Pastoral Care, Literary Cure and Religious Dissent: Zones of Freedom in the British Atlantic (c. 1630-1720)
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Leeds
Department Name: School of English
Abstract
Present-day thinking about public health has come to give increasing attention to forms of wellbeing and caregiving. This project will contribute to such thinking by addressing some of the contexts in which caregiving has emerged and has been formulated as a social practice. Its study focuses on description and analysis of the concept of pastoral care as it was practised in three communities of faith operating across the British Atlantic between 1630 and 1720. The project will further assess how practices of care in the pre-modern past both inform and can shape pastoral care and holistic wellbeing in our post-secular present.
The project focuses on faith communities impacted by the development of nation states and the ways in which emergent states established a specific religious confession as integral to their identity. It will assess how these communities and their practices of care were shaped by political exclusion and/or geographical distance from centres of power. Government policy, such as the 1662 Act of Uniformity, which excluded citizens who refused to conform to its demands from participating in the state church, and geopolitical logistics, such as the challenges faced by a small national church based on parishes increasingly required to provide care for members living beyond the territorial limits of the nation state, created unprecedented spaces for experimentation. Whether by virtue of governmental coercion and persecution, or distant parochial oversight (due to an expanding commercial empire) these zones of freedom required communities to exercise initiative by reinventing practices of ministry and generating new ways of providing pastoral care.
The archives preserved by these communities allow their historical practices of pastoral care to be excavated. The project gives detailed attention to: 1) the concept of pastoral care - defining relationships between religious, philosophical and scientific forms of caregiving, and examining how this changed over time; 2) vocabularies of pastoral care, emotion and experience, exemplified in letters, assessing what these reveal about the scientific, linguistic and theological epistemologies that shaped care provision; 3) the role of the pastor as a physician of soul and body - the boundary between physical and spiritual care was fluid in the pre-modern period and pastors prescribed treatment to ensure the holistic wellbeing of those under their care. This means focusing on the material ways in which these early modern communities practised care and considering how political exclusion and/or geographical distance from the metropolitan centre impacted increasing professional specialisation (e.g. between pastor, missionary and physician).
The project is rooted in, but extends beyond, an historical analysis of how liminal communities exercised care in zones of freedom. It asks how observing relationships between care and cure may contribute to the history of medicine as an emerging professional practice. It also considers how an historically and theologically informed concept of pastoral care can shape thinking about spirituality in our own evidence-based and instrumentalised public health context. More particularly, it will address present-day understanding of how the written word and the act of reading are glossed and (as with bibliotherapy) prescribed as forms of care or agents of cure. The project will also evaluate how the practices of care embodied by these historical communities speak to current thinking about the provision of aid and the role of faith actors in the global public sphere. Partnership with non-academic organisations will be integral to these public-facing dimensions of the project.
The project focuses on faith communities impacted by the development of nation states and the ways in which emergent states established a specific religious confession as integral to their identity. It will assess how these communities and their practices of care were shaped by political exclusion and/or geographical distance from centres of power. Government policy, such as the 1662 Act of Uniformity, which excluded citizens who refused to conform to its demands from participating in the state church, and geopolitical logistics, such as the challenges faced by a small national church based on parishes increasingly required to provide care for members living beyond the territorial limits of the nation state, created unprecedented spaces for experimentation. Whether by virtue of governmental coercion and persecution, or distant parochial oversight (due to an expanding commercial empire) these zones of freedom required communities to exercise initiative by reinventing practices of ministry and generating new ways of providing pastoral care.
The archives preserved by these communities allow their historical practices of pastoral care to be excavated. The project gives detailed attention to: 1) the concept of pastoral care - defining relationships between religious, philosophical and scientific forms of caregiving, and examining how this changed over time; 2) vocabularies of pastoral care, emotion and experience, exemplified in letters, assessing what these reveal about the scientific, linguistic and theological epistemologies that shaped care provision; 3) the role of the pastor as a physician of soul and body - the boundary between physical and spiritual care was fluid in the pre-modern period and pastors prescribed treatment to ensure the holistic wellbeing of those under their care. This means focusing on the material ways in which these early modern communities practised care and considering how political exclusion and/or geographical distance from the metropolitan centre impacted increasing professional specialisation (e.g. between pastor, missionary and physician).
The project is rooted in, but extends beyond, an historical analysis of how liminal communities exercised care in zones of freedom. It asks how observing relationships between care and cure may contribute to the history of medicine as an emerging professional practice. It also considers how an historically and theologically informed concept of pastoral care can shape thinking about spirituality in our own evidence-based and instrumentalised public health context. More particularly, it will address present-day understanding of how the written word and the act of reading are glossed and (as with bibliotherapy) prescribed as forms of care or agents of cure. The project will also evaluate how the practices of care embodied by these historical communities speak to current thinking about the provision of aid and the role of faith actors in the global public sphere. Partnership with non-academic organisations will be integral to these public-facing dimensions of the project.
Planned Impact
There are several groups outside of the academic community who will benefit from this research.
1) Faith-based NGOs and policy-makers: the project will generate knowledge that helps to catalyse thinking around the intersections of faith, health and inequalities in two policy sectors:
a) Faith-based community development circles: building on project partner USPG's existing work on faith, power and accountability in relation to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), through the symposium and ECR workshops this project will extend the dialogue beyond academics to faith-based organisations including Tearfund, World Vision, Christian Aid; mission agencies including the Mothers' Union, USPG and CMS; think tanks including Theos, the LSE Faith Centre, the Institute for Development Studies, FaithAction; and faith actors including Church of England policy representations and hospital chaplains.
b) Faith actors and UK faith-based welfare providers: austerity has refocused research and policy attention on the contribution of faith actors to welfare provision; the UK government's responsibility to report on progress relating to SDGs has generated interest in mapping faith-based actor's domestic welfare provision. These two elements remain unsynthesised: development 'out there' is perceived differently from welfare in the UK. This project will bring together professionals operating in the UK alongside those working internationally to foster thinking beyond the international/domestic binary and move towards a more holistic conceptual framework for addressing global inequalities, as required by the SDG agenda.
