It cannot be assumed that countries with large mineral deposits should consider themselves blessed. The phrase ‘resource curse’ is familiar in debates about how natural resources like metals, minerals and oil are sourced by relatively developed countries in ways that leave a trail of devastation in their wake. But it is not enough to scapegoat the mining industry. Most, if not all, citizens of relatively developed countries benefit from the products of mining. Churches, pension funds, and many other investment bodies, also have money in mining and are thereby implicated in the actions of the companies in which they are invested. Mining companies vary considerably in policy and practice with respect to environmental protections, wage levels and employment practices, the payment of taxes and other revenues, relationships with local communities, and more.

Esther Reed has been involved with the Mining and Faith Reflections Initiative since 2014 as member companies and churches aim inter alia to enable and support a dialogue in ways that encourage openness, honesty and the sharing of different perspectives on mining. One current topic of conversation is the possibility of chaplaincies at mine sites amongst some of the participating companies. The Limit of Responsibility: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics for a Globalizing Era frames the question of responsibility as a problem of agency in relation to the systems and structures of globalization, with particular reference to industry scale mining and everyday purchasing of goods and services that require the products of mining.

As part of my Masters programme I was required to undertake an internship placement linked to the core themes of my course. For the past 7 weeks I have been working under the guidance of Professor Esther Reed on an exciting project that is looking to implement chaplaincy programmes in extractive mine sites around the world. The work allowed me to consider the role of religion in business and industry, and consider its links to major human rights and sustainability benchmarks. With supervision I produced a research paper titled “Chaplaincy in Mine Sites: Human Rights, Human Dignity and Care for Our People” which I then presented at the steering committee meeting of the Mining and Faith Reflections Initiative. The support provided by Esther throughout the programme was excellent, and the placement opened my eyes to future career paths that I had not previously considered. I am very grateful to have had this opportunity and I hope to work with Esther and the University of Exeter again in the future!

Vicki Collinge - MA in Religion, Conflict and Globalisation, University of Groningen, the Netherlands

The mass-murder of European Jews during the Nazi era, an event common named ‘the Holocaust’, has increasingly come to be known as representing some of the darkest potentials of Western society. Ways in which the event’s implications have been understood have nonetheless altered markedly over time and between locations, variously shaped by political, cultural, and religious factors. Earlier elements of my research on this topic focused on Jewish religious writings in N. America from the 1960s onwards, particularly using reception of the Bible as a prism for understanding how Holocaust memory created new readings and representations of biblical material.

In more recent work I have begun to consider the religious dimensions of Holocaust memory in contemporary Britain, as during the 21^st century public remembrance has grown markedly through the establishment of a memorial day, educational initiatives, a Prime Ministerial commission, and the construction of a new national memorial site next to the Houses of Parliament. The new research has been disseminated through journal articles for Modernism/Modernity and Material Religion, and conference papers for the American Academy of Religion, the British Association of Holocaust Studies, and the International Society of Religion, Literature and Culture. One key strand of this research has been the project ‘Engaging with the Holocaust in Secondary RE’, funded by the St Luke’s Foundation. The project has featured an academic workshop assessing tensions and debates surrounding Holocaust representation in the RE classroom, a training event for teachers in the South West, and a conference panel on Holocaust memory, educational policy, and government-led concepts of ‘British Values’.

The historian Dan Stone notes that by some international standards ‘Britain came relatively late to Holocaust consciousness’. But it is now the case that Holocaust memory is becoming consolidated as a key ethical marker within a fluid religious-secular landscape. I anticipate that the ‘Engaging with the Holocaust in Secondary RE’ marks one element of scoping work for what will be ongoing research in this difficult, but important and complex subject area.

Dr David Tollerton

This project examines religion's role in public life in modern Iran and Britain, identifying contrasting and common elements. In the 1960s and 1970s, many politicians, journalists and academics in both Iran and Britain had argued that religion's influence on public life will wither away as the two societies become more 'secular' through the modernising process. Experience since then has demonstrated that religion and religious identity have remained central to political culture and public life of both countries. This project compares the experiences of Britain and Iran, analysing the potential future role of religion in the public life of both countries. By bringing together emerging scholars and students from British and Iranian universities for workshops and summer schools, and by facilitating two early career fellowships, the project aims to facilitate intellectual exchange and long-term research collaboration between British and Iranian institutions on this subject.

