Jonathan Chaplin

About Me

Jonathan Chaplin is a specialist in Christian political thought, understood broadly to include political philosophy in various Christian traditions (especially Reformed, Catholic and Evangelical), political theology and public theology. His work has centred on different dimensions of how the modern state might justly respond to complex and challenging expressions of societal plurality. He has published on notions of the state, civil society, justice, liberal democracy, religious public reasoning, cultural and religious pluralism, multiculturalism, and, recently, on environmental political theology. His most recent book (co-edited with Gary Wilton) is God and the EU: Faith in the European Project (Routledge 2016). He is author of Herman Dooyeweerd: Christian Philosopher of State and Civil Society (University of Notre Dame 2011) and is currently working on a book entitled Faith in Democracy? Towards a Post-secularist Settlement.

Jonathan received a BA (MA) from Oxford University in 1978, an MPhil from ICS in 1983, and a PhD from London School of Economics and Political Science in 1993. He taught at four institutions in the UK prior to his appointment as Associate Professor of Political Theory at ICS, a post he held from 1999 to 2006. From 2004-6 he was also first holder of the Dooyeweerd Chair in Social and Political Philosophy, and Adjunct Faculty at TST from 2002-7. In 2006 he became first Director of the Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics, based at Tyndale House, Cambridge. In 2007 he was appointed external member of the Cambridge University Divinity Faculty, and from 2007-2011 served as Visiting Lecturer in Social and Political Philosophy at the VU Universiteit, Amsterdam. He held a William Evans Fellowship at the Centre for Theology and Public Issues, University of Otago, summer 2013. He was appointed a Senior Fellow of Cardus in 2006 and has served terms as Chair of the Public Justice Resource Centre, member of the Social Action Committee of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and member of the Theology and Public Affairs Commission of the UK Evangelical Alliance.