Inaugural lecture: The Revd Canon Professor Luke Bretherton - The Struggle to be Human: Christian Humanism and the Future of Our Common Life

The Revd Canon Professor Luke Bretherton is giving his inaugural lecture at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities on Monday 16 November, starting at 17:00. It's held in the Oxford Theatre, and the talk is titled The Struggle to be Human: Christian Humanism and the Future of Our Common Life.

An inaugural lecture is a particular kind of academic milestone—it's the first public talk a professor gives after being appointed to their chair, and it usually serves as a statement of intent for the work they'll be doing. Bretherton is with the Faculty of Theology and Religion, and the title points exactly to where his focus lies: the intersection of Christian humanism and the way we live together. It's not just a theological exercise; it's a look at how those ideas bear down on the common life we share, and what that looks like when the ground beneath it feels shaky.

If you've followed the work coming out of the Faculty of Theology and Religion, you'll know that's a broad church to draw from. Bretherton's talk sits right in the middle of it, pulling from theology, ethics, and political thought to ask what it actually means to be human in a world that's increasingly hard to make sense of. It's the kind of lecture that works as well if you're coming from a religious background as if you're just interested in the bigger questions of how we hold a community together.

It's a single evening's affair, so you can drop in without committing your whole week. The lecture starts at 17:00 at the Schwarzman Centre, in the Oxford Theatre, on Monday 16 November.