2) Chaplains and associated healthcare professionals: chaplains wish to measure the impact of the pastoral/spiritual care they provide within a secular/biomedical model of caregiving. Drawing this expertise into conversation with a wider group of practitioners considering similar questions from different geographical and sectoral contexts will stimulate new ways of analysing and thinking about chaplaincy care in 21st century institutions. Public Health actors wish to collaborate with faith organisations/places of worship as they offer access to 'hard to reach' populations because places of worship can be 'healthy settings'; the project will help the specific expertise of chaplains to be integrated into wider local government and policy thinking about care provision. The project will generate a new vocabulary and insights offering resources for healthcare professionals (e.g. Public Health Leeds, Leeds City Council and third sector organisations (e.g. BHA Leeds Skyline and Touchstone Leeds) working at the intersection of faith and health.
3) Public audiences: there are several public audiences that this research will benefit. USPG has a large number of volunteers and supporters around the world; the project's online exhibition and the public-facing talk at the London symposium will provide an opportunity for these supporters to develop an understanding of the organisation's history, especially the relationship between mission and slavery. As a freely accessible online resource hosted by the Bodleian Library, the exhibition will also be available as a tool for schools to use as part of the curriculum for religious studies, in assemblies, and when teaching the histories of British colonialism. The project's partnership with Big Lit (a well-established literary festival) and the Gatehouse Development Initiative will incorporate two public-facing talks on Samuel Rutherford, whose archive of letters is central to the project research, and Dorothy Sayers, another author with local connections who engages issues of literary care and cure. These talks will attract large public audiences and should open further opportunities for local outreach in schools, museums and public spaces in the Gatehouse of Fleet, building on the PI's history of collaboration with both partners following the restoration of a memorial to Rutherford.
1) Faith-based NGOs and policy-makers: the project will generate knowledge that helps to catalyse thinking around the intersections of faith, health and inequalities in two policy sectors:
a) Faith-based community development circles: building on project partner USPG's existing work on faith, power and accountability in relation to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), through the symposium and ECR workshops this project will extend the dialogue beyond academics to faith-based organisations including Tearfund, World Vision, Christian Aid; mission agencies including the Mothers' Union, USPG and CMS; think tanks including Theos, the LSE Faith Centre, the Institute for Development Studies, FaithAction; and faith actors including Church of England policy representations and hospital chaplains.
b) Faith actors and UK faith-based welfare providers: austerity has refocused research and policy attention on the contribution of faith actors to welfare provision; the UK government's responsibility to report on progress relating to SDGs has generated interest in mapping faith-based actor's domestic welfare provision. These two elements remain unsynthesised: development 'out there' is perceived differently from welfare in the UK. This project will bring together professionals operating in the UK alongside those working internationally to foster thinking beyond the international/domestic binary and move towards a more holistic conceptual framework for addressing global inequalities, as required by the SDG agenda.
2) Chaplains and associated healthcare professionals: chaplains wish to measure the impact of the pastoral/spiritual care they provide within a secular/biomedical model of caregiving. Drawing this expertise into conversation with a wider group of practitioners considering similar questions from different geographical and sectoral contexts will stimulate new ways of analysing and thinking about chaplaincy care in 21st century institutions. Public Health actors wish to collaborate with faith organisations/places of worship as they offer access to 'hard to reach' populations because places of worship can be 'healthy settings'; the project will help the specific expertise of chaplains to be integrated into wider local government and policy thinking about care provision. The project will generate a new vocabulary and insights offering resources for healthcare professionals (e.g. Public Health Leeds, Leeds City Council and third sector organisations (e.g. BHA Leeds Skyline and Touchstone Leeds) working at the intersection of faith and health.
3) Public audiences: there are several public audiences that this research will benefit. USPG has a large number of volunteers and supporters around the world; the project's online exhibition and the public-facing talk at the London symposium will provide an opportunity for these supporters to develop an understanding of the organisation's history, especially the relationship between mission and slavery. As a freely accessible online resource hosted by the Bodleian Library, the exhibition will also be available as a tool for schools to use as part of the curriculum for religious studies, in assemblies, and when teaching the histories of British colonialism. The project's partnership with Big Lit (a well-established literary festival) and the Gatehouse Development Initiative will incorporate two public-facing talks on Samuel Rutherford, whose archive of letters is central to the project research, and Dorothy Sayers, another author with local connections who engages issues of literary care and cure. These talks will attract large public audiences and should open further opportunities for local outreach in schools, museums and public spaces in the Gatehouse of Fleet, building on the PI's history of collaboration with both partners following the restoration of a memorial to Rutherford.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Alison Searle (Principal Investigator / Fellow) |
Publications
Searle A
(2022)
'We have sick souls when God's physic works not': Samuel Rutherford's pastoral letters as a form of literary cure
in The Seventeenth Century
Searle A
(2021)
How texts from the past can shape and inform the future
in Futurum Careers
Jo Sadgrove
(2021)
Resourcing the Crisis: Pastoral care across space and time
| Title | Online Exhibition: The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel: A Transatlantic Community of Letters, 1701-1720 |
| Description | An online exhibition developed in partnership with USPG and EMLO, and using the software Omeka, drawing on a selection of core correspondence items from the first twenty years of the Society's transatlantic operations (c. 1701-20). It curates and makes available photographs of some of the key manuscripts from the organisation's archive alongside transcriptions of these manuscripts. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | This exhibition makes primary source material from USPG's archive available open access to a public audience. To mark the exhibition's launch, we commissioned a reflective interview between BBC journalist Rosie Dawson and former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams which discusses some of the key themes of the exhibition. This interview was screened as part of the USPG-SPCK hosted Bray Day event on 15 February 2021, and the video recording of the interview is embedded into the online exhibition. |
| URL | http://emlo-portal.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/exhibition/uspg/home |
