All Saints Margaret Street.

The link to the Zoom meeting for each seminar can be found here.

Zoom Theology Programme 2026-7

Once every two months or so, we organise an online theology seminar by Zoom to discuss a particular idea, theme or text. We aim to make discussion as approachable as possible, and to give people the space they need to express their thoughts and questions.

The kids are alright: How Gen Z found the Church of England

Tuesday 27th October 2026, 7.30pm
Esmé Partridge

There has been much talk in recent years of a renewed interest in Christianity amongst younger people. But what does that actually look like? Why do some young adults turn towards faith, and what expressions of the Church of England are attracting them most? Esmé Partridge’s research explores the experiences, relationships and questions along the journeys by which young adults are coming to faith. In this session, she will introduce the findings of her recent report for the think-tank Theos, “Understanding Young Adult Journeys to Faith in the Church of England,” and invite us to consider what they might mean for the future of the Church, and the experience of our parish. Participants are encouraged to read the document before the session.

Speaker: Esmé Partridge is Senior Researcher at Civitas, and Fellow of Civic Future. Her work focuses on young adults, faith and the contemporary Church of England.

According to Mark: Meeting Jesus in the First Gospel

Tuesday 24th November 2026, 7.30pm
Professor Helen Bond

As Advent approaches and we prepare to begin another year in the Church’s lectionary, we turn to the earliest of the four canonical Gospels. Professor Bond will introduce us to the distinctive world of St Mark’s Gospel, drawing on her book “The First Biography of Jesus: Genre and Meaning in Mark’s Gospel” to explore its portrait of Jesus, its characters and its urgent, and sometimes unsettling, narrative. Participants are invited to read Professor Bond’s book beforehand, so that the session might lead into a conversation about how we hear and read Mark as Christians today.

Speaker: Helen Bond is Professor of Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh and a leading scholar of the historical Jesus and early Christianity. She is the author of numerous books on the New Testament, and also the co-host of the popular Biblical Time Machine podcast.

Love without measure: The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

Saturday 6th March 2027, 7.30pm
The Rev’d Dr Matt Jacobson

Depending on how we first meet it culturally, few Christian devotions are so familiar, or so exotic as those to the Sacred Heart. What does it mean to contemplate the heart of Christ, and how did this devotion develop? Following a series of talks on the Sacred Heart at our sister parish, St Mary the Virgin, Times Square, Fr Matt Jacobson will explore for us the history, theology and practice of this rich tradition, from its biblical foundations to its place in the life of the Church today.

Speaker: Fr Matt Jacobson is a priest of the Episcopal Church and serves at St Mary the Virgin, Times Square, our sister parish in New York City. He has a particular interest in the Catholic devotional tradition and its place in Anglican Christianity.

Dissolving the Veil: Discovering Byzantium

Tuesday 16th March 2027, 7.30pm
Professor Charlotte Roueché

What do we mean when we speak of “Byzantium”? Too often, an entire civilisation of extraordinary intellectual, artistic and Christian achievement is hidden behind a word that can make it seem remote, exotic, or somehow less familiar either than the classical world that preceded it, or the Western medieval world that followed. Charlotte Roueché invites us to look again. The V&A will be mounting a large exhibition called “Constantinople to Istanbul,” examining the history of that great city.  Following a parish trip to the exhibition, she will explore with us the empire’s culture, religion and imagination and their influence on, and memory within, Christendom. As Professor Roueché herself put it, she is “always grateful for a chance to dissolve the veil wilfully drawn over Byzantium.”

Speaker: Charlotte Roueché is Professor Emerita of the Late Antique and Byzantine Worlds at King’s College, London. Her work has explored the history, inscriptions and culture of Byzantium, with a particular interest in recovering the lives and voices of the people who inhabited it.

The Bayeux Tapestry: History, Memory and the Church

Tuesday 11th May 2027, 7.30pm
Dr Mark Philpott

With its ongoing blockbuster exhibition at the British Museum, The Bayeux Tapestry has renewed its hold on the English imagination. It is one of the most remarkable surviving witnesses to the world of the Norman Conquest. What does it tell us about the people who made it and the world they inhabited? How should we read its depictions of kings, battles, relics and churches? Dr Mark Philpott will use the tapestry as a window onto the religious and political imagination of eleventh-century England and Normandy, exploring how Christians in the Middle Ages thought about history, authority and divine providence.

Speaker: Dr Mark Philpott has taught and researched in Oxford for many years, including at Keble College, Oxford and at St Stephen’s House. Dr Philpott has focused on the medieval Church and how its teachings and law shaped people’s lives. Instances of his research include work on the coronation(s) of William the Conqueror, an exploration of the history of cannibalism, and the cults of bearded women saints.

Thinking Machines: Theology in the Age of AI

Tuesday 8 June 2027, 7.30pm
Dr Euan Grant

Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing the world around us, but what questions does it raise for Christian theology? What is distinctive about human intelligence, creativity and agency? And how should Christians think about technologies whose possibilities are still unfolding? Dr Euan Grant will lead us in an evening of theological reflection and discussion about what it means to be human in an age of intelligent machines. Participants will be asked to read Pope Leo’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas in preparation for the session.

Speaker: Dr Euan Grant is Senior Tutor at St Stephen’s House, Oxford, an Anglican seminary in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. He previously taught systematic theology and the history of doctrine at Trinity College Dublin, and was a Gifford Fellow and Associate Lecturer at the University of St Andrews. A graduate of Keble College, Oxford, he has returned to Oxford to join the staff of St Stephen’s House.