I am an historian, writer and consultant based in the UK. Here you can read news, reviews and long-form writings on my various interests: religion, culture and the arts. My most recent book is on Walter Hussey, Anglican patron of the arts. Christianity and British politics, with a particular interest in religion in Parliament and…
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From time to time churches decide that their liturgies need to be revised. Such revisions are rarely easy, since the religious life for many people depends on familiarity: on having access to a kind of meditation that repetition over a…
2.3.2025 11:25Stations on the road to a non-liturgical timeA new article of mine has just appeared in the journal Anglican and Episcopal History. It is available in JSTOR, and so is accessible both to subscribers and to non-subscribers after creating a (free) JSTOR account. ‘George Bell, the British…
13.1.2025 13:24The British churches and artists from Nazi EuropeRegular readers will know that I’ve become interested in the history of publishing, both as an exercise in the history of technology and as a way of seeing how communities of thought and discourse organise themselves. In 2020 I published…
15.11.2024 11:32Reading the edited collection, distantly: some trends in British theological publishing in the twentieth centuryIn recent months I’ve had occasion to look at the lives of several Anglican women of the last century or so, for possible inclusion in a biographical dictionary. Many of these names have been overlooked by historians (or at least…
24.11.2023 08:57Anglican women: Mollie BattenTo regular readers of this blog, this will appear as a normal post. But thanks to a significant move by Automattic (the people behind wordpress.com who host this blog), it can now be read directly by users of Mastodon and…
21.10.2023 11:05Joining the fedi-blogosphereComments made in response to these posts in the Fediverse (like this one) now show up in the comments thread on the original blogpost.<a href="https://peterwebster.me/author/peterwebster/" rel="ugc">@peterwebster@peterwebster.me</a>
13.10.2023 12:45Comment on Rowan Williams and the cost of communion by Peter WebsterI really didn’t want to write this post. The grim sound of the Anglican churches tearing themselves to pieces over human sexuality has been a constant through the quarter-century over which I have studied the history of those churches, yet…
20.3.2023 06:49Rowan Williams and the cost of communionIn the last couple of weeks I’ve reached something of a resting point in my work on the Anglo-Catholic philosopher and theologian Eric Mascall. Slightly to my surprise, the project expanded to fill what are now five articles or book…
13.3.2023 11:48Eric Mascall and the knowledge of GodThe period from the 1950s to the early 1970s was one of rapid change in the British churches, and in their attitudes to the society around them. The period saw a sweeping relaxation of the ‘moral law’ in the UK,…
1.3.2023 10:15Eric Mascall and the rise, fall and (partial) rebirth of “Christian sociology”This is a recording of a paper to be given to the winter meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society on January 14th 2023. The theme of the conference is ‘the Church and hypocrisy’, and the title of the paper is…
10.1.2023 13:21Iris Murdoch and the clergy of the Church of EnglandRegular readers will remember that in recent years I have become interested in the history of religious publishing. It is the point at which religious history most closely meets a slightly separate interest in the history of technology. It is…
13.12.2022 09:21Visualising English theology in edited collections[…] further reflections on the business of Christian biography, see posts on John Stott, and Michael Ramsey and Walter […]
18.6.2022 05:00Comment on Alister Chapman on John Stott: a review by Book review: The Life and Times of Stephen Neill – WebstorySince this was shared by Thinking Anglicans, some discussion has happened there: https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/opinion-24-june-2020/#comment-279036
25.6.2020 08:51Comment on The churches and the future of theological research by peterwebsterAn unexpected footnote to this, from a 2019 article in Christianity magazine, entitled 'Is the Bible inerrant and infallible, or are there mistakes in it?'. It is part of a series from Tom Wright, former bishop of Durham, and is derived from the Premier Christian Radio podcast, 'Ask N.T. Wright anything'. One passage reads: 'When it comes to historical writing, people sometimes get hung up on the order of events in the gospels..... Does it matter? No, it doesn't. I think we need to lighten up. It was common practice for ancient biographers to select and arrange their material to suit their particular purposes, and it's still the way we write biographies today. I recently read a new book on the former archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey. It arranges a lot of the material thematically around the issues he dealt with during his time in office. So quite naturally, it cuts to and fro across the chronology. Nobody thinks that's wrong; so why should we object if the Gospels use the same approach?' The full podcast is available at: https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Weekday/Ask-NT-Wright-Anything/Podcast/7-Bible-infallibility-Sola-Scriptura-and-slavery
30.9.2019 05:51Comment on On structuring a book by peterwebster[…] First off, I must reiterate that you, reader, should begin by reading Peter Webster’s summary and overview of MacIntyre’s book. […]
27.7.2019 10:05Comment on Re-readings: Secularisation and Moral Change (MacIntyre) by MacIntyre — Secularization and Moral Change, Summary | Into the ClaritiesThis is an excellent review and summary. Better than what I'm going to put out there in a week or so.
12.7.2019 21:57Comment on Re-readings: Secularisation and Moral Change (MacIntyre) by gregorystackpole[…] reactions to John A. T. Robinson’s Honest to God, and to Anglican-Methodist reunion in a 2017 lecture, and I hope to be able to announce its publication before too long. In the meantime, the time is […]
11.6.2019 05:57Comment on Theology and crisis in the 60s: Michael Ramsey and E.L. Mascall by Eric Mascall: a bibliography – WebstoryI notice this interesting post from Chris Gehrz, who very kindly expounds my article and relates it to his own work on Charles Lindbergh https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2019/04/religious-history-internet/
9.4.2019 16:40Comment on Early Christian reactions to ‘cyberspace’ by peterwebster[…] with a brief historical sketch of the development of Web archiving over the last 20 years, which I discussed at greater length here. It then moves on to outline the different means by which these archives are created, and what […]
13.12.2018 08:56Comment on New article: Users, technologies, organisations – towards a cultural history of Web archiving by Existing Web archives: an orientation – We...This is what I'm trying to do. Sometimes when the kids are sleeping, I feel like my head is turning so I can't write. On those days I don't write. Writing must be sustainable. Anyway, 300 words with whatever quality, that's great. My best paragraphs come with this mindset. And some garbage comes with this mindset too, but I can delete / edit that later.
26.11.2018 16:28Comment on The 300-words-a-day rule by tamasrev