| Description | 1) Catalysing of institutional change in partner organisation USPG as a result of academic analysis, publication and sharing of early corporate archives including implications for their relationships with global partners, particularly in the Caribbean. a) As an organisation with early modern origins operating in a post-colonial context, USPG has for the past few decades been working to understand the implications and legacy of its troubling history for its contemporary mission and global role. The academic collaboration and publication of some of the early corporate archives has enabled organisation-wide engagement with and better understanding of the archival context. The intentional focus on the Society's early archive, alongside the commentary provided by Bishop Rowan Williams, has given confidence to staff and partners and created more robust conversations within USPG about a number of internal tensions which staff and partners are navigating. Specifically, the archival analysis has illuminated the long duration of tensions within the contemporary organisation that were nascent within its origin story. One of USPG's core internal tensions exists between those parts of the organisation charged with care giving/global relationships and those concerned with economic resourcing. The structure creates distinct accountabilities - to donors and supporters on one hand and global partners on the other. The question 'who is the object of care?' as explored in the archival analysis reveals these tensions as fundamentally embedded within the early life of the Society, specifically in SPG's acceptance and continued operation of slave plantations in Barbados to ensure the economic viability of its operations. Locating the origins of contemporary tensions between caregiving/economic resourcing in organisational history has helped some staff better to understand the nature of these operational challenges. A deeper, historically informed understanding is catalysing internal conversations across teams and emboldening staff to press for stronger action in relation to contemporary moral challenges - specifically what the inclusion of global partner voices in decision making about resource allocation and communications might look like. b) USPG has been engaging in a process of reflection and dialogue with partners in relation to its history of slave ownership in Barbados and the trans-Atlantic slave trade more generally. It has sought better to understand the impact that this history has had and continues to have on both its self-understanding as an organisation and its relationship with one of its oldest partners - the Church of the Province of the West Indies (CPWI). While USPG has hosted and convened public events on the topic of enslavement (in the UK and in Barbados), the context out of which SPG's slave owning history emerged has not been well understood across the organisation which has limited the confidence with which it can progress its learning and reparative actions. The public visibility of the archival sources around the Codrington bequest has catalysed and grounded intentional conversation around the legacies of enslavement, improving historical literacy amongst staff and a growing group of Church of England stakeholders as to the trans-Atlantic contexts out of which SPG and the Anglican Communion emerged. 2) Broader understanding of the intersectionality of public health as a result of research undertaken across the Anglican Communion and in dialogue with historical analysis into pandemics. The original framing for the impact component of this project drew on the lessons that emerged out of the global response to the African HIV pandemic and its implications for discourses of health, healing, and the provision of care across different discursive frameworks, sectors and diverse worldviews. HIV, particularly the African pandemic, generated a huge body of international learning about the intersections between the physical, spiritual, and social for thinking about health and care for those impacted by HIV. Interrogating care under Covid-19, with an understanding of the impact and implications of the African HIV pandemic, enabled the team to extend a form of support to USPG's global community by drawing in church leaders with expertise in pandemics (Ebola and HIV) to resource church leaders in western contexts with limited public health expertise. This resourcing was two-fold. The first aspect was about managing expectations for the long period of uncertainty that pandemics foster. Challenging rhetoric about the 'unprecedented' nature of the Covid-19 crisis in the UK, the cross-cultural dialogue that emerged enabled western actors present better to understand and anticipate the temporal contours of a pandemic at a time where the UK government was stating that Covid-19 would be over in a matter of months. African leaders were able to alert western actors as to the ways in which the pandemic would continue to expose long-standing social inequalities around gender, ethnicity, class etc and that ongoing work would be required to care for increasing numbers of people suffering as a result of multiple systemic deprivations worsened by Covid-19. These are all aspects of the crisis around which debate and media visibility continues to grow in the UK. The second aspect of the resourcing has been more practical. Christian leaders offered churches and church leaders models for mobilising public health responses at different levels of scale (local, regional, national) and developing responsive forms of care within contexts of high mortality. Cautions around 'faith healing' and managing alternative models for thinking about disease aetiology in African and Christian contexts/communities spoke strongly to concerns about 'anti-vaxxers', highlighting the important role of faith leaders in work with communities in which anti-vaccination propaganda is high. Supernatural explanations for disease causation, were often rendered highly visible within western scholarship on HIV in Africa because of a tendency of (western) scholars to focus on 'culturally distinct' aspects of that pandemic. Our work around Covid-19 within the Church of England networks has uncovered similar recourse to supernatural explanations and responses in the UK, particularly during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, characterised by high levels of fear, uncertainty, and rising mortality. These synergies across African and western contexts concerning the erosion of boundaries between the material and spiritual worlds in interpreting disease causality speak into current debates about vaccines/anti-vaccinaters. The demonisation of 'cures' across different societies and groups (vaccines as methods of control/ micro-chipping, vaccines as negatively impacting fertility, vaccines as containing foetal material) within the UK is usefully informed by understanding the challenges that African Christian leaders faced around faith healing as a cure for HIV. Faith healing in many African contexts was met with a strong, local, targeted community information campaign, spearheaded in many places by religious leaders who are not only highly respected and have access to large audiences, but are also authoritative figures articulating boundaries between the material and spiritual for their communities. Drawing church leader responses to pandemics in other parts of the world into dialogue with those working through Covid-19 in the UK does two vital things. First it helpfully deconstructs cultural boundaries around how the sacred/secular and visible/invisible worlds are conceptualised in different places. It indicates how situations of high mortality/crisis (rather than culture/worldview) might shape those responses. Secondly, it de-centres 'western' knowledge and expertise by both rendering visible certain connections in conceptual orientation across cultural worldviews towards the supernatural (in a context of high mortality and fear, humans resort to an invisible causal matrix) and in clearly indicating where, geographically, public health expertise (broadly conceived) lies. This expertise in public health and in front-line crisis response, held by church leaders in Africa and Asia is extensive and has been sustained over the 30 plus years of the HIV pandemic. The networks that church leaders have established in response to HIV and Ebola with local and national stakeholders and vast numbers of community volunteers are continually repurposed to deal with local disease outbreaks and crises. Western governments, particularly in the UK and the US, have generally not managed the Covid-19 crisis well. Challenging epistemic hierarchies and assumptions that obfuscate cross-contextual learning in relation to health and community crisis management is critical to enabling western nations to respond more effectively to the ongoing challenges of care, health, and economic hardship either caused by, or rendered visible, as a result of Covid-19. 