Christianity and History Forum Spring Conference 2019 (All Nations College, Ware).

The Christianity and History Forum aims to explore interfaces between Christianity and historical

understanding, in part through the study of specifically Christian topics, but also through

developing Christian perspectives on the historical process as a whole. The Spring 2019 continued this sequence of regular events with a residential conference at All Nations College, Ware (9-11 April). The main conference themes included: The Legacy of the First World War and Christian Identities through Space and Time, but a wide range of papers were enjoyed. We were pleased to welcome students (to whom a discount is offered), established scholars and those with a serious interest in the subject to another stimulating conference. Topics and speakers included (in order of appearance):

• Professor John Coffey (Leicester): "John Newton and the origins of British slavery abolitionism."

• Dr Mark Smith (Oxford): "The Importance of Being Earnest: Religion, radicalization and the impact of World War I."

• Professor John Wolffe (Open University): "Sacred and secular martyrdom in the aftermath of World War I."

• Grant Masom (Oxford): "The Longest Battle? Engaging with secular culture 1919 onwards."

• Iris Leung (Hong Kong/KCL): "Impacts of the First World War on German missions in Hong Kong."

• Ann Cotterrell (Birkbeck): "The role of Methodism in the formation of Ghanaian national identity."

• Martin Light (Isle of Wight): "‘What should we tell children about their heroes’ and updates on Wilberforce diaries, and Religious Toleration and Peace projects."

• Dr Sam Brewitt-Taylor (Oxford): "The freedom of the Christian historian: Christianity, secularization and the cultural turn." See his book, Christian Radicalism in the Church of England and the Invention of the British Sixties, 1957-1970 The Hope of a World Transformed (Oxford: OUP, 2018).

• Esther Counsell (Cambridge): "Law, Liberty and Religion in Sir John Eliot’s prison manuscripts, 1629-1632."

• Dr John Usher (Regents): "Rev. Arthur Polhill of the Cambridge Seven: His church and De Civitate Dei in China." Published as "Beyond the Cambridge Seven: The Rev. Arthur Twistleton Polhill and the Dazhou Fú Yīn Táng" in Mission Round Table: The OMF Journal for Reflective Practitioners Vol.14 No.1 (Jan-April 2019).

• Dr Sam Jeffery (KCL): "‘One New man in Christ’: New Frontiers, multi-ethnic churches and the globalization of British ‘Restorationism’, 1986-2005."

• Dr Debby Gaitskell (SOAS): "Seth Mokitimi and the ‘Equality of Believers’: A biographical slant on Christian multiracialism in South Africa."

Please see our events page for information about our next conference.