In his series of lectures, Demant provides a cultural analysis and addresses why humanity struggles with modernity and living in the contemporary world. Published in 2018, sixty-two years after the lectures were delivered, his ideas continue to prove influential for thinkers and theologians today.
Vigo Auguste Demant was born on 8 November 1893 in Newcastle, England. A theologian and social commentator, he is considered the founder of Christian sociology in England. Ordained Deacon in 1919 and Priest in 1920, he served curacies in Oxford and London before becoming a vicar in Surrey. In 1941, he was named Canon of St Paul’s, and in 1949, Canon of Christ Church and Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford, positions he held until in 1971.
Demant was a member of T.S. Eliot’s Christendom Group which published an Anglo-Catholic sociology journal. In 1950, he delivered a series of lectures entitled ‘Religion and the Decline of Capitalism’ on the BBC’s Third Programme. Notable works include The Just Price (1930), This Unemployment: Disaster or Opportunity? (1932), Christian Polity (1936), The Religious Prospect (1939), Theology of Society (1947), The Responsibility and Scope of Pastoral Theology Today (1950), Religion and the Decline of Capitalism (1952), Christian Sex Ethics (1963), The Idea of a Natural Order (1966), and Why the Christian Priesthood Is Male (1972).
