Theology and Religion Research Seminar: Book Launch - Susannah Cornwall with Adrian Thatcher as Respondent

Our Theology and Religion research seminar on 21 January 2026 (11.30am in Harrison 209 and online) will take the form of a launch for Susannah Cornwall's new book, Structural Sin and the Death of Institutions (Routledge, 2026). You are warmly invited to join us online or in-person to hear Susannah introduce the themes of the book, followed by a response from Prof Adrian Thatcher.

Structural Sin and the Death of Institutions explores how Christian understandings of sin map onto institutional failures. It argues that institutions frequently create conditions in which individuals are disempowered and disposed to sin, and that uncritical appeals to redemption, reconciliation and restoration perpetuate harm. The book engages the turn to despair, abolition and termination in recent theologies, and builds on work by those working in other fields including the penal abolitionist movement. It offers an account of sins common to many institutions, including secrecy, exceptionalism, and the over-privileging of institutional reputation, and argues that Christian accounts of forgiveness of sin should not gloss over damage but appropriately remember the past. The volume will appeal to readers interested in Christian doctrines of sin and ecclesiology, including scholars of theological ethics, practical theology, and political theology, and to those asking how far their own continued association with flawed institutions is an unacceptable moral compromise.