Gresham College provides outstanding educational talks and videos for the public free of charge. There are over 2,500 videos available on our website. Your support will help us to encourage people's love of learning for many years to come.
South Africa’s Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) and the Afrikaner people it served had, since the 17th century drawn a distinction between white ‘Christians’ and the apparently unconvertible ‘heathen’ peoples around them. Theology legitimised apartheid, but was also instrumental in its end.
It is a gross injustice to the child and parent for social workers, backed by ‘expert’ opinion, to wrongly remove children but it is equally unacceptable for vulnerable children to be left at home to suffer abuse...
Can we give a purely scientific account of human nature in terms of its physical, chemical and biological components. Richard Dawnkins' 'The Selfish Gene' is considered to see how a scientific narrative about selfish genes might correlate with a theological narrative about sin.
An exploration of how so many Christians came to support Nazism, and how some managed to oppose it: from the dejudaised Christianity of the ‘German Christian’ movement, to illicit collaboration of the supposedly anti-Nazi 'Confessing Church'.
The issue of Shaken Baby or Natural Cause will be examined, using a case study involving a bereaved parent, the transformation of a family home into a crime scene, with the pregnant mother facing a murder trial and her baby removed at birth.
Science and technology creates moral problems in being able to both improve life and destroy it. How might Tolkein's 'Lord of the Rings' offer us reflections on scientific and religious frameworks which enable us to respect nature on the one hand, while transcending its limits on the other?
Rules on disclosure, hearsay, use of expert witnesses, and time scales in court will be examined to consider why a Not Guilty verdict in Crime may not be enough to resume being a parent...