Weds 12th June 2024
Recollection Lecture: The Public Authority of the Church of England: Its Theological Foundations.
Joan Lockwood O’Donovan (Hon. Reader at the School of Divinity, St Andrews).

The talk examines the exception presented by the legally established Church of England to the restraints placed by secular liberal pluralism on the church’s ‘public authority,’ understanding ‘public authority’ as both ‘the power to influence’ and ‘the moral power to rule.’ It considers the theological understanding of the Church’s dual authority of proclamation and jurisdiction contained in the foundational Reformation formularies of the Book of Common Prayer and Ordinal, and the Thirty-Nine Articles.