3) A richer appreciation of the complex power dynamics inherent in pastoral care as a practice both in historical and contemporary terms and across various geographical regions: this is something we are developing further in ongoing research for a book (by Alison Searle) and policy report (by Jo Sadgrove) and is traced in terms of hierarchies of knowledge in connection with public health in 2) above. However, as the online exhibition, interview and conversations at Bray Day made very clear, the intersections between power and pastoral care are most poignant, problematic and complex in relation to questions of who is deemed worthy of care, how that care is provided, and its pastoral framing within the context of SPG's legacies of enslavement and global mission. This is a key finding that we are developing further in the final six months of the project. 4. The breadth and significance of early modern letters as a key technological mechanism for remote care provision and the critical ways in which this intersects with remote care provision over a distance in contemporary health care (particularly as a result of Covid-19). This can be seen in both the online exhibition and interview, and also in the three starter catalogues published in EMLO. These research outputs make clear the central role that letters played in ensuring the corporate administration of SPG's early transatlantic mission, and also to sustaining nonconformist faith communities in England, Scotland and Europe. Open-access sharing of cleaned-up legacy datasets, and new metadata extraction, ingested into EMLO has also demonstrated the central and interconnected way in which religious mission and pastoral care were imperative and entangled components in the wider early modern republic of letters. Our detailed work on these three early modern archives has also resulted in a deeper understanding of the languages of pastoral care developed and used in historically marginalised or liminal religious communities and the ways in which they can shape caregiving practices in the present, particularly through a more holistic understanding of the intersection between the material and spiritual. 5. The importance and generative impact of cross-sectoral partnerships in both methodological and relational terms. As academics working in partnership with a mission organisation, both the PI and PDRA's praxis has been transformed, as historical archives are considered not simply as sources for scholarly work, but as a key part of the heritage and identity of a complex and globally active contemporary faith-based organisation. Auto-ethnographic reflection has formed a key part of the methodological process in our cross-sectoral partnership with both USPG and MHA. This has resulted in an interdisciplinary and public-facing set of research activities - including jointly convened global webinars, a partner-hosted research day, and significant engagement with chaplains, supporters, and the broader public, that have become an integral part of the research process. The methodological implications of this have been shared with a large group of early-career researchers in a professional development session hosted by the Society for Renaissance Studies, and also in an invited presentation to the Britaix 17-18 Seminar on the Early-Modern Anglophone World. This is an integral component of ECR mentoring in cross-sectoral partnerships, knowledge exchange, and impact that formed an important aspect of the initial project objectives, and is something that we are continuing to develop as a research team in the final stages of the project's activity. |
| Exploitation Route | * ECRs and other scholars in developing the resources developed on EMLO * USPG and its global partners in reflecting on the ongoing significance of reparations and legacies of slave ownership * Public health dissemination and opportunities for the west to learn from the global south, especially regarding the role of faith actors in the public sphere * Research into USPG's archives can be disseminated further through church archives, libraries, networks and schools |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Healthcare,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Description | 1) Caring for the carers (support for MHA chaplains through debriefing, opportunities for reflection, and ongoing analysis). The theme of caring for carers grew out of the dialogue between the SPG archival material and an emerging contemporary dataset. This dataset includes a survey, a focus group discussion and two webinars focusing on the role of pastoral caregiving by front line Church of England parish clergy and international chaplains ministering to migrant and diaspora communities in different parts of the Anglican Communion. Under lockdown parish clergy have been forced to respond to a host of spiritual questions from the 'unchurched' in their localities. These questions concern the nature of life after death, the meaning of suffering and why the pandemic is happening. Clergy themselves have noted that it is challenging to speak in a 'covenanted' vocabulary to those for whom the language and praxis of Christianity is at best foreign and at worst alienating. Parish clergy, critical in their localities as providers of material and pastoral care and encountering new communities as a result of lockdown, have expressed their need for support in transliterating 'spiritual' care to 'secular' language. Institutional chaplains such as those working for MHA are natural boundary spanners with expertise in translating (spiritual) care across the distinct fields of the faith tradition in which they are situated and the institutions in which they work. As translators of care, they are uniquely placed to support Church of England clergy in the range of boundary crossing that the pressures of Covid-19 has placed upon them. Dialogue with MHA prior to and throughout the life of the grant has enabled the development and extension of this research area concerning the intersections between spiritual and other kinds of care and care for caregivers to incorporate social care chaplains. As is well documented, social care providers have suffered inconceivable losses during the Covid-19 crisis and pastoral care and support for the residents and staff of care homes has been an urgent and ongoing need. Our deepening collaboration with MHA has offered research support and expertise in MHA's mapping of the experiences and unfolding nature of chaplaincy provision through the Covid-19 crisis. As well as providing mentorship for MHA's research projects officer, our co-production of MHA's annual research day created a space for chaplains to process and review the experiences, changes and challenges of the past 12 months. Chaplains shared their experiences allowing exploration of the impact that the pandemic has had on their collective wellbeing, their relationships with and experiences of care home staff and residents and the innovations in care necessitated by physical distancing. The themes that have emerged from both the interviews and the research day with MHA staff indicate how Covid-19 has reshaped pastoral care and focuses on the vulnerabilities of chaplains and parish priests in meeting the unprecedented pastoral demands generated by their communities due to Covid-19 and their mechanisms for self-care. The research team plans to bring together these two distinct cohorts - parish clergy in front line welfare provision and social care chaplains - to enable each group to share their own experiences of Covid-19, their coping mechanisms, pastoral support structures and skills/challenges of translating care across various boundaries (spiritual, social, secular, institutional) to support and resource each other and create new connections for peer support. 