This project is made possible by the British Academy International Partnership scheme. The UK-based collaborators are Professor Esther D. Reed (Theology and Religion) and Professor Robert Gleave (Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies) of the University of Exeter.

Research theme

The role of religion in public life continues to be much disputed in both the British and the Iranian contexts. Central research issues include the influence of religion on the provision of services, including education, health and the administration of justice, the role of religion in promoting human rights and the manner in which religious values might inform public policy. The debates in each of these areas contribute to a larger general debate about the nature of the "modernisation process", and whether religion has any role to play in a contemporary nation state. Engaging with the broader theme of how religious values might contribute to public policy formation will form the focus of activities within this partnership proposal.

Context

The differing contexts of Iran and Britain have contributed to differing academic commentary on the role of religion in public life. In Iran, the Revolution of 1979 brought in an intensification of religious influence on policy formation in health, education, transport, law, economics and planning. This process, sometimes called Islamisation, offered religion as a source which could inspire all (or most) public policy objectives. In more recent times, this totalising religious justification has, to an extent, given way to a division of labour between religious and non-religious justifications for policy. Islam remains the overall inspiration and theoretical justification for the structure of the state; however, on the detail of, for example, transport planning or the provision of basic services (water, gas, electricity), policy is linked to broader aims and objectives (cost, efficiency, utility). These broader aims and objectives are said to contribute towards a more developed, and hence better resourced society, which in turn can be justified by generalised Islamic values; but the perceived need for a specifically Islamic inspired sewerage system (for example) so prevalent in the days following the revolution has subsided, and in many ways Iranian policy formation in these areas is not different from non-Islamic states. Running concurrently with this change in the role of religion as a justificatory factor in public policy, there has been extensive academic discussion about the "Islamisation" of knowledge generally, and whether Islam, broadly conceived, can accommodate the findings and methods of the both the natural and social sciences. The general, but not dominant, view is that many of the conclusions of science and humanities can inform public policy without being grounded in Islamic justifications.

In a British context, the reduced role of the Church of England in public life is often cited as an indication that religiously informed public policy is on the wane. There is a general agreement that religious justifications for health or education policy have a very limited role to play in policy formation. However, stories which focus on the contrast between religious requirements and the demands of public policy frequently intrude on political debate. Recent examples include: the right (or lack of it) of service providers with a religious objection to homosexuality (such as B&B owners or Adoption Agencies) to exclude homosexual couples from accessing services, the reaction of religious communities to proposals for the teaching of sex education to children through the state school system, religious representation in a reformed House of Lords, the role of faith-based organizations as 'third sector' providers of welfare, the right of individuals to wear religiously significant clothing and jewellery whilst in places of work. There is general agreement amongst the policy makers that religion or religious principles cannot and should not be cited as the reason for particular policies. Nevertheless, the tension between religiously neutral policy objectives and the needs and requirements of religious groups (both Christians and others) is a recurrent feature of political debate within a supposedly secular cultural environment.

Research objectives

The objectives of this project are to:

• enable emerging scholars and students in both Iran and the UK researching the role of religion in public life to share their perspectives and develop comparative perspectives which will raise the quality of scholarship on this topic in both the UK and Iran;
• establish a network of contacts between British and Iranian scholars working in this area which will outlive the project life and provide a resource for future collaboration;
• identify the main areas of shared concern, and the areas of distinctive difference between the British and Iranian context, and to identify areas which could fruitfully profit from a comparative and collaborative approach;
• raise the capacity of both UK-based and Iranian scholars to deal with issues connected with religion in public life.

Methodology

Since the individual projects of the scholars involved in the project are diverse, the methodologies employed will exhibit a multi-disciplinary character. In terms of the project over all, though, the methodology will be based on the principle that scholarly advancement develops most productively through sustained research contacts between researchers of different perspectives. The three activities associated with the project aim to facilitate opportunities for research sharing.

