McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics & Public Life

Steering Committee 

• Professor Nigel Biggar
• Dr John Perry
• Rev Dr Edmund Newell
• Dr Dave Leal

Council Members

• Jonathan Aitken is a former British Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister. He is a biographer of Richard Nixon and John Newton, a broadcaster, and Chairman of The Prison Reform Policy Group of the Centre for Social Justice.
• Dr Rufus Black, Master of Ormond College, Melbourne, Australia, holds a D.Phil. in Christian Ethics from Oxford University, is a partner of McKinsey & Co., and is the author of Christian Moral Realism (2001).
• Professor Andrew Briggs is Professor of Nanomaterials at the University of Oxford, and Directorof the Quantum Information Processing Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration. He also holds a degree in theology from the University of Cambridge and is a member of the International Board of Advisors of the John Templeton Foundation.
• William Chapman, C.V.O. is Director of Policy at the Tony Blair Foundation and former Secretary for Appointments to the Prime Minister of the U.K.
• Major General (retired) Tim Cross, C.B.E. is Visiting Professor at Nottingham University, Adviser to the British House of Commons Defence Committee, and a Trustee of the Bible Society. He was the U.K.’s Deputy to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, 2003.
• Andrew Dilnot, C.B.E., is Principal of St Hugh’s College, Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Oxford, and a former Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, London. He presents BBC Radio 4’s series on the beauty of numbers, More or Less, and television documentaries about the economy for Channel 4.
• Professor Jean Bethke Elshtain is Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago, U.S.A., and the author of Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (2003).
• Claire Foster is Director of the Ethics Academy, Senior Adviser at the St Paul’s Institute for 21^st Century Ethics, London, and a former National Policy Adviser in Science, Medicine, Technology and Environmental Issues to the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England.
• The Rt Revd Lord (Richard) Harries of Pentregarth was Bishop of Oxford from 1987-2006, and is currently Gresham Professor of Divinity and and Honorary Professor of Theology at King’s College, London. He is the author of books on a range of issues, most recently The Re-Enchantment of Morality (SPCK 2008) and, forthcoming, Faith in Politics? Rediscovering the Christian Roots of our Political Values (DLT 2010) and (with Stephen Platten) Reinhold Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics: God and Power (OUP 2010).
• Donald Hay is an industrial economist, a former Head of the Social Sciences Division at the University of Oxford, and author of Economics Today: A Christian Critique (1989, 2004)
• Jeremy Hill, Legal Adviser to the Consultative Group on the Past in Northern Ireland, is a former British Ambassador to Bulgaria and to Lithuania, and a former Head of the Southern European Department in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
• Professor Werner Jeanrond holds the Chair of Divinity at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, is a former Professor of Systematic Theology and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Lund, Sweden, and is the author of Desire and Otherness: A Theology of Love (forthcoming).
• Simon Laver is founder partner of the Perrett-Laver Partnership, a Trustee and Chair of the International and Advocacy Committee of Tearfund, and holds a first class B.A. in Theology from the University of Oxford.
• Professor Robin Lovin, Cary M. Maguire University Professor of Ethics at the Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, U.S.A., is a former President of the Society of Christian Ethics and the author of Christian Realism and the New Realities (2008).
• David Loyn, the BBC’s Developing World Correspondent, won the Royal Television Society’s award for Foreign News and was made the R.T.S. Journalist of the Year in 1998. He is the author of Frontline: The True Story of the British Mavericks Who Changed the Face of War Reporting (2006) and Butcher and Bolt: 200 Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan (2008).
• Sir Joseph Pilling, K.C.B., is a former Permanent Under-Secretary of State in the Northern Ireland Office and Director-General of H.M. Prison Service.
• Charlotte Rendle, Deputy-Governor of H.M. Prison at Wormwood Scrubs, holds an M.St. in Christian Ethics from Oxford University.
• Professor Hans Ulrich is Professor Emeritus of Ethics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, a former President of the Societas Ethica, and author of Wie Geschöpfe Leben (Living as Creatures, 2005).
• Professor Keith Ward, F.B.A., was formerly Professor of Divinity at Gresham College, and Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford. He is a member of the Council of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, and the author of God: A Guide for the Perplexed (2002) and Why There Almost Certainly is a God (2008).
• Professor Nicholas Wolterstorff is Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, U.S.A., former President of the American Philosophical Association (Central Division), the co-author of Religion in the Public Square (1997), and the author of Justice: Rights and Wrongs (2008).