The Church of England is experiencing a significant decline in membership and in other forms of influence and engagement, whose implications may have consequences for the Anglican Communion as a whole. The qualitative as well as quantitative changes suggest the need for a renewal of Anglican public theology that maintains a positive account of the relationship between church and world while letting go the expectation of privilege and power. Articles in this issue of the Journal of Anglican Studies address the public character of Christianity in Britain after Christendom.

Fr Arthur Gabriel Hebert SSM is perhaps best known for his role in the Parish Communion Movement (PCM), a predominantly Church of England based offshoot of the wider liturgical reform movement of the early and mid-twentieth century. The PCM made the case for Holy Communion to be the main act of Sunday morning worship, rather than the then more widely used Matins service.

Today Hebert's name is most often associated with liturgical reform, and the systematic theology which underpinned his work has fallen largely into obscurity. This paper explores the theology that informed Hebert's liturgical arguments, drawing out his understanding of a faith that transcends denominational and stylistic differences, and makes the case that Hebert's theology has much to contribute to present-day ecumenical and missional dialogue.

Four articles based on presentations from the Lincoln Theological Institute’s 2013 Conference on ‘Churches, Communities and Society’ deal with issues facing the Church of England and other faith communities in the UK, and reflect the legacy of the Institute and the previous Lincoln Theological College.

The paper investigates the roots of a virtue-based ethics within Anglicanism starting with the Caroline tradition in the seventeenth century. In the twentieth century there was a rebirth of ‘Anglican Moral Theology’ with the work of Kenneth Kirk, Robert Mortimer and Lindsay Dewar. Issues of perfectibility are examined. The recovery of the Orthodox tradition of deification at the present time and the rebirth of virtue ethics through the work of Alasdair McIntyre are explored. Anglicanism is rooted in an approach where grace is already present in the natural order but which is enhanced by an integralist approach to theology bringing together doctrinal, ascetic and moral theology in one compass.

In this polemical paper, produced for the Churches, Communities, and Society conference at the Lincoln Theological Institute, University of Manchester, I argue that the Church of England has failed to develop a coherent or convincing theology of architecture. Such a failure raises practical problems for an institution responsible for the care of 16,000 buildings, a quarter of which are of national or international importance. But it has also, I contend, produced an impoverished understanding of architecture’s role as an instrument of mission and a tool for spiritual development. Following a historical survey of attitudes towards church buildings, this paper explores and criticizes the Church of England’s current engagement with its architecture. It raises questions about what has been done and what has been said about churches. It argues that the Church of England lacks a theology of church building and church closing, and calls for work to develop just such a thing.

The new Muslim presence in the West has become the source of multiple anxieties. This article, by focusing on one city in the north of England with a Muslim presence which has grown from 3000 to 130,000 in 50 years, considers the resources which state and the established church bring to incorporate such communities in the mainstream of society. The Muslim communities are not presented as passive victims of prejudice and exclusion but as possessed of agency. This paper concludes that there are expressions of Islam which are easy to incorporate but others which generate an isolationist mindset which can create major problems.

This essay argues that modern society lacks a vision of the common good, which prevents education from having an adequate telos or goal. It calls for a restoration of the language of virtue and the ethical tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas. The Anglican parish and the church primary or elementary school are examined as sites where virtue ethics is still active: particularly in the intercessory work of parish prayer, and in the mimetic approach to learning employed with younger children. The article then addresses ways in which these institutions depend upon what C.S. Lewis called ‘deeper magic’ of a transcendent reality, and ways in which the school especially might develop further a pedagogy of the virtues using J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter stories as exemplars. Finally, it argues for a dimension of the beautiful in a recovery of an education in Christian virtue.