Name: Edward Rogers Memorial Lecture
Start: 2026-07-09T14:30:00+01:00
End: 2026-07-09T17:00:00+01:00
Location: Wesley House Cambridge

Life on the Breadline: A faith that transforms structural injustice
About this Event

You are warmly invited to join us either in-person or online for the Edward Rogers Memorial Lecture on Thursday 9 July 2026

This year's lecture will be provided by Dr Chris Shannahan, Associate Professor in Political Theology at the Centre for Peace and Security at Coventry University.

His research focuses particularly on Christian responses to contemporary poverty and inequality; racism and the Far Right and the role of the Church plays in the public sphere. His most recent book, Life on the Breadline: Theology, Poverty and Politics in an Age of Austerity, which was published in November 2025 by SCM Press, draws on his ESRC funded 2018-2021 Life on the Breadline project and sows the seeds of an austerity-age theology of liberation.

Traumatising systemic poverty is a scandal that contradicts the will and the nature of God. Drawing on the recent Life on the Breadline research project, this lecture will explore the complex character of austerity-age poverty, the debilitating impact it has on individuals and communities and the challenge this poses to a Church that is called to ‘transform structural injustice’. Rooting reflections in the varied Christian responses to poverty identified during Life on the Breadline, the lecture will show that the Church stands at a Kairos moment and suggest that we need to build on but move beyond ‘caring’, ‘campaigning’, ‘enterprise’ and ‘community building’ to fashion a liberative theology, an outward facing missiology and a prophetic presence in the public sphere that can force death-dealing poverty into retreat.