CTI Secures $4.5mil Templeton Foundation Research Grant on Hope
Dr. Tom Greggs (new Director of CTI) has secured a $4.5 mil. grant from the Templeton Foundation. The three-year project is entitled: From Despair to Hope: Interdisciplinary Theology in the service of Building Spiritual Capital.
The grant will be the focus of CTI’s work at the start of Dr. Greggs’ tenure. He will be joined in leading the project by a co-investigator, The Rev’d Dr. Jonathan Lewis-Jong (a philosopher and psychologist working between the Universities of Oxford and St Mary’s University Twickenham, and a priest based in the Diocese of Chichester). CTI is also delighted that Dr. Valerie Cooper (Duke University) and Dr. Amos Yong (Fuller Seminary) will be joining the project as Senior Fellows.
The project’s underlying question is: What would it look like to develop and apply new, inter-disciplinary theologies of hope in domains where despair prevails and hope is yearned for? In trying to answer this question, CTI will convene groups of scholars residentially and digitally, host workshops and colloquia, create online resources, chair global webinars, and record new podcasts, among many other ventures. Our new state-of-the art building provides the perfect location and facilities for such an ambitious research agenda.
The project focuses on developing theologies of hope in five areas: (1) Technology and AI; (2) Civics and Democracy; (3) Youth and Education; (4) Health and Medicine; (5) Entrepreneurship and Economics. Each area will bring together five fellows from around the globe to work, and adverts will soon be posted for these competitive fellowships.
In addition to these areas, and sixty years on from the publication of Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology of Hope, several major works of systematic, practical and contextual theologies of hope will be produced by a core team (including Dr. Joshua Mauldin, the Associate Director, and the two Senior Fellows).
CTI’s new Director, Dr. Tom Greggs, states: “I am thrilled to be able to start my time at CTI, leading such an exciting program of theological inquiry, and am grateful to the Templeton Foundation for the confidence they have placed in me in funding this project. We live in a context where despair is so evident. There is such a need for hope, and CTI has a role to fulfil. CTI was founded to bring about a theological renaissance, and a much-needed focus on hope has huge potential to build the kinds of spiritual capital desperately needed throughout the globe. Theological wisdom, in dialogue with the pressing issues of the day, has so much to offer for individuals, organisations and society at large.”
Retired Director, Dr. Will Storrar offered his congratulations: “My warmest congratulations to CTI’s incoming Director on the award of this major research grant, addressing among the most pressing public concerns of our time. Dr. Tom Greggs begins his distinguished leadership with momentum in research on global issues that will make a hopeful theological contribution to the common good.”
On behalf of the Board of Trustees, Board Chairman, Dr. Roy Lennox, joined in celebrating this success: “The Board of Trustees congratulates our new Director, Dr. Tom Greggs, on his stellar achievement in securing this major research grant. It bodes well for CTI’s exciting future under his gifted leadership.”