John Hull Research Articles

Reimagining ecclesia domestica following a time of pandemic: the John Hull Memorial Lecture, 2023

ABSTRACT The Second Vatican Council helpfully reaffirmed the partnership among three primary agencies in the Christian education and the Christian formation of the young: school, church, and home. The primacy among these three agencies may emerge differently in different social contexts. The argument of the present paper is two-fold. First, it is argued that John Hull was the key influence during the 1970s in trying to shift the primary focus for the Church of England from the school to the local congregation. Second, it is argued that post-pandemic, the primary focus now needs shifting from the local congregation to the home, to the ecclesia domestica.

Encountering our own whiteness: An autoethnographic conversation on the experience of putting together a journal issue around mission, race and colonialism

ABSTRACT This article emerged out of a debrief as a result of putting together a journal issue on race, mission, and colonialism. We found this to be a challenging, confronting, and learning experience where we encountered our whiteness, sometimes in unexpected ways. We were able to uncover this by a series of conversations during which we discovered new and troubling insights about the process which had made us deeply uncomfortable. The autoethnographic conversations really did provide a place for moments of disclosure or epiphanic moments as we began to unpick and analyse our own reactions, responses, and unease. These began to provide insights around systemic racism, structures of whiteness, tools of whiteness, our own white fragility and complicity. Drawing on scholars such as Willie James Jennings, bell hooks, John Hull, and Anthony Reddie helped us to deepen our reflection and begin to understand how we are enmeshed in a system of whiteness for which we have to take responsibility. Jennings’ metaphor of mastery was particularly helpful and revealing as we found ourselves so often pushed in this direction. This personal story of putting together a journal became a larger canvas for us to reflect more widely on systemic injustice of which we are all a part and how we can become stuck in it. We learned that we need to own this and to be more intentional in our efforts to dismantle whiteness.

A pedagogy of resistance and Scouse other-ness

ABSTRACT Both within and beyond the Church, much current pedagogical methodology and practice encourages students to minimise and overcome, rather than embrace and leverage, disruptive challenges in learning, resulting in exclusion and division. In drawing connections with her own experiences navigating a Scouse learning identity and ‘The centrality of resistance’ (Hull, J. 1999. “Adult Religious Faith: Some Problems of Definition, of Research and of Education.” Modern Believing 40 (4): 39–48 43) in the late Prof. John Hull’s (University of Birmingham/Queen’s Foundation) pedagogy of transformatory Christian adult learning, the author offers an alternative to this. Hull’s pedagogy of resistance replaces a conception of learning built on ‘offering additional knowledge … to be added to the previous stock of knowledge’ (Hull, J. 1997. “Karl Marx on Capital: Some Implications for Christian Adult Education.” Modern Believing 38 (1): 22–31, 29) with a change of posture to potential learning obstacles. This, Hull claims, results in the re-definition of essential pedagogical traits and patterns. The article concludes with two examples of Scouse women whose own learning illustrates how the major themes of a pedagogy of resistance practically function.

The Hull Grundy collection in the Museum of Medicine and Health, University of Manchester

Abstract Anne Hull Grundy and her husband, John, were prolific antique collectors, remembered for their generous donations of fine and decorative arts to several major museums. Less well known is their collection of over 200 items broadly related to medical topics and donated to the University of Manchester Museum of Medicine and Health (mmh) between 1978 and 1983. The donation includes items of equipment in silver, a collection of commemorative medals and a set of framed prints, all linked to medicine and medical history. This paper describes the Hull Grundy collection and its place in the history of the museum. Short biographical sketches of Anne and John Hull Grundy and a brief history of the mmh, are followed by an account of the artefacts in the collection. The role of donors and donations in defining the nature of a ‘medical history museum’, and its potential use for social history and the medical humanities are also discussed.

What Prevents Christians from Learning to Be Good?

