Episode 59. Henry Scott Holland and the common good

SYNOPSIS

Possessed of the belief that ‘you cannot believe in the incarnation and not be concerned about drains’, Henry Scott Holland (1847 - 1918) had arguably the greatest long-term influence on the Anglican social conscience in his and later generations - informed by his winsome personality and sprightly networking. Born into privilege in an age when the Varsity was still a male preserve, Scott Holland formed close relationships at Balliol College, Oxford with the idealist philosopher T H Green and contemporaries R L Nettleship, Stephen Freemantle and Gerard Manley Hopkins which primed his theological social conscience with an awakening understanding of the common good. The rest of his life was an experimental outworking of this belief.

The episode explores how friendships informed the publication of Lux Mundi (1889), a collection of 12 essays by liberal Anglo-Catholic theologians; entry into the social circle of Liberal prime Minister Gladstone through his daughter, Mary; appointment by Gladstone in 1884 to a Canonry of St Paul’s Cathedral, where he became a popular preacher; engagement in the settlement movement in the slums of London’s East End; and creation of the Christian Social Union in 1889, editing the national parish magazine Goodwill and the monthly periodical Commonwealth in support of its aims.

Scott Holland was appointed Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford in 1910, yet his last years were clouded by illness and the onset of the First World War.

GUESTS

Dr Ralph Norman teaches philosophy, Victorian religion and Anglican social theology in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Education at Canterbury Christ Church University. He has published on Henry Scott Holland, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Oxford Anglicanism, British Idealism, and the common good.

Simon’s interview with Ralph Norman was recorded online on 30 January 2025.