Programme of activities

Year 1 (October 2010-September 2011)

• Early Career Visiting fellow from Iran to come Exeter for a period of 2 months. Please check here again for dates of seminars and other activities.
• Workshop 1 in Iran. Three days to include seminars, tutorials and other classes.

Year 2 (October 2011-September 2012)

• Preparation for and completion of Summer School to be held in Exeter

Year 3 (October 2012-September 2013)

• Early Career Visiting fellow from UK to visit Iran.
• Summer School to be held in Iran - 5 days of classes, research seminars, presentation of research and exploration of further collaboration.
• Workshop 2 in UK. Three days to include seminars, tutorials and other classes.

'The Art of Narrative Theology in Religious Education' is a collaborative research project, funded by Bible Society (Phases 1-4) and the Westhill Endowment Trust (Phases 4) and run by Professor Esther Reed (Theology and Religion) and Dr Rob Freathy (Education), that is developing an approach to teaching the Bible to Key Stage 3 pupils based on a foundation of narrative philosophy and narrative theology. Narrative philosophy understands all individuals and communities as formed by reading, sharing and living within stories; narrative theology, informed by this, puts forward a narrative understanding of both Christian communities and of the biblical texts upon which these communities are based.

Informed by this approach, the project is designing a series of curriculum material that enable pupils to understand the Bible as a set of stories that are particularly important for Christians and which have authority for them, to understand Christians as a storied people whose sense of community and ethical commitments are shaped not by moral rules but by participation in shared narratives of faith, to consider their own interpretations of the texts, and to reflect upon those stories – religious, non-religious or both – that contribute to formation of their own narrative identities.

Over the course of 12 lessons, pupils are introduced to the Bible and explore a selection of eight significant biblical narratives. They also consider the single, over-arching narrative of the Christian faith – the story of creation, fall and redemption – that runs through the Bible as a whole, and to which each of the individual narratives contributes. Each narrative is accompanied by a painting of the same text by Devon artist Brian J. Turner, whose images show biblical scenes in a quirky, contemporary style that is both engaging and thought-provoking. This use of art serves to bring the idea of interpretation to life for pupils, giving license to their own, personal interpretations of the narratives, and introducing the concept of participation in respectful dialogue with the beliefs and interpretations of others.

The curriculum materials therefore move away from the ‘proof-texting’ approach evident within the vast majority of existing publications for use in teaching Christianity at this level, in which biblical texts come to be treated simply as a sourcebook for ethical principles that guides Christians in making correct moral decisions, towards one in which pupils are enabled to think about the significance of biblical narratives for both Christians and themselves.

A additional volume of curriculum materials, exploring narrative approaches towards teaching about Jesus, is being produced in the fourth phase of the project.

Programme of Activities

Phase 1 (2011-12)

• Design and trial curriculum materials for three lessons
• Hold a Cathedral Workshop based on materials from the project and attended by pupils from local schools
• Draft an article outlining the pedagogy advanced by the project

Phase 2 (2012-13)

• Design and trial curriculum materials for a further seven lessons
• Publication of the article from Phase 1 in the British Journal of Religious Education

Phase 3 (2013-14)

• Publication of curriculum materials
• Promotion of published resources
• Submission of a grant proposal to the ESRC for a large-scale research project expanding the narrative approach to the teaching of world religions in schools

Phase 4 (2015-2017)

• Design and publication of additional volume of curricilum materials exploring narrative approaches towards teaching about Jesus

DAY CONFERENCE

For additional event information please visit the event page.

The UK Defence Committee published a report (25 March 2014 www.parliament.uk/defcom) entitled Remote Control: Remotely Piloted Air Systems. It stated inter alia:

157. We welcome the report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism. We note that he has identified a number of legal questions on which there is no clear international consensus. We recommend that the UK Government engage actively in the debate on these matters and report on progress in its response to our report.

