About

My name is Richard Pratt.

I am passionate about thinking;  complicated questions don’t have simple answers.

I have a long-standing interest in Political Theology : I think all interpretations of the Bible have a political aspect and my PhD, available on this site, was an attempt to set out tests for valid/invalid interpretations;  it suggested that a good test was whether a particular interpretation was a good conversation.

At the moment I am particularly interested in Ordinary Theology, by which I mean the Theology of those without Theological training : the Church has spent a lot of time telling people what they should think but I want to reflect on what they do think.  There are obvious links to Implicit Theology, to Ethnography, and so on.  Within Ordinary Theology, I am thinking about a theology of Marriage : what couples think is happening when they get married.

Labels are less and less helpful, but I might use of myself the label “Liberal Catholic”.  So I am also working on A Liberal Catholic’s Manifesto.

I use Free and Open Source Software (Linux and LibreOffice, for example) and am grateful to all those who make this possible.  In the same spirit and by way of saying thank you, the material on this site is free to use providing that appropriate acknowledgement of my authorship is made and a similar condition passed on.

I am Archdeacon of West Cumberland, in the Diocese of Carlisle.  My email address for this site is richard@prattt.org  You are welcome to contact me about anything on this site, using that email address.