Mbrown54@btinternet.com
I have been ordained for over 45 years, initially working as a parish priest and industrial missioner in suburban and inner city contexts. During the 1990s, I was Executive Secretary of the William Temple Foundation in Manchetsre – a research and training unit working on the churches’ engagement with urban and economic life – and worked extensively with other churchs across Europe on those topics. During that time, I also studied for my PhD and taught on a post-graduate course in social and political theology at Manchester University. From 2000, I was Principal of the East Anglian Ministerial Training Course (latterly the Eastern Region Ministry Cource) which is part of the Cambridge Theological Federation. Then, from 2007 until I retired from full time work in 2025, I was Director of the Church of England’s Mission and Public Affairs division (latterly Faith and Public Life) leading a team of specialists who advised the church and its leadership on issues in public ethics, politics and Parliament, as well as interfaith, ecumenical and theological matters and set up numerous programmes on (e.g.) modern day slavery, housing and disability issues.
In 2025, I was awarded the OBE in the King’s Birthday Honours list for Services to the Public Witness of the Church of England.
I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
I am a Friend of the Fondazione Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice (Roman Catholic institute for the study of ethics and economics).
I live outside Cambridge and am active in a ministerial capacity in my local parish and assisting in other parishes in the Diocese of Ely.
Qualifications
- PhD, University of Manchester – Thesis title: Dialogical Traditionalism: A Theologial Approach to Reconstructing the Churches’ Engagement with the Economy.
- MA in Philosophy and Theology, Oriel College, University of Oxford.
Roles at Queen’s
PhD supervision
Roles outside of Queen’s
I am a Visiting Lecturer in the Dept. of Computer Studies at the University of Bath where I teach an introduction to ethics course for postgraduate students studying AI, and I am a member of various related Advisory Boards there.
I am supervisor for a PhD student on the Lambeth Research Degrees in Theology programme.
I was Dean’s Scholar at Virginia Theological Seminary in the autumn of 2025.
I am a member of the Editorial Board for the theological journal Crucible.
Having been a member of the Church of England’s Ethical Investment Advisory Group for many years, I continue to offer theological advice to that body’s working groups.
Research interests and supervision
My initial research interests were on Christian Ethics and Economics and that remains a core area of interest.
My interests have broadened to embrace most aspects of Christian Ethics, especially when applied in practical terms; political theology, especially in a UK context; Anglican ecclesiology, and the Church of England’s socal engagement since 1918.
I am currently working on a book proposal exploring the author George Orwell’s proposition in 1940 that the rise of totalitarianism was enabled by the loss of a popular belief in eternal life, and the implications of that for the church in the context of the rise of Christian Nationalism today.
Publications
2020 (Ed. with Graham Tomlin) Coming Home: A Theology of Housing. Church House Publishing/SCM Canterbury Press.
2014 (Ed.) Anglican Social Theology: Renewing the Vision Today, London: Church House Publishing. (chapters by Malcolm Brown, Alan Suggate, John Hughes, Jonathan Chaplin and Anna Rowlands).
2010 Tensions in Christian Ethics: An Introduction, London: SPCK
2006 (with Paul Ballard), The Church and Economic Life: A Documentary Analysis – 1945 to the Present, Peterborough: Epworth Press.
2005 Faith in Suburbia: Completing the Contextual Trilogy, Contact Pastoral Monograph No.15.
2004 After the Market: Economics, Moral Agreement and the Churches’ Mission, Oxford, Bern, Frankfurt a.M. etc.: Peter Lang
Contributions to edited collections since 2015
Forthcoming “The Political Necessity of Transcendence: Why our politics needs a legitimate voice from the Church of England” in The Public Legitimacy of the Church of England (working title) eds. Joshua Hordern and Graham Tomlin.
Forthcoming “Racial Justice and the Structures of the Church of England”, in Voices in the Wilderness, ed. Sanjee Perera.
2025 “Anglican Perspectives on the State and Taxation” in, (ed.) Robert van Brederode, Christian Perspectives on the Role of the State, Justice, and Taxation, Springer.
2025 (with Eamonn O’Neill and James McEvoy): “Jus in Bello – AI is not just another weapon” in (eds.) Maggi Savin-Baden and Maria Power, Just War Theory and Artificial Intelligence, Taylor and Francis.
2021 “Ethics, Character and Community: Moral Formation and Modelling the Human”, in (ed.) Maggi Savin-Baden, Post-Digital Humans, Springer.
2020 “Housing, Church, Community – and Christian Theology”, in (eds.) Malcolm Brown and Graham Tomlin, Coming Home: A Theology of Housing, Church House Publishing, pp.53—74.
“Brexit-Shaped Britain and the Church of England: looking backwards to look forwards”, in: (eds.) Jonathan Chaplin and Andrew Bradstock, The Future of Brexit Britain: Anglican Reflections on National Identity and European Solidarity, SPCK, pp. 193—203.
2018 “Digital Impact on Payments, Credit and Financial Risk Management: New Ethical Questions? Comment on paper by Jose Manuel Gonzales-Paramo”, in (eds.) Giovanni Marseguerra and Anna Maria Tarantola, Catholic Social Teaching in Action: Facing the Challenges of the Digital Age, Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, pp.377—386.
2018 “John Atherton: Industry, the City and the Age of Incarnation”, in (eds.) Elaine Graham and Christopher R. Baker, Theology for Changing Times: John Atherton and the future of public theology. London: SCM Press.
2017 “Global Poverty and Justice” in, (ed.) Jeremy Morris, The Oxford History of Anglicanism, Vol.4 1910 to the present – Global Western Anglicanism. Oxford University Press.
“Anglican Social Theology Today and Tomorrow” in (ed.) Stephen Spencer, Theology Reforming Society: The 2017 Scott Holland Lectures, London: SCM Canterbury Press.
2015 “The Church of England and the Common Good”, in (eds.) Nicholas Sagovsky and Peter MacGrail, Together for the Common Good, SCM Canterbury Press.
Peer Reviewed Articles
2019 “Establishment: Some Theological Considerations” in The
Ecclesiastical Law Journal. Vol.21, Issue 3, September 2019. pp.329—341.
2015 “Civil Society, Welfare and the State”, in Modern Believing 56:1