2) Archival research leading to the online exhibition launch at Bray Day has energised critical conversations across the Anglican communion, especially between USPG and the Church of the Province of the West Indies re legacies of enslavement and implications for current praxis. The legitimacy of a funded research project and intentional engagement with the archives has provided a mandate to stimulate what have been nascent conversations within USPG for a number of years. These include conversations about how institutions respond to and deepen their historical and archival understanding; How can the use of archives have a transformative impact on a community / institution in the present? How do organisations that are constantly evolving in the present respond to a history that is also constantly developing as historiographical concerns and methods change? What does re-thinking care, slavery and questions of power mean for contemporary Christian organisations involved in international mission? Over the past 12 months, USPG have begun a series of quarterly workshops with all UK-based staff to address issues of 'Culture, Identity and Justice', exploring (so far) issues of unconscious bias; structural exclusion and intersectionality; diversity and inclusion to foster deeper critical engagement about how positionality and diversity inform USPG's working culture, organisational self-understanding and engagement with partners. In particular, there is a desire amongst staff to address some of the ways of working that continue to embed racial bias, as USPG operates within systems of structural and institutional racism. There is, within this matrix of intersecting challenges, an urgent need to understand and be able to speak confidently about USPG's slave-owning history so that the organisation is able to challenge its own role within ongoing global systems of structural oppression. The pastoral care project and its public-facing event Bray Day has opened up a global conversation (particularly between the CPWI, USPG and the Church of England) about the complexities of the organisation's history and implications for contemporary relationships and praxis. In particular, there is an urgency about the relationship between economic pragmatism/organisational self-preservation and the development of a moral/theological position in relation to historical slave ownership and contemporary concerns about 'development', decoloniality and power. An ongoing conversation within USPG seeking to challenge centre/periphery tendencies within the wider institution of the Church of England has also been deepened as a result of this project, particularly around issues of slave ownership and the relationships between capital resources, labour, bodies and ecclesiology in both the past and the present. USPG has begun a conversation with the Church Commissioners who manage an £8.3 bn fund. Whilst the CC's have engaged with the links between their fund and slave ownership, and plan to do so again in the context of Black Lives Matter, there has not been a rigorous dialogue with the archival material or exploration of the connection across the repositories of the different C of E agencies (USPG, CC, Lambeth Palace). Due to the partnership between USPG and the University of Leeds, USPG are well placed to model, facilitate and advise on what deeper engagement with the archive might look like, how to understand the broader historical context in which activity is taking place and what kinds of questions such engagement might engender for the CC's and C of E in the present day. USPG is one of the few actors within the C of E with the global networks, mandate (a mandate in part given by the AHRC project work already done to date), intellectual and practical expertise to draw into critical dialogue the CPWI, the churches in West Africa, Lambeth Palace, Church House and the Church Commissioners. As an interlocutor and facilitator, USPG's unique location within the structures of the Anglican Communion can foster engagement in historically informed discussions which will permit church organisations to participate in timely national conversations about the institutional legacies of slavery. 3) Care provision in a pandemic by faith actors -- shaping ongoing practice in the UK through webinars and expert input from chaplains and clerics working in international chaplaincy and countries with far less extensive healthcare structures. The intersection of the project with the Covid-19 pandemic has catalysed ongoing work that USPG is undertaking to challenge the centre/periphery model of colonial structures with overseas partners and the Church of England. The set of global conversations around pastoral care, health and healing and Covid-19 facilitated and inspired by the research questions in this project focusing on care and power have provided an organisational case study for interrogating global epistemic hierarchies - in this case around health and healing. Recognising the failure of the west to handle Covid-19 and the success with which non-western states have managed their epidemics has created a new facilitative role for USPG in enabling the sharing of public health and pastoral care models with leaders in the C of E. USPG has a long history of global-health engagement, planting and supporting mission hospitals around the world and more recently supporting various forms of community and church-led community health work - particularly in relation to HIV prevention and stigma reduction, childhood nutrition, social isolation, and gender-based violence. The organisation's global networks in relation to Christian health and care are considerable and hold substantial expertise. A number of USPG's global partners (including bishops and clergy as well as health care professionals) have experience of responding to and mobilising community response to disease outbreaks and pandemics - including HIV, Ebola, SARS and MERS. The UK's response to Covid-19 has been of concern to many staff and partners who understand what all in the UK have now learned - that early response, community level information campaigns and community testing are critical to stemming disease outbreak. USPG's webinars have invited church leaders with expertise in public health response and mobilisation and experiences of responding to disease outbreaks to challenge and offer models of good practice as to the ways that the church and its leadership at local, regional and national levels in the UK and beyond have a responsibility for the health of their communities and congregants. Whilst UK clergy are beginning to understand what this means at the local level, through their work during lockdown, it is clear that more needs to be done in improving health and cross-sectional literacy amongst church leaders, in fostering networks between church leaders and local public health actors, and in mobilising the church to lobby and challenge health inequalities at the national/policy level. Our forthcoming report 'The Churches, Care and Covid-19' will develop this strand and dialogue and learning between church leaders with health expertise around the Anglican Communion with those in the C of E. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2020 |
| Sector | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Healthcare,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Policy & public services |
| Description | Institution and Archive: Global Entanglements, Organisational Practice, and Storytelling (AHRC Consortium - financial value for international studentship is a very rough estimate) |
| Amount | £125,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | CDA22007 |
| Organisation | White Rose College of Arts and Humanities |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 10/2022 |
| End | 01/2026 |
| Title | EMLO Dataset: The Correspondence of Richard Baxter |
| Description | In partnership with Early Modern Letters Online (EMLO) we extracted and cleaned letter metadata from N. H. Keeble and Geoffrey Nuttall, Calendar of the Correspondence of Richard Baxter, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). This metadata, from approximately 1300 letters, has been added to EMLO's open-access union catalogue, so it is fully searchable, and can be linked to metadata uploaded by other research projects. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The specifically religious focus of our data-set ensures that by adding approximately 1300 letters into EMLO we are highlighting the critical role played by religious actors and correspondents is recognised within broader understandings of the early modern republic of letters. Making this metadata available open access permits other researchers to use this material. |
| URL | http://emlo-portal.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/collections/?catalogue=richard-baxter |