This day conference takes its starting point from the report and concentrates on those legal questions on which there is no clear international consensus. The report further considers a range of lessons identified from operating remotely piloted air systems in Afghanistan. Our team of experts will reflect upon these lessons for future remotely piloted air system programmes.

Speakers:

Professor Michael N. Schmitt
Extraterritorial Lethal Targeting: Deconstructing the Logic of International Law Michael Schmitt is Professor of Public International Law at the University of Exeter. Charles H. Stockton Professor and Chairman of International Law Department at the United States Naval War College, Senior Fellow at the NATO Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, and Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Major General J Thomas CB DSO
UAV Strike Ops: A Commander's Personal Perspective
Jerry Thomas retired from active service in May 2012 after a career spanning nearly 37 years. During this time he commanded on operations at every level up to and including the UK Task Force in Afghanistan in 2006-07. Jerry is now an Honorary Fellow with the Strategy and Security Institute and a part-time PhD student at Exeter. He also chairs the Royal Marines Charity, represents the Royal Marines at various events and does a little bit of defence and security consultancy.

Respondents:

Professor Charles Garraway
Former Stockton Professor of International Law at the US Naval War College. Currently a Fellow of the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex and Vice President of the International Humanitarian Fact Finding Commission. Served for thirty years as a legal officer in the United Kingdom Army Legal Services. Senior Army lawyer deployed to the Gulf during the 1990/91 Gulf Conflict and UK delegate to a number of diplomatic conferences on the law of armed conflict and international criminal law.

Dr Aurel Sari
Lecturer in Law, specializing in international law and military operations. He has published widely on status of forces agreements, peace support operations and the legal aspects of European security and defence policy. Aurel is a member of the ILA Committee on Nuclear Weapons, Non-proliferation & Contemporary International Law, the ILA Study Group on The Conduct of Hostilities under International Humanitarian Law and the Committee of the UK National Group of the International Society for Military Law and the Law of War. He is also a member of the editorial board of The Military Law and the Law of War Review.

Dr Annicée van Engeland
Anicée has acted as a consultant for several international organisations and NGOs such as UNDP, ICRC, UNHCR, ILO, IOM, UNDP, CBI, MSF, and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She is a legal research associate for the ABA International Legal Resource Centre. She is currently acting as an expert witness to courts in the UK and the USA, as well as an advisor on Iranian law and Islamic law.

IAIS Building, Seminar Room 1, 2-3 June 2014 - Network for Religion in Public Life

This conference brings together scholars committed to exploring diverse problems besetting contemporary capitalism from a variety of Christian and Muslim perspectives. The terms ‘critique’ and ‘capitalism’ are both ambiguous and fraught with tensions. Together we aim to examine some of these tensions by unpacking carefully the meaning of capital, theories of economic practices that inform market exchange as an ‘ethic’ in itself, contradictions between contemporary capitalism and democracy, and collective rights for workers — all in dialogue with sacred texts and significant theologians from the three traditions. Our practical focus is on how practising Christians and Muslims might together resist the systemic violence of unrestrained capitalism and offer alternative modes of money-exchange, banking, accounting standards, financial transactions, and insurance. We shall examine also the claim that these aims might better be advanced by the inclusion in public debate of explicitly religious voices.

At present, the available funding will cover only accommodation and lunches. Attendees are asked to pay their own travel, evening dinner, and other costs. There is no conference fee. The intention is to seek publication for the collection of essays that will result from our working together — though this is not an absolute requirement and attendees are welcome to attend without committing to this objective.

Programme

For full programme details, please download the Critiques of Capitalism Programme

Speakers

Dr Rashid Begg

Before joining the University of Kurdistan, Rashid worked as a lecturer at Stellenbosch University in South Africa and prior to that, as a researcher at the University of Toronto, Canada. A native South African and a Canadian citizen, Rashid holds a Ph.D. in Sociology with special interests in social theory and understanding the historical linkages between religion, politics and economics. His primary methodological interest is historical sociology. His most recent works include the popular book, The Hajj (ISBN# 978-0-620-51783-6). His recent papers include ‘Otherwise than Being: Levinas' compassion’ and ‘Nagarjuna's karuna, Cult-Church Dynamics within the Nation of Islam’, ‘Hadith as a Means of Routinizing Charisma’ and ‘Anselm of Canterbury and Abu Hamid al-Ghaz’. He Dean of the School of Social Sciences.

