The Society emerged from conversations between
Michael Farrer and Brent Skelly in the late 1990s. Both were
aware that there was increasing interest by historians in the
field, but that few publication outlets were available. They
wondered whether there might be a way of making some of the
fruits of research available to the wider public, and of
stimulating additional interest amongst both scholars and the
serious minded layperson. They came to the view that a society
might provide such a function.
The idea was floated with Bishop Geoffrey
Rowell, formerly fellow of Keble College and the author of
The Vision Glorious—a wide ranging study of the Oxford
Movement and Anglo-Catholicism. He was supportive of the idea
and became our first President, followed in 2020 by Bishop Rowan
Williams. Bishop Rowell also enlisted the Revd Dr
Perry Butler, author of Gladstone, Church, State and
Tractarianism and editor of Pusey Rediscovered, as
Chairman.
By June 2000 the Society was ready to be
launched and the inaugural lecture was delivered by Bishop
Rowell at St Mary’s Bourne Street. Membership increased rapidly,
largely by word of mouth. By the tenth anniversary of the
Society, some thirty lectures had been given, and eleven
substantial monographs produced.
In January 2020 Bishop Williams gave his
inaugural lecture (number 65 on our
Lectures page), and the
Society celebrated its twentieth year with a book of essays,
Twenty Preists for Twenty Years (featured on our
Books page).
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