| Title | EMLO Dataset: The Correspondence of Samuel Rutherford |
| Description | This dataset is a starter catalogue on EMLO which currently contains metadata from the 365 letters included in Bonar's 1891 edition of Rutherford's letters, Andrew Bonar, ed., The Letters of Samuel Rutherford (Edinburgh, 1891). The metadata has been extracted and uploaded using the information in this edition, some of which is in need of correction and further updating in the light of more recent scholarship. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | This is a starter catalogue in EMLO, and making this metadata available open access permits other researchers to use this material, and also to help contribute letters to it and develop the resource further. The specifically religious focus of our data-set ensures that by adding these 365 letters into EMLO we are highlighting the critical role played by religious actors and correspondents is recognised within understandings of the early modern republic of letters. By integrating this data-set within EMLO, we are seeking to expand the representation of religious and Scottish correspondence within this open-access union catalogue. |
| URL | http://emlo-portal.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/collections/?catalogue=samuel-rutherford |
| Title | EMLO Dataset: The Correspondence of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts |
| Description | This catalogue contains metadata extracted from a selection of approximately 110 manuscript letters covering the first twenty years after the SPG's establishment. The existing calendars for these letters, e.g. Manross, S.P.G. papers in the Lambeth Palace Library, calendar and indexes (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), are dated and contain some errors of transcription and fact which this dataset has corrected. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | By integrating this data-set within EMLO, we are seeking to raise awareness of an under-utilised correspondence archive, and expand the representation of missionary and transatlantic correspondence within this open-access union catalogue. This is a starter catalogue in EMLO, and making this metadata available allows other researchers to use this material, and also to help contribute letters to it and develop the resource further. The specifically religious focus of our data-set ensures that by adding approximately 110 letters into EMLO we are highlighting the critical role played by religious actors and correspondents is recognised within broader understandings of the early modern republic of letters. |
| URL | http://emlo-portal.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/collections/?catalogue=society-for-the-propagation-of-the-gospe... |
| Description | Partnership with Methodist Homes (MHA) |
| Organisation | Methodist Homes (MHA) |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Alison Searle, Emily Vine, and Jo Sadgrove brought intellectual input, and expertise in the intersection of the history of medicine, pastoral care, and public health to this collaboration. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The Director of Chaplaincy and Spirituality and the Chaplaincy Project Officers facilitated access to data, meetings with chaplains across a range of MHA facilities, and provided intellectual and sectoral expertise. |
| Impact | MHA Research Day |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Partnership with United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG) |
| Organisation | United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG) |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Alison Searle and Emily Vine brought expertise in relation to early modern archives and source materials, palaeography, religious, literary and cultural history, and skills in digital humanities and database development to this collaboration. |
| Collaborator Contribution | USPG provided permission to use and access their archives, technological support for the delivery of a series of webinars, and intellectual expertise through the involvement of their archivist, Catherine Wakeling, and their Research and Learning Advisor, Jo Sadgrove. |
| Impact | Webinars: Disease, Pandemics, and Innovations in Care; International Chaplaincy; Presence, Provision, and Prayer in the Pandemic; Presence, Provision, and Prayer in the Pandemic (follow-up); SRS: Early Modern Archival Research, Impact, and Cross-Sectoral Partnerships - what's involved?; Past and Present: Pastoral Care Across Space and Time. Online exhibition: The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel: A Transatlantic Community of Letters, 1701-1720. Dataset: The Correspondence of The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts: Starter Catalogue. Blogpost: The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts - a timely collaboration (with EMLO/Cultures of Knowledge). Article: Jo Sadgrove,'Christian Care in a Pandemic: Learning from the Global South', Crucible (2021), pp. 31-38. |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Bishop Rowan Williams on archives and pastoral care |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Rowan Williams discusses the archives of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG, est. 1701), and its encounters with indigenous and enslaved people. Rosie Dawson interviews Bishop Rowan Williams for the launch of a new online exhibition exploring the archives of the United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG, formerly SPG). This conversation marks the 320th anniversary of the Society's foundation in 1701; it focuses on the early history of the Society and the role of its archive. In a wide-ranging conversation they discuss early eighteenth-century attempts to recreate the English parish in the American colonies, interactions with and attempts to convert indigenous peoples, and the Society's historic involvement in the slave trade. The interview is based on archival material featured in an online exhibition: The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel: A Transatlantic Community of Letters, 1701-1720. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | http://emlo-portal.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/exhibition/uspg/public-engagement |
| Description | Blog post on launch of SPG starter catalogue and online exhibition for Early Modern Letters Online |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | This blog on the Cultures of Knowledge website, publicised the starter catalogue of SPG's correspondence (created as part of the project) to an international scholarly network, to encourage further participation in its development on Early Modern Letters Online. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | http://www.culturesofknowledge.org/?p=11622 |
| Description | Britaix 17-18 - Seminar on the Early-Modern Anglophone World (Aix-Marseille University, LERMA, UR 853) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Monday 1 February 2021, 16.30 -18.30 European Standard Time (3.30 - 4.30 GMT) This paper provides an overview to the research project 'Pastoral Care, Literary Cure and Religious Dissent: Zones of Freedom in the British Atlantic (c. 1630-1720)', which is based at the University of Leeds. It discusses the research processes and outputs of a project that has focused on the role of pastoral care and letter writing in transatlantic Protestant communities in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It also reflects on how events of the past year, including Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement, have intersected in unexpected ways with the project, and have prompted the consideration of synergies between the provision of pastoral care past and present. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://britaix.hypotheses.org/2173 |
| Description | Christian Care in a Pandemic: Learning from the Global South |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Jo Sadgrove, 'Christian Care in a Pandemic: Learning from the Global South', Crucible: The Journal of Christian Social Ethics (January, 2021), pp. 31-8. This article explores the inequalities in Britain that Covid-19 has uncovered, it reflects on the role of the church in historical and contemporary terms in responding to these issues physically and spiritually as part of a provision of care, and draws out the importance of learning from the experiences of churches in the global south in responding to pandemics. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://crucible.hymnsam.co.uk/articles/2021/january/articles/christian-care-in-a-pandemic-learning-... |