Dr Brian Brock

Reader in Divinity, University of Aberdeen. Brian's main interests lie in moral and practical theology. He writes: ‘In an English-speaking context practical theology has acquired an orientation toward the hermeneutics of contemporary culture. This orientation rightly warns moral theology against drifting to a level of abstraction that makes it appear irrelevant for the moral decisions of daily life. At the same time, moral theology serves practical theology by insisting that interpretation is not endless, but is properly circumscribed by doctrinal and confessional frameworks. His engagements with Christian doctrine and cultural hermeneutics are tied together by a third interest in the role scripture plays in God's work of generating a people with a distinctive ethos.’ His recent books include: Christian Ethics in a Technological Age (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010); Singing the Ethos of God: On the Place of Christian Ethics in Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007); and Ed. with J. Swinton, Theology, Disability and the New Genetics: Why Science Needs the Church (London: T&T Clark, 2007).

Recep İhsan Eliaçık

On Tuesday 21 October 2014, St Mary le Bow Church, London, Christian Aid launched its report Tax for the Common Good: A Study of Tax and Morality. This report brings together two subjects that are usually far apart: theology and tax. Esther D. Reed and other authors met over a series of months to look together at what lessons the Bible may hold about matters such as the purpose of tax, how governments should apply it, how companies and individuals should pay it and what they should expect of governments in return.

In her article, Esther explores what Christian ethics can tell us about the taxation of multinational companies. She argues that such companies are required to pay more tax than the law requires of them, if failure to do so would damage the conditions required for everyone to flourish. She further argues that the fact of human sinfulness makes it necessary to have coercive measures at national and international level to prevent tax evasion and restrain tax avoidance.

Lectures were held at the University of Exeter and were open to the public at no charge. They have subsequently been published as Esther D. Reed and Michael Dumper, Eds, Civil Liberties, National Security and Prospects for Consensus Legal, Philosophical and Religious Perspectives.

The same questions were put to all speakers:

What do you understand by security? What issues and assumptions need to be clarified with respect to the relation between concepts of 'national security', 'international security', and 'global security'?
Is the subordination of human rights to any or all of the above unnecessary and/or morally questionable?
How might better protection of human rights make nation states safer and/or more secure?
What contribution, if any, might members of the major world religions make to this debate?

Speakers included:

Professor Conor Gearty, London School of Economics.
Civil liberties, terrorism and UK human rights law.

Professor Jeremy Waldron, New York University School of Law.
The Good of Security.

Dr Eric Metcalfe, of the human rights organisation Justice.
Terror, Reason and Rights.

Professor Tariq Modood, University of Bristol, UK.
Religion As Identity, Respect for Religion and Secularism.

Professor Malcolm Evans, University of Bristol, UK.
From Cartoons to Crucifixes: Current Controversies concerning the Freedom of Religion and the Freedom of Expression before the European Court of Human Rights

Professor Robin W. Lovin, Cary M. Maguire University Professor of Ethics, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, USA.
Security and the State: A Christian Realist Perspective on the World since 2001

Scriptural Reasoning (SR) is a way of Jews, Muslims and Christians meeting together and reading sacred scriptures together. An SR group meets with the intention of reading together the scriptures of each faith in a practice of 'reading-and-reasoning-in-dialogue' with one another. SR involves the three Abrahamic faiths because each of these traditions holds at its center the authoritative words from scripture, with value being placed on these texts as a source of sacred guidance in daily living.

Like many regions of the UK, the South West has established interfaith networks. The Devon Faiths Forum, for instance, meets regularly. SR meetings, however, are opportunity for deep theological sharing, amongst members of the Abrahamic faiths especially, around the holy scriptures.

