The Annual Lecture
Theologies of Liberation Annual Lecture
Each year, St Teilo’s Church in Wales High School hosts a lecture from a leading theologian on the theme of liberation.
The central insight of liberation theologies is that, because God makes a preferential option for those on the margins, we are called to do so as well. Through listening and learning, in the power of God's Spirit, we seek to truly love our neighbours as ourselves.
Love exists only among equals.
2025
The Revd Canon Dr Manon Ceridwen James
Manon Ceridwen James is a contextual theologian and poet based on the north Wales coast. In 2005, she was Dean at the St Padarn’s Institute, the theological training institution of the Church in Wales and Canon Theologian of Newport Cathedral. She writes about theology and contemporary culture, feminist theology, Welsh theology and has also contributed various chapters in edited books on theology and comedy, trauma, qualitative research as well as poetry. In her lecture, Manon Ceridwen James explores the potential for developing a contextual Welsh theology through insights from indigenous and black theology.
Manon is the author of Women, Identity and Religion in Wales (UWP, 2018):
Women, Identity and Religion in Wales is the first comprehensive study of its kind from a present-day perspective. It brings significant and original insights to an understanding of Welsh identity and religion, as well as exploring the distinctive pressures that women in Wales face in their everyday lives.
2024
The Revd Canon Jarel Robinson-Brown
Fr Jarel Robinson-Brown is Vicar of St German’s Church, Adamsdown, Cardiff and Vice-Chair of OneBodyOneFaith. Prior to this he was Assistant Curate at St Botolph-without-Aldgate in the City of London, Associate Chaplain at King’s College London and served as a Methodist Minister in Cardiff and South East London. His research interests are in the History of Early Christianity, particularly in North Africa and Egyptian Late Antiquity. He also writes in the areas of sexuality, gender, ethnicity, Black Liberation Theology, Queer Theology and Christianity and the arts.
Jarel is the author of Black, Gay, British, Christian, Queer: The Church and The Famine of Grace (SCM, 2021):
If the church is ever tempted to think that it has its theology of grace sorted, it need only look at its reception of queer black bodies and it will see a very different story. In this honest, timely and provocative book, Jarel Robinson-Brown argues that there is deeper work to be done if the body of Christ is going to fully accept the bodies of those who are black and gay. A vital call to the Church and the world that Black, Queer, Christian lives matter, this book seeks to remind the Church of those who find themselves beyond its fellowship yet who directly suffer from the perpetual ecclesial terrorism of the Christian community through its speech and its silence.
2023
The Revd Dr Charlie Bell
Charlie Bell is a Forensic Psychiatry Registrar, and also the John Marks Fellow, College Lecturer and Director of Studies in Medicine at Girton College, Cambridge. He is a priest in the Diocese of Southwark, Scholar in Residence at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City, and a Research Fellow and Associate Tutor at St Augustine’s College of Theology.
Charlie is the author of Queer Redemption (DLT, 2022):
LGBTQI people in the church have spent a long time being told what God expects of them and how they should behave. From prohibitions on who they might love or marry, to erasure and denial, the theological record is one in which LGBTQI people are far too often objectified and their lives seen as the property of others. In no other significant religious question are ‘theological’ arguments made that so clearly reject overwhelming scientific and experiential knowledge about the human person. This book seeks to find a better way to do theology – not about, but with and of LGBTQI people – taking insights from the sciences and personal narratives as it seeks to answer the question: ‘What does human flourishing look like?’