| Description | Disease, Pandemics, and Innovations in Care |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Supporters |
| Results and Impact | Cognisant of the fact that pandemics are not unprecedented events, this webinar draws on the experiences of USPG partners around the world who became front line respondents to Ebola, HIV, and SARS. Churches and church leaders became critical leaders in the public health responses to these diseases as trusted voices with considerable health system infrastructure in many global contexts. This webinar explored what has been learned about the models of holistic care - spiritual, material, pastoral - that emerged from these very different diseases with a view to informing the response to Covid-19 around the world. Speakers came from Zimbabwe (HIV), Sierra Leone (Ebola), Taiwan (SARS). This webinar was a 2-hour global forum. Each speaker presented for 15 minutes followed by small group discussions and a final plenary. The primary audience was drawn from USPG's global partners (as well as UK supporters) so that all participants could discuss and share their learnings within the context of pandemics and Covid-19. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.uspg.org.uk/communications/news/disease-pandemics-and-innovations-in-care.php |
| Description | Early Modern Archival Research, Impact, and Cross-Sectoral Partnerships - what's involved? |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This event introduced early career researchers to ways of approaching partnership-based research. It involved speakers working on the AHRC-funded project 'Pastoral Care, Literary Cure and Religious Dissent: Zones of Freedom in the British Atlantic c. 1630-1720'. This interdisciplinary research project based at the University of Leeds included collaborations with Early Modern Letters Online (EMLO) at the University of Oxford, and the Anglican mission organisation United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG). Each speaker talked for 5 minutes about their approaches to, and experiences of, collaborative research. The panel flagged some of the opportunities and challenges that partnership-based research focusing on early modern archives presents. An open discussion was facilitated by SRS to allow participants the opportunity to ask questions, and discuss the benefits and complications of this type of research. Speakers included: Miranda Lewis (Digital Editor); Jo Sadgrove (Research Policy Adviser); Alison Searle (Academic); Emily Vine (Early Career Researcher); and Catherine Wakeling (Archivist). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.rensoc.org.uk/event/early-modern-archival-research-impact-and-cross-sectoral-partnership... |
| Description | From Pastoral Care to Literary Cure |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This symposium interrogated and assessed how writers have used literary forms to provide care and enact cure. Tracing the material and literary history of care from the early modern period through to contemporary practices of bibliotherapy foregrounds the rich interrelationships between care and cure. Part of an AHRC-funded research project examining the provision of pastoral care through letters in the early modern British Atlantic, this symposium broadened the project's scope beyond an historically contextualised analysis of pastoral care in liminal communities by inviting participants to examine the complex interconnections between theological genealogies of care and contemporary secular practices. It focused on the following questions: 1) How, and in what ways, does defining care, and its relationship to cure, contribute to a different narrative history of medicine? 2) What theoretical resources does a concept of pastoral care that resists the instrumentalization of spirituality to measurable ends offer to medical humanities as a discipline and, more specifically, to assessing various attempts to use the book as cure? 3) How, and in what ways, do the practices of care embodied by historical communities speak to contemporary thinking about the provision of care and the role of faith actors in the global public sphere? 4) What is the role of imagination in the provision of care? Or, in other terms, how does faith disrupt the secular social imaginary with alternative eschatological narratives? Contemporary medical definitions of cure are often positioned within a narrative of efficient causation; by re-contextualising the idea of cure through a theological genealogy of the term, this symposium provided a counterpoint to presentism by conceptualising care as a series of moments of lived encounter between pastor and congregant, embodied in letters, devotional writings and other literary genres. Historical faith actors and groups (such as Samuel Rutherford and his correspondents) generated horizontal networks of social capital that impacted on their holistic wellbeing over time. Assessing the practices of such communities of care, and directing attention towards pastoral care as a critical term, this symposium challenged the dominance of the biomedical paradigm of efficient causation in public health. In place of the immanent telos that has shaped bibliotherapy and scholarly practices in the medical humanities, the theological genealogies explored in this symposium aligned instead with current policy attempts to reimagine care as community-based, focused on prevention rather than reaction. Work on the role of chaplains and libraries in the East India Company and in the British army during the First World War, for example, indicated that the complex relationship between religious voluntarism and secular humanitarianism has impacted the development of practices of pastoral care and bibliotherapy. This, in turn, raised a larger question about the relationship between the religious and secular in the development of literary studies as a discipline, and the ways in which secular critique can be read as a form of colonial oppression underwritten by the emergence of the liberal state. These issues were explored in detail by the academic participants and speakers at this symposium. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | International Chaplaincy: Caring Across Contexts in a Crisis |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | USPG and other faith-based international organisations occupy a liminal position that seeks to work against the nationalising tendencies that are posing challenges to a global pandemic response. USPG and many of their supporters and partners are prioritising multi-lateral engagement across contexts and the maintenance of global support networks and dialogue. Chaplains to diaspora groups, refugees and mobile groups occupy unique positions as 'boundary spanners' - extending care across contexts to a variety of groups and engaging with a range of different structures and discourses about wellbeing and care. Drawing on some of the emerging themes from webinars within USPG around caring for carers/self-care and historical project themes around remote care across territories, there is rising concern within USPG about how caregivers around the world (specifically clergy and chaplains and also health care workers in church institutions around the world) receive care in this very stressful situation. This webinar drew on the experiences of international chaplains ministering to communities in multiple places - in 'zones of freedom', to use the project terminology. One of our speakers, an Anglican Flilipino chaplain based in the UK (who is also a hospital chaplain) has been ministering to the Filipino community in the UK. Many of their community members in the UK are health care workers who have suffered a disproportionate mortality burden within the UK pandemic. This has involved complex extensions of care within and between both the diaspora and 'home' contexts. Speakers included: Alison Searle, Emily Vine, Averil B. Pooten Watan LL.M, a Church Warden, Chair for Forest Women's Interfaith Network Group, Care Home Manager and Citizens UK Waltham Forest Co-Chair, and The Rev'd Canon Dwight dela Torre, Dwight Q. dela Torre is a priest of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente/Philippine Independent Church (IFI/PIC). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.uspg.org.uk/engage/events/webinars/uspg-webinar-international-chaplaincy--caring-across-... |
