USPG has been working with scholars at the University of Leeds who have been exploring, analysing and digitising some of the documents from our early history as an organisation (1701 – 1720). Working around the theme of pastoral care, we have been trying to understand how the past might inform the present in relation to the Covid 19 crisis and USPG’s ongoing mission to care and create community across cultures and contexts. The archival work has been accompanied by a series of contemporary research conversations with chaplains and clergy working in front line spiritual care provision. This report, written from an organisational perspective, seeks to draw the archival conversations into dialogue with USPG’s work with African and UK church partners throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
This document is the result of a collaboration between colleagues working on the UKRI AHRC-funded project Pastoral Care, Literary Cure and Religious Dissent: Zones of Freedom in the British Atlantic (c. 1630 – 1720) at the University of Leeds and United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG).
All images provided by USPG remain copyright of USPG. Lambeth SPG 8 50 and Lambeth SPG 12 52 are used with permission from Lambeth Palace Library.
https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/arts-humanities-cultures/dir-record/research-projects/1523/pastoral-care-literary-cure-and-religious-dissent-zones-of-freedom-in-the-british-atlantic-c-1630-1720
The quotations cited throughout this report come either from public webinars organised by USPG or from research interviews undertaken with clergy and chaplains in the UK. Quotations from the webinars are identifiable by name. Those drawn from UK research interviews have been anonymised detailing only a respondent’s role and location within the UK.
Click here to visit the project website.
To read our blog for the Bodleian library introducing the project, click here.
