Category Archives: Southern Chapter

Southern Chapter September 2026

30 September 2026

Speaker The Revd Professor James Walters
Climate and Creation: Engaging faith communities in climate science
St Stephen’s Rochester Row

12.00-12.30: Arrival; Tea & biscuits
12.30: Eucharist (open to the public)
13.10: Lunch
14.00: Talk & discussion
15.00: Departure

Climate and Creation: Engaging faith communities in climate science
The parts of the world most impacted by climate change are simultaneously the most religious and those with the lowest levels of scientific education. This is not to say that such groups see religion and science as necessarily in tension. But the dominant framing of the climate emergency in technical scientific language alienates these populations from this issue which is acting them so profoundly and which they describe in their own more moral/theological language. Professor Walters will outline the work of his research unit in listening to these religious voices and drawing them more fully into the global climate conversation.

The Revd Professor James Walter
The Reverend Professor James Walters is the founding director of the Faith Centre at the London School of Economics. The centre works with LSE’s diverse student body and wider global publics fostering interfaith dialogue to address conflict and the challenges of the climate emergency. He was ordained in 2007, served his curacy in Hampstead in North London, and has been at the LSE since 2010. He is an honorary canon theologian at Chichester Cathedral.

Southern Chapter October 2024

1 October 2024

Speaker: The Reverend John Kerr
St Stephen’s Rochester Row

Coffee at 11am
Talk 11.30am
Eucharist 12.30pm, presiding, Revd. Graham Buckle
Lunch 1.30pm
Close 2.30pm
Optional pub

The Genesis Distortion: agnosticism and creation

SYNOPSIS: We engage in the so-called “culture wars” on an entirely mistaken premise; that there is one Biblical creation account “The Biblical Creation story”, and it is found in the first couple of chapters in Genesis. On that false assumption, a vast inverted pyramid of doctrine is balanced. There are at least seven vastly different Biblical creation accounts in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament, as some still call it). In today’s brief presentation and discussion, we shall examine perhaps three of them, and see how our teaching has been skewed by the Genesis distortion.

Southern Chapter September 2022

23 September 2022

Speaker Revd Dr Mark Siddall
St Stephen’s Church, Rochester Row, London

11.15 Arrival and Coffee

11.30 -12.30 Presentation 

12.30 -13.30 Sandwich Lunch (a donation of £5)

1.30 – 14.30 Questions and discussion

2.30 – 15.30 Eucharist followed by tea

Mark spoke about the climate crisis from the perspective of the Prodigal Son referencing a recent article he wrote for Theology, vol 125 (3) 197-204.