| Description | Methodist Homes (MHA) Research Day |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Mapping the experiences and unfolding nature of chaplaincy through the Covid-19 crisis was just one purpose of this research day. We also offered a space for people to process and review the changes, to think about resources of self-care, gather concerns and questions, as well as learn from academics colleagues.The collaboration with MHA has developed during the life of the project. MHA is seeking to map and understand the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and high mortality rates in some of its homes on chaplains working within those settings. MHA has sent out regular wellbeing surveys to all of its staff over the course of 2020. In May, it was decided to interview 6 chaplains to explore the changing role of the chaplain, the changing relationship of the chaplain with the care home and its staff, changing practices around death and dying and the relationship with the families of those who died as a result of Covid-19. These interviews were undertaken by a researcher working with the Director of Chaplaincy & Spirituality. Jo Sadgrove was invited by the Directory of Chaplaincy & Spirituality to offer some research support and mentorship to the researcher by reading over the interview transcripts and advising in relation to methodology, interview skills, thematic development and building a longer term research project. As a result of these conversations it was decided to interview the group of 6 chaplains quarterly over the year to track their changing experiences of the pandemic and of their role as care givers within what is an emerging situation. So far, the group have been interviewed three times (May 2020, August 2020, November 2020). To build up the wider research conversation around chaplaincy care within MHA and the impact that the pandemic is having, we collaborated with MHA in their annual research day. This annual meeting which Jo Sadgrove has attended in the past identifies key aspects of the work of the chaplaincy team that would benefit from deeper understanding and analysis through research. This year the event engaged a number of chaplains in discussions about their experiences over the past few months to explore the impact that the pandemic has had on the wellbeing of chaplains, their relationships with and experiences of care home staff and residents and innovations in care. The discussions were focused around a number of key themes that have begun to emerge in the interviews. These included: 1) Anxiety and fear (including concerns about family and friends, concerns over personal vulnerability. How was anxiety managed?) 2) Guilt (around not being present, not being able to support residents and staff adequately due to restrictions, about the wellbeing of family etc). 3) Pastoral support provided by MHA and the resourcing of chaplains. 4) Changes in the ways that chaplaincy has been offered. 5) Changes in the nature of the care home itself (the care home as a primary site of liturgical gathering in a context where formal places of worship are not open). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Past and Present: Pastoral care across space and time (Bray Day) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Supporters |
| Results and Impact | The United Society Partners in the Gospel, and the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, hosted Bray Day online featuring Bishop Rowan Williams and academics from the School of English at the University of Leeds. How is pastoral and spiritual care given remotely, at a distance? It's a question that has been asked before. Indeed, it lies at the heart of the United Society Partners in the Gospel (UPSG) and what it means to be a global mission agency. This Bray Day provided access to a fascinating digital archive with the UPSG: a freely available online exhibition of sources and letters from the time of the Society's foundation. This is the result of work undertaken over the last year by USPG in collaboration with scholars at the University of Leeds, exploring themes of pastoral care in USPG's archive. This work focused on letters exchanged between missionaries in North America and the Caribbean and the Society's headquarters in London. It sheds an extraordinary light on the concerns and issues of pastoral caregiving in the early work of USPG. Pastoral caregiving remains a critical part of the global work of USPG particularly in the context of Covid 19. This evening will provide a rich exploration of the connections between the past and the present. Speakers included: Bishop Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Alison Searle, Associate Professor of Textual Studies at the University of Leeds, Dr Emily Vine, Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the University of Leeds, and Dr Jo Sadgrove, USPG's Research and Learning Advisor. The webinar also included a panel comprised of Rev'd Dr Carlton Turner, USPG Trustee and Tutor at the Queen's Foundation, Birmingham, the Rt Rev'd Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Bishop of Dover and Rev'd Professor Veront Satchell, Professor of Economic and Landscape History at the University of the West Indies. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/english/events/event/2079/past-and-present-pastoral-care-across-space-and-ti... |
| Description | Presence, Provision, Prayer: The Church in the Pandemic |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Supporters |
| Results and Impact | This webinar, focused on the UK, explored the ways that the pandemic has drawn new constituents to the Church of England both within the local parish and through online encounters. It examined the perspectives of parish clergy responding to the needs of local communities under lockdown and 'spiritual seekers' approaching Church House, the institutional centre of the Church of England, with spiritual needs and questions pertaining to sickness, disease and mortality. The speakers were Dr Anne Richards (the Church of England's National Advisor on Mission Theology, New Religious Movements and Alternative Spiritualities) and the Rev'd Canon Malcolm Rogers MBE (Vicar of St Gabriel Huyton Quarry, Area Dean of Huyton and the Bishop of Liverpool's Canon for Reconciliation). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://uspg.org.uk/engage/events/webinars/presence-provision-and-prayer-in-the-pandemic.php |
| Description | Presence, Provision, Prayer: The Church in the Pandemic (Follow-Up) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A closed group discussion to follow up on some of the themes we explored in the first webinar and to understand how these themes and practitioner experiences were changing over time. By listening, USPG is developing a better understanding of the changing nature of parish life in the UK and will be better able to support all in ministry around the world. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Project Round Table |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This event began with Alison Searle and Emily Vine giving a brief update on the progress of the project, including an overview of the key themes that have emerged, and a summary of the public symposia that were key to the interdisciplinary reach and focus of the project. These events included: a symposium entitled 'From Pastoral Care to Literary Cure' held in May 2020 and a series of webinars organised by Jo Sadgrove in partnership with United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG): Disease Pandemics and Innovations in Care; International Chaplaincy - Caring across contexts in a crisis; Presence, Provision and Prayer in the Pandemic; and a research day organised in partnership with Methodist Homes (MHA). After this summary, the event was then opened up into a general discussion with an opportunity for all participants to talk very briefly about their involvement in the project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |