which has grown from 3000 to 130,000 in 50 years, considers the resources which state and the established church bring to incorporate such communities in the mainstream of society. The Muslim communities are not presented as passive victims of prejudice and exclusion but as possessed of agency. This paper concludes that there are expressions of Islam which are easy to incorporate but others which generate an isolationist mindset which can create major problems.

This essay argues that modern society lacks a vision of the common good, which prevents education from having an adequate telos or goal. It calls for a restoration of the language of virtue and the ethical tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas. The Anglican parish and the church primary or elementary school are examined as sites where virtue ethics is still active: particularly in the intercessory work of parish prayer, and in the mimetic approach to learning employed with younger children. The article then addresses ways in which these institutions depend upon what C.S. Lewis called ‘deeper magic’ of a transcendent reality, and ways in which the school especially might develop further a pedagogy of the virtues using J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter stories as exemplars. Finally, it argues for a dimension of the beautiful in a recovery of an education in Christian virtue.