ABSTRACT This article riffs on the title of John Hull's classic work, What prevents Christian adults from learning?, in which he identifies the pathology of the ‘unlearning religious person’ and the defences that individuals and churches construct to avoid the pain of Christian cognitive learning. Learning Chrisitan values and virtues is rather different, but can still be a pain – and a much more potent and personal one. The paper explores some of the problems and possibiliteis, both for disciples and ministers, of ‘learning the Christian character’.

Pre-individual affects: Gilbert Simondon and the individuation of relation

This article develops the theoretical relationship between affect and the pre-individual. It does so to respond to a recent tendency to posit affect as vague form of relationality exceeding the individual. Instead, the article outlines how affect, as a concept that draws upon a certain Deleuze–Spinozian line of thought, is at least as much a process corresponding to virtuality and potentiality as it is one that pertains to embodied individuals. Instructing this move is the writing of Gilbert Simondon, a philosopher who conceptualises affect in terms of pre-individual potentials exceeding the individual. Engaging with Simondon’s conceptualisation of individuation and perception as a way to trace the importance of these pre-individual processes, affect is understood more precisely as a potentialised orientation of non-individuated relationality. More significantly, though, the article argues that Simondon’s notion of the pre-individual can be used to develop an ontogenetic logic of affect, through which thought is directed towards processes of individuation exceeding the individual but that, nevertheless, modify the genesis of affection, perception and action – an argument I make tangible through a brief discussion of John Hull’s writing on sense and perceptual experience. An ontogenetic logic of affect, I suggest, demands that the thought schemas through which social scientists evaluate processes of affect be open to these pre-individual potentials that orientate perceptive experience.

The Use of Derivatives to Hedge Market Risk in Corporate Financing

In this tutorial article, the strategies available to hedge market risks arising from different financing instruments are explained. Financial derivatives, whether futures or options have been widely applied in companies to mitigate or eliminate potential losses due to the uncertainty in interest or foreign exchange currency rates. However, the mathematical complexity of derivatives has sometimes been a barrier to non-highly specialised financial managers in understanding their foundations, advantages and ways to apply them in exposure reduction strategies. To address this issue, a practical approach to the use of derivatives is presented in this article. The swap valuation concepts and foundations of pricing are dealt with in the text, but their formal valuation techniques are described separately in the appendices. Explanations will be provided to calculate option premiums with the extensively used and free downloadable software of John Hull (Derivagem), but the mathematics involving the models used in option valuation will not be shown as they are outside the scope of this paper.

Practical Applications of From Derivatives to Mega-Funds: An Interview with John Hull

<b>John Hull</b>, the Maple Financial Professor of Derivatives and Risk Management at the <b>Rotman School of Management</b> at the <b>University of Toronto</b>, is very well known in the field of quantitative finance. He has published dozens of papers and several books, including the classic <b><i>Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives</i></b>, which is widely used in university classrooms and trading rooms around the world. Hull’s work spans a wide range of topics, including interest rates, credit derivatives, volatility and risk management. He will be speaking at the <b>Global Derivatives Trading &amp; Risk Management Conference</b> and is studying new areas of securitization, as he explained to <b>Institutional Investor Journals</b> in this pre-conference interview.

Practical Applications of From Derivatives to Mega-Funds:An Interview with John HullFrom Derivatives to Mega-Funds:An Interview with John HullJohn Hull

Practical Applications of From Derivatives to Mega-Funds:<i>An Interview with John Hull</i>From Derivatives to Mega-Funds:<i>An Interview with John Hull</i>John Hull

Practical Applications of From Derivatives to Mega-Funds:An Interview with John HullFrom Derivatives to Mega-Funds:An Interview with John HullJohn Hull

Practical Applications of From Derivatives to Mega-Funds:<i>An Interview with John Hull</i>From Derivatives to Mega-Funds:<i>An Interview with John Hull</i>John Hull