Supported by the M.B. Reckitt Trust, the Exeter SR group has met at the University, Synagogue and Cathedral. (The Mosque is currently undergoing refurbishment.) Our practice has been in-keeping with the guidelines for SR as developed by Steven Kepnes in David F. Ford and C.C. Pecknold Eds, The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning (Blackwell, 2006). A key aim of SR is to promote interfaith dialogue in a friendly and hospitable environment that will encourage relationships between participants of the three faiths to form. It has thus been appropriate that we pitch 'tents of meeting' in places that form part of our respective communities. We are grateful for the hospitality shown.

Round Table Events in Exeter and Plymouth to Mark the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (8 & 10 Dec. respectively)

People of different faiths, and from various academic disciplines and professions, joined in discussion about the future of human rights in a religiously and otherwise plural world.

The partipants at both sessions came from a wide variety of backgrounds. Some were Community Officers for organizations combatting racial discrimination and racial violence. Some were scholars of international law. Some were retired academics from other disciplines. Some worked for agencies supporting refugees and asylum seekers. Some were university teachers of international human rights law; others community leaders trying to influence local and national policy with respect to rights in the workplace and children's rights. One had been an Ecumenical Accompanier in Palestine. Others were scholars of the Qur'an who, whilst critical of the individualistic tenor of much recent Western rights talk, were exploring conceptual and practical issues relating to the interface between human rights and Islamic law.

Our various experiences of lobbying and campaigning, attempts to influence policy, research, work with the media, grass roots support, partnerships, etc., made us all too aware that, for many people, the UDHR remains an unfulfilled promise. Of interest to us colloquially was the role that religion in diverse modes of public life might play in advancing the work of human rights and jus cogens norms.

Three broad, general issues formed a backdrop for our discussions:

Firstly, we were aware of tendencies in modern public international law that make the international arena increasingly unreceptive to a satisfactory concept of human rights - in particular, the focus of public international law on states as the only legal players in the international community and the emphasis on consensus amongst states as the only source of legitimacy for international law.

Secondly, we were aware of tendencies in our (predominantly UK, European and American) domestic and regional contexts to delimit the work of human rights to the civil and political at the expense of the social and economic.

Thirdly, we were aware of challenges from various quarters that the universality of human rights is a myth that should have evaporated long ago ... or is disappearing as we speak, and of the immense practical difficulties in integrating universal human rights norms into diverse social contexts. Participants in Exeter expecially helped us to unpack why and how the massively complex tension between the cosmopolitan norms of human rights and the need for legal rights has been treated in some instances by courts around the world (e.g., cases dealing with access to legal abortion in Peru). We discussed also some issues surrounding Moslem teaching regarding the status of the individual before God and divergent views amongst Moslem thinkers regarding the modern nation state.

Our more specific discussions in the second of the two sessions centred around various Moslem declarations of human rights. Charlotte Alfred led our discussions on the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights (UIDHR) 1981 and Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam 1990, paying particular attention to status of minority rights in Islam. In Exeter, our discussion centred around the potential benefits and/or harm of specifically religious declarations. In Plymouth, we talked more about the positive obligations that the protection of minorities enjoin upon nation states.

Lectures were held at the University of Exeter and were open to the public at no charge. The same questions were put to all speakers:

What issues and assumptions need to be clarified with respect to the relation between concepts of 'democracy', 'rule of law', and 'access to justice'?

Where are the present-day 'pressure points' with respect to the gaining of access to justice by minority groups?

What contribution, if any, might members of the major world religions make to these debates?

Speakers included:

Professor Mashood Baderin, Professor of Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London and founding co-editor of the Muslim World Journal of Human Rights (http://www.bepress.com/mwjhr/).
Access to Justice: An Islamic Perspective.

The Reverend Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, University of Oxford.
Invoking God in Public Reason: Jürgen Habermas's 'Postsecular' Second Thoughts.

Dr Matthew Gibney, University Reader in Politics and Forced Migration at the Oxford Refugee Studies Centre.
The Rule of Law: Deporting Citizens: Denaturalisation in the UK before and after September 11.

Professor Richard Moorhead, Professor of Law, University of Cardiff.
Access to Justice: The Rich, The Poor and the Socially Excluded.