Pusey House

Pusey House If you have benefited from our ministry, please consider making a donation. http://www.puseyhouse.org.uk/support-and-donate.html
You could be a Friend.

As a chaplaincy, library, and social space at the very centre of Oxford, Pusey House provides a welcome space for students and members of the wider community to worship and study. If you have longstanding connections with this place, we would also encourage you to join our vibrant community of Friends, whose lives Pusey House has touched over the years. Becoming a Friend allows you to offer a cont

inued contribution to the life of the House, ensuring that its unique joy and edification can be carried forward into the future. Visit our website today. http://www.puseyhouse.org.uk/become-a-friend.html

29/04/2026

Are Pilgrim’s Progress & The Brothers Karamazov ‘Christian’ novels? If so, why?
Because they present morality & mortality in a certain way?
Can a novel be Christian even if its author is not? Could a novel be Christian if its story is a tragedy?
Come & find out at our conference in !
Tickets are available here: ticketsource.com/pusey-house/

More details about the conference can be found here: puseyhouse.org.uk/conferences

Speakers:

Professor Randy Boyagoda (University of Toronto): What is seen, what is believed: Belief in/and the Novel.

Professor Bonnie Lander Johnson (Downing College, Cambridge): Mysticism and the Modern Novel.

Professor Alison Milbank (University of Nottingham): What makes a Gothic novel Christian: From Dracula to Sarah Perry’s Melmoth.

Ms Grace Oliver (Wilson Hill Academy): Elizabeth Gaskell and the Christian Imagination: Prayer, Scripture, and Character Formation in Gaskell’s Works.

Professor Lori Peterson Branch (University of Iowa): What if the Novel is Secular? The Novel as Secularism’s Theology.

Professor Holly Ordway (Word on Fire Institute): ‘Fundamentally religious’ – or Not? J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and the Question of Authorial Intent.

Ms Beatrice Scudeler (Fairer Disputations): The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Eschatological Hope in Dorothy Sayers’ Detective Fiction.

Professor Clare Walker Gore (Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge): Revealed Truths and Reserved Plots: Charlotte M. Yonge and the Tractarian Novel.

24/04/2026

For the next few days, we will be continuing to highlight the fantastic speakers who will be presenting at the conference ‘What makes a novel Christian?’ on 13 May

Professor Alison Milbank is Professor Emeritus of Theology and Literature at and Canon Theologian at She was formerly John Rylands Research Institute Fellow at the University of Manchester, and taught at the Universities of Cambridge, Middlesex, and Virginia.

Her research has been on the relationship of religion to literature and culture, especially non-realist literary and artistic expression, such as the Gothic, the fantastic, horror and fantasy. She also has a prominent role in the Save the Parish Network.

Her two most recent books are ‘The Once and Future Parish’ (SCM, 2023) and ‘God and the Gothic: Religion, Romance and Reality in the English Literary Tradition’ (OUP, 2018).

Her paper for our conference is entitled: ‘What makes a Gothic novel Christian: From Dracula to Sarah Perry’s Melmoth’.

You can get a ticket now by going to ticketsource.co.uk/pusey-house/

More details about the conference can be found by going to puseyhouse.org.uk/conferences

22/04/2026

For the next few days, we will be highlighting the fantastic speakers who will be presenting at the conference on ‘What makes a novel Christian?’ on 13 May

Professor Randy Boyagoda is Vice-Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Science and a Professor in the English Department at the University of Toronto He is the author of four novels, with a fifth one, Lords of Serendipity, about to be published worldwide in September 2026 by

His novels have a satirical edge that could easily be compared to Evelyn Waugh’s early work and his most recent novels explore the complexities of keeping the Christian faith in the modern world.

His fiction has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize, and named a Book Review Editor’s Choice Selection and Best Book of the Year. He contributes essays, reviews, and opinions to publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Walrus, First Things, Commonweal, Harper’s, the TLS , the Financial Times, the Guardian, the New Statesman, and the Globe and Mail.

He served as President of PEN Canada from 2015-2017 and is currently a member of The Walrus Educational Review Committee and serves as the University of Toronto’s advisor on civil discourse.

His paper is entitled: ‘What is seen, what is believed: Belief in/and the Novel.’ More details about the conference can be found by going to puseyhouse.org.uk/conferences

You can get a ticket now by going to ticketsource.co.uk/pusey-house/

22/04/2026

Join us next Wednesday 29 April at 4pm for our first lecture of the term by David Williams

His lecture will explore how three very different 19th-century theologians, who helped to found modern universities (Friedrich Schleiermacher, John Henry Newman, and Abraham Kuyper) grappled with the question of theology’s role in the modern research university, and how their arguments relate to contemporary debates about the ‘demarcation’ of science, the nature of academic disciplines, and the value of theology.

22/04/2026

We have some excellent lectures and conferences coming up at !

Conferences:

1. What makes a novel Christian? (13 May)

Speakers: Professor Randy Boyagoda, Dr Bonnie Lander Johnson, Dr Alison Milbank, Dr Grace Oliver, Professor Lori Peterson Branch m’s Theology, Professor Holly Ordway, Ms Beatrice Scudeler, Dr Clare Walker Gore.

2. Public lectures by Professor Tracey Rowland and Professor Jason Blakely will also be delivered at Pusey as part of the conference on ‘MacIntyre in the Conflicts of Modernity’, held in partnership with the Canterbury Institute and the Aquinas Institute of (11-12 June)

3. We have a conference at the end of the term on ‘Natural Law & War’, held in partnership with the Chase Center at , and the School of Civic Leadership at (18-19 June)

We have lectures coming up on ‘What makes theology scientific?’, E.L. Mascall, liturgy and ethical formation, and Prudentius’ hymns. The Peter Toon Lecture on ‘The Prayer Book and the Quiet Revival’ will be delivered by

Full details are in the term card and on our website: puseyhouse.org.uk

22/04/2026

For the next few days, we will be highlighting the fantastic speakers who will be presenting at the conference on ‘What makes a novel Christian?’ on 13 May

Professor Bonnie Lander Johnson is Fellow and Associate Professor in English Literature at , and Senior Research Fellow at , Oxford.

Her research has focused on Shakespeare and early modern culture, publishing ‘Chastity in Early Stuart Literature and Culture’ (2015), ‘Botanical Culture and Popular Belief in Shakespeare’s England’ (2024), and ‘Vanishing Landscapes’ (2025, ).

For Catholic University of America Press, she co-edits with Julia Meszaros a multi-volume series of prose writing by the lost women of the Catholic Literary Revival, such as Caryll Houselander, Sheila Kaye-Smith, Josephine Ward, Enid Dinnis, and others.

Her fiction and non-fiction has appeared in Hinterland, Howl, Dappled Things and The Brick Lane Bookshop Anthology.

Her paper for our conference is entitled: ‘Mysticism and the Modern Novel.’

You can get a ticket now by going to ticketsource.co.uk/pusey-house/ More details about the conference can be found by going to puseyhouse.org.uk/conferences

The Easter Vigil at Pusey House. Alleluia, Christ is Risen!
07/04/2026

The Easter Vigil at Pusey House. Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

03/04/2026

High Mass for Maundy Thursday, with Mandatum & Procession to the Altar of Repose

Address

St Giles
Oxford
OX13LZ

Opening Hours

Monday 7:40am - 6:30pm
Tuesday 7:40am - 10:30pm
Wednesday 7:40am - 6:30pm
Thursday 7:40am - 6:30pm
Friday 7:40am - 6:30pm
Sunday 10:30am - 2:45pm

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01865 278415

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