Peter Hinchliff

Bio: Peter Hinchliff is an academic researcher from Balliol College. The author has contributed to research in topics: Heresy & Church history. The author has an hindex of 4, co-authored 13 publications receiving 117 citations. Previous affiliations of Peter Hinchliff include Rhodes University.

Benjamin Jowett and the Christian religion

Abstract: The conventional picture of Benjamin Jowett (1817-93) is of the outstanding educator, the famous master of Balliol College, Oxford, whose pupils were extremely influential in the public life of Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century. However, he is also recognized as a theologian since he contributed an essay 'On the Interpretation of Scripture' to Essays and Reviews, a collection published in 1860; the book's liberalism aroused great controversy, and it was eventually synodically condemned in 1864. It has been thought that having got into trouble over his essay, Jowett abandoned theology and became a purely secular figure. This book attempts to identify the ideas which caused Jowett to develop his theology, the thinkers who influenced him and how his own religious ideas evolved. It argues that, after the Essays and Reviews controversy, he deliberately chose to disseminate those ideas through the college of which he became master. It also shows how he influenced other religious thinkers and theologians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, arguing that he was more important in the history of English theology than is usually recognized.

The selection and training of missionaries in the early nineteenth century

Abstract: Anyone who studies the techniques and strategy of early nineteenth-century missionaries and (even more) of early nineteenth-century missionary societies can hardly avoid gaining the impression that they suffered from a romantic casualness. It is as if zealous Christians of the period were so convinced that the Lord would guide and provide for the missionary that he really did not need much mundane preparation. Nineteenth-century missionaries often simply disappeared into bush, desert or jungle, stopped when they came to a site where there was food, water and heathen, and preached in whatever language happened to be available.

One Hundred Twelfth Critical Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences

Abstract: The classification system for the annual Critical Bibliography is based on that developed by George Sarton in 1913 and revised by committee in 1953. In the first two sections will be found references to histories of science in general and to historiographical, philosophical, sociological, and humanistic aspects of science. Section C indexes general books and articles relating to specific sciences. Section D contains all references that relate to the sciences in specific historical periods. Preference is given to the latter, so that historians interested in a particular science, biology, for example, must look in both the general section on the biological sciences (24) as well as the biological section under each of the historical periods.

Sexual minorities, human rights and public health strategies in Africa.

Abstract: This chapter examines specific initiatives that are using subtle, somewhat covert means to negotiate a path between rights activism and secretive bisexuality. It argues that strategies primarily focused on health concerns that simultaneously yet discreetly promote sexual rights are having some success in challenging prevalent homophobic or ‘silencing’ cultures and discourses. Overall, in the last few decades, remarkable progress has been made towards the recognition of sexual minority rights in Africa. At the same time, a marked increase in attacks, rhetorical abuse, and restrictive legislation against sexual minorities or ‘homosexuality’ makes activism for sexual rights a risky endeavor in many African countries. Campaigns for sexual rights and ‘coming out’ are frequently perceived as a form of Western cultural imperialism, leading to an exportation of Western gay identities and provoking a patriotic defensiveness. Cultures of quiet acceptance of same-sex relationships or secretive bisexuality are meanwhile also problematic given the high rate of HIV prevalence on much of the continent.

Reimagining the human : the role of the churches in building a liberatory human rights culture in South Africa today.

Abstract: hovering above lived realities, passive, waiting for God to accomplish things, or repressive, denying the realities of present suffering, but calls Christians to practice ‘pathic’ hope-in-action imbued with the Source of all Life. It is in this third movement forwards that the ‘church’ practices public, participatory witness-in-action. 5.3.1 Created for freedom reforming our understanding. Moltmann demonstrates a consistent concern with freedom. He points specifically to the need for “freedom from: systems of oppression but he is also concerned about “freedoms for” as 463 He suggests that oppressors are also trapped in these deformed relations as inhumane oppressors, exploiters, alienators, apathetic and godless alongside the oppressed, exploited, alienated, godforsaken and dehumanised.(1974/2001:343-344, 1979b:24). 464 Moltmann has engaged with Pentecostal movements, seeing their openness to the Spirit as a place for church renewal as well as being critical of the ways in which many strands promote individualised understandings of the person and distorted utopias of affluence. 465 Moltmann contrasts the ‘utopias of the status quo’ of success, power and happiness that can lead to forms of apathy in relation to change, with ‘utopias of justice’ with its ‘Sitz im Leben’ in the suffering of the present and which hopes instead for change. (1976c:24).

The religious identity of the church and its social and political mission in South Africa 1948-1984 : a historical and theological analysis

Abstract: This study is concerned with the identity of the Church and its social and political mission in South Africa. Here the argument is that the religious identity of the Church is fulfilled in the realization of the Kingdom of God through the historical event of incarnation which liberates human identity from oppression and alienation. This doctrine in turn, it is contended, depends for its relevance upon the significance of the concepts of prolepsis and commitment for the mission of the Church, Prolepsis signifies that the Church exists to bear witness to that which has come and is coming in Jesus Christ, In this way the thesis attempts to situate the proclamation of the Kingdom of God in relation to a particular problem of oppression and exploitation in South Africa, Hence commitment should be understood as the fulfilment of Black identity and thus as a liberation which brings about the transformation of the South African identity as a whole. In this thesis the hermeneutic circle as a theory of interpretation is applied in the theological and historical analysis of the South African social formation. Part One of the thesis lays the theoretical foundations of the study by developing the hypothesis and discussing identity theories and methodology. Part Two contains an analysis of South African social reality in which the variable of class is identified as that which underpins the South African social structure. Consequently, Apartheid is explained with reference to the economy rather than race. It is an economic rather than a racial factor. Part Three consists of a theological and sociological analysis of South Africa; it employs the Marxist social theory of alienation and applies the conception of identity advocated by the Liberation Movements of Southern Africa, particularly the African National Congress. It is concluded that the religious identity is a crucial factor in the emergence of a full humanity.