What Next?: Nan Shepherd and the First World War

Alison Lumsden’s essay on Nan Shepherd discusses the war’s oblique traces in The Quarry Wood (1928) and Shepherd’s more deliberate engagement with the conflict – and post-war social reconstruction – in The Weatherhouse (1930). Lumsden discusses the influence of John Macmurray – a philosopher and friend of Shepherd’s who posited a rejection of Cartesian separation between intellect and body – on her portrayal of Gary Forbes in The Weatherhouse.

From Idealism to Personalism

This chapter looks at the work of John Caird, John Oman, and John Macmurray as thinkers who tried to reformulate Christian belief in the light of the intellectual challenges that emerged to Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Caird’s apologetic aimed to reshape Christianity in the light of Hegel. Oman tried to relieve the tension between freedom—intellectual, moral, and aesthetic—and religious belief. Macmurray elucidated the importance of Christianity through its suggested connection to the sustenance of personal forms of existence and of community. The chapter offers brief evaluations of each writer and concludes that they shared a common allegiance to broad themes arising within British idealism, not least their view of God as immanent in experience.

Three Lost Prophets: Macmurray, Smith, and Lambourne

John Macmurray, Ronald Gregor Smith, and R. A. Lambourne are three prophetic figures, whose theological work in the 20th century on the priority of interpersonal relationships and the meaning of community has been unjustifiably neglected. Their writings on the centrality of relatedness for faith demand to be rediscovered today when a relational theology is vitally needed to counter trends towards social dis-integration

John Macmurray's influence on Thomas F. Torrance

The study of Thomas Torrance is undergoing a revival, but has neglected to highlight one significant influence: the insights of the Scottish philosopher John Macmurray. This article focuses on three respects in which Torrance affirmed Macmurray's work: in overcoming dualism, in creating an integrated realist philosophy and in expounding the form of the personal. This study will bring to light Macmurray's contributions to Torrance's thought, surveying the works of Torrance to reveal where Macmurray contributed key epistemic and systemic points to Torrance's developing scientific theology. This brief summary intends to reveal both Torrance's overt acknowledgement of Macmurray and the need for more exploration of their connections in order to enrich the study of both scholars.

Democratic parent engagement: Relational and dissensual

In opposition to the discourse of silent compliance and the neo-liberal colonisation of voice, this article shares research with parents in an English primary school. Drawing on the work of Jacques Rancière and John Macmurray, the author argues that there is a need for a more relational but dissensual approach to parent engagement and voice, instead of parents being positioned by schools as support acts. Parent engagement, increasingly commodified over recent years within English school policy, has been relegated to responding to questionnaires, dutiful attendance of parents’ evenings, ensuring homework completion and choosing the correct school. Meanwhile, the social mobility agenda demands that parents inculcate aspirations in their children unquestioningly. Policies and pronouncements seek to ‘close the gap’ in attainment between the poorest children and their peers in England, Australia, the USA and other neo-liberalised countries. Hence a context is created in which parent engagement is now an exercise in creating ‘good’ pupils and successful economic beings. This article considers how parents have been rendered objects rather than agentic subjects within neo-liberal education systems and have lost their democratic voice. It concludes that there needs to be a reanimation of Dewey’s vision of education politics.