drawing maps of new hope
A Panel on John Henry Newman
“We must work together to set humanity free from the encircling gloom of nihilism, which is perhaps the most dangerous malady of contemporary culture, since it threatens to “cancel” hope. This reference to the darkness that surrounds us echoes one of Saint John Henry Newman’s best-known texts, the hymn “Lead, Kindly Light.” In that beautiful prayer, we come to realise that we are far from home, our feet are unsteady, we cannot interpret clearly the way ahead. Yet none of this impedes us, since we have found our Guide: “Lead, Kindly Light” (…) let us disarm the false reasons for resignation and powerlessness, and let us share the great reasons for hope in today’s world (Leo XIV).
Following his recent proclamation as a Doctor of the Universal Church, the panel will focus on key contributions of Newman to the development of Christian doctrine, education, and sacramental imagination, which can help “drawing new maps of hope” to navigate the current challenges of our wounded world.
The panel is in collaboration with the Oxford Newman Network
SPEAKERS
Michael D. Hurley
Michael D. Hurley is Professor of Literature and Theology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow and Director of Studies in English at Trinity College. He was educated at the universities of Cambridge and St Andrews and has taught at Cambridge since 2005, with visiting roles at Harvard, All Souls College, Oxford, and the Sorbonne. His research spans literature, philosophy, and theology, focusing on writers from Dante to T. S. Eliot and questions of value and meaning in literary form. Hurley co-edits The Hopkins Quarterly, contributes to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day, and frequently delivers public lectures on art, literature, and philosophy.
Dr Rebekah Lamb
Dr. Rebekah Lamb is Lecturer in Theology, Imagination and the Arts at the University of St Andrews. She specialises in theology and the arts, with particular emphasis on literature and visual culture in late modernity. Her research examines art and aesthetics as distinctive modes of theological and philosophical inquiry, especially in relation to ethics, devotion, and formation. Key figures in her work include John Henry Newman, Thérèse of Lisieux, Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ, Christina Rossetti, and the Pre-Raphaelites, as well as writers such as J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. She is Co-Principal Investigator of the RSE-funded project Catholic Women Writers in Scotland and Beyond and publishes widely in both academic and public-facing venues.
Dr Paul Shrimpton
Dr Paul Shrimpton teaches at Magdalen College School, Oxford. He is the author of A Catholic Eton? Newman’s OratorySchool (2005) and The ‘Making of Men’: the Idea and Reality of Newman’s University in Oxford and Dublin (2015), and has edited two volumes of Newman’s unpublished university papers, My Campaign in Ireland, Parts I & II. He has also written about the influence of Newman on the students of the White Rose resistance in Nazi Germany in Conscience before Conformity (2018). His most recent volume is ‘The Most Dangerous Man in England’: Newman and the Laity (2015).