Publications

This document contains details of the McDonald Centre's activities and achievements over the 2016/2017 academic year. 

The May 2016 issue of Studies in Christian Ethics features contributions to a project undertaken focusing on the ‘pre-modern’ or ‘long’ traditions of political thought in Islam and Christianity.

The thought of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is often regarded as having caused a crisis for theology and religion because it sets the limits of knowledge to what can be derived from experience. In The Intolerable God, Christopher Insole challenges that assumption and argues that Kant believed in God but struggled intensely with theological questions.

As a science and practice transcending metaphysical and ethical disagreements, ‘secular’ medicine should not exist. ‘Secularity’ should be understood in an Augustinian sense, not a secularist one: not as a space that is universally rational because it is religion-free, but as a forum for the negotiation of rival reasonings.

A Special Issue of Studies in Christian Ethics gathers together contributions to the 2014 McDonald Centre conference on Nigel's Biggar's In Defence of War.  It also features a set of responses from the author.   

The nation-state is here to stay. Thirty years ago it was fashionable to predict its imminent demise, but the sudden break-up of the Soviet Union in the 1990s unshackled long-repressed nationalisms and generated a host of new states.

Pacifism is popular. Many hold that war is unnecessary, since peaceful means of resolving conflict are always available, if only we had the will to look for them. Or they believe that war is wicked, essentially involving hatred of the enemy and carelessness of human life.

The attached document sets out the main activities of the Centre over the 2012/2013 academic year. 

In the face of ongoing religious conflicts and unending culture wars, what are we to make of liberalism's promise that it alone can arbitrate between church and state? In this wide-ranging study, John Perry examines the roots of our thinking on religion and politics, placing the early-modern founders of liberalism in conversation with today's theologians and political philosophers. 

While South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is widely regarded as a model of political ‘reconciliation’, Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s introduction into it of Christian notions of forgiveness is the subject of heated debate. What appears as Christian common sense to some, looks like a short-changing of justice to others.

Must religious voices keep quiet in public places?  Does fairness in a plural society require it?  Must the expression of religious belief be so authoritarian as to threaten civil peace?  Do we need translation into 'secular' language, or should we try to manage polyglot conversation?  How neutral is 'secular' language?  Is a religious argument necessarily unreasonable?