The brief but bitter campaign to expose the hidden homosexuality of Anglican bishops in the mid-1990s was framed as a contest about hypocrisy, with bishops – whether suspected of homosexuality or not – condemned as hypocrites, and the Church of England as hypocritical. However, the activists behind this ‘outing’, and the media which covered the story with such enthusiasm, were similarly attacked for hypocrisy. A neglected moment in recent ecclesiastical history, it reveals the ongoing importance of hypocrisy in debates about the nature of faith and the authority of the church. Still more, it sheds light on how contemporary assumptions about authenticity both intensified the perceived importance of hypocrisy and increased the chances of being accused of acting hypocritically.

Beginning with a surprisingly exuberant response to the landscape recorded by a distinguished scholar, this paper explores the agency of things and places though time. It argues that the recent ‘material turn’ is part of a broader re-enchantment of the world: a re-enchantment that has parallels with a similar process at the turn of the nineteenth century. Tracing this history suggests that within the space of a single generation the material world can be enchanted or disenchanted, with things and places imbued with – or stripped of –agency. In other words, different periods possess what we might call different regimes of materiality. Any approach which assumes the existence of material agency throughout history, or which imports our assumptions into a period which did not share them, will necessarily fail. Before we look at the material world, therefore, we need to examine how the material world was looked at, how it was conceptualised and how it was experienced. We need to apprehend its regime of materiality.

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.

The 1910 International Town Planning Conference is rightly seen as a major moment in the development of modern urban design. It drew together more than 1,000 architects and planners from across the world. At first sight, the conference consequently appears to provide further evidence for the importance of transnational town planning networks in this period. This article, by contrast, highlights the domestic agendas which underwrote the event. It shows that the conference was considerably less successful and less international than has previously been argued. It thus stresses the limitations of the town planning movement: underscoring the continued importance of national differences and national debates.