Hook Lecture 2022 – Partnerships for Real Change

This lecture aims to address the multiple challenges facing our society ranging, as we know, from the impacts of the cost-of-living crisis, COVID 19, widening social and cultural divides, environmental disaster and war in Europe. Chris will argue that despite these dystopian scenarios, the pandemic and the other existential threats that currently face us have catalysed alternative aspirations, agendas, hopes and practices that seek to challenge and confront business as usual models and assumptions.

These alternatives are clustering around a renewed sense of the importance of values in public life, and the renewed search for authenticity and re-enchantment in private and corporate settings. Chris will explore these alternatives with reference to key philosophical and theological ideas, major sociological and cultural shifts, policy debates and empirical research highlighting the emergence of deeper forms of partnership across difference.

The invitation and opportunities are now presented for a radical rethinking of our social economy and politics based on deep shifts in cultural norms and the urgency of changing existing mindsets, but that ultimately this is down to the sort of local and national leadership that we need in public and corporate life.

About the speaker

Professor Chris Baker is William Temple Professor of Religion, Belief and Public Life at Goldsmiths, University of London and Director of Research, William Temple Foundation. His research and publications explore the impact of lived religion and belief on society, and vice versa, and he combines theology, political philosophy, sociology, urban studies and policy studies in his work. His most recent publications include Geographies of Post secularity: Re-envisioning politics, subjectivity and ethics and Theology for Changing Times: John Atherton and the Future of Public Theology