Thinking with Christians: Doing Ecclesiastical History in a secular age

Graham Ward is the Regius Professor Divinity, Christ Church, University of Oxford and a Canon of the Cathedral. Here, he gives his inaugural lecture as Regius Professor of Divinity on What makes a belief believable.

The Faculty of Theology and Religion will host Professor Mark Noll (University of Notre Dame) as the Astor Lecturer in Trinity Term 2013. Prof. Noll is one of America's foremost cultural and religious historians, and a recipient of the prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities medal (awarded at a White House ceremony in 2006). His research concerns mostly the history of Christianity in the United States and Canada, but he also teaches courses in the Civil War era, general Canadian history, and the recent world history of Christianity.) He is currently working on a book that combines combine two large narratives about the Bible in American history; first the rise and decline of a biblical civilization defined mostly by activistic, British-origin Protestants; and, second, the ever widening diversity of Bibles, biblical uses, and other sacred Scriptures in a liberal America open to Christian believers of all kinds as well as the adherents of many other authoritative religious texts. His lecture at Oxford extends research published in 'America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln' (Oxford University Press, 2002) and 'The Civil War as a Theological Crisis' (University of North Carolina Press, 2006).

Sarah Foot, Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Christ Church, University of Oxford, gives the Inaugural Lecture on the 18th May 2011.