Professor John Hull: theologian, educationist, mentor and friend

Professor John Hull: theologian, educationist, mentor and friend

Christianity, John M Hull and notions of ability, disability and education

In his editorial, Simon reflects on the significance of the work of Professor John Hull, who is a giant amongst academics working in the theology of disability. John was my main supervisor for my doctoral studies when I was working on developing an evangelical theology of religious education for British schools. He was a remarkable tutor with whom I enjoyed the most stimulating debates. I disagreed with his basic position and critiqued that in my thesis, but was heavily influenced by his ideas and the challenges he presented me with. His book, What Prevents Christian Adults from Learning?, first published in 1985, is still, in my opinion, one of the most important books that I have read on Christian learning. However, as Simon too acknowledges, it was John’s personal qualities that had the most impact. I started as his doctoral student not long after he finally lost his sight in 1983 in the middle years of a distinguished academic career. Such a happening would cause many to give up. Not John. Up to the moment of his death in the early hours of 28 July 2015, he was still producing ground-breaking work. It is fitting that this special issue is dedicated to him

Mediatising childhood religion: the BBC, John G. Williams and collective worship for schools in England, 1940–1975

As part of its stated mission to Christianise Britain, from its earliest years the BBC broadcast religious programmes intended for a child audience. Directed at sites domestic and educational, these broadcasts constituted a means of the mediatisation of religion for children. This paper explores the work of the pioneer children’s religious broadcaster John G. Williams, the nature and character of childhood religion and its nurture espoused by him whilst at the BBC, and as an educationist in the years following the 1944 Education Act. Setting a close reading of Williams’ views on childhood religion and school worship alongside those of a later critique, from the religious educationist John Hull in his School Worship: An Obituary (1975), this article argues that the differences between these two religious educators illustrate fracture lines occurring between religious education in the home, school and broadcast spaces in the long 1960s. Additionally, the historical evidence presented here provides a nuanced understanding of mediatisation as a process, indicating that other social processes in any national context, for example de-Christianisation in the English one, disrupt media logic. Finally, further research is called for on the historical intersections of religious education, and schools and religious broadcasting, as well as the more recent effects of broadcast collective worship in mediatising religion for children.

The FVA Debate: In Theory and Practice

In a recent paper John Hull and Alan White have argued that funding cost adjustments should not be included in derivatives pricing, which has triggered a heated debate. Their arguments share some ideas that we have published previously and the purpose of this note is intended to help clarify some of the debate, relate the note of Hull and White to our previous papers on the topic and connect some theoretical lines of argument with some practical considerations.

Christianity, Sport and Disability: A Case Study of the Role of Long-Distance Running in the Life of a Father and his Son who is Congenitally Blind and has Profound Intellectual Disabilities

The aim of this qualitative case study was to explore the role of sport (longdistance running) in the lives of a father and his son who is congenitally blind and has profound intellectual disabilities. Drawing on the works of Jean Vanier, Stanley Hauerwas, Henri Nouwen and John Hull, the major themes explored are relational and religious trust, suffering, sacrificial love, embodiment and blindness. A series of one-to-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with the father (and mother) concerned and the resultant transcripts analysed using thematic content analysis. Locating the lived experiences of the interview respondents at the centre of the analysis, findings demonstrate that sport is an invaluable means of physical, psychological and spiritual development which has the potential to act as a "counter-narrative" and "prophetic incarnational message" to the commercialized world of sport.

Another Blinding Documentary on Channel 4?

David Bradford is a 28-year-old freelance writer who is gradually losing his sight as a result of the genetic condition retinitis pigmentosa. He was recently approached by Channel 4 about the prospect of making a television documentary on the subject of his sight loss. In weighing up this proposition, David sought the opinion of the blind academic, John Hull. This is a transcript of the emails between David and John, in which they discuss the difficulties of dealing with blindness in a visual medium. Specifically, they share their frustration at the documentary maker’s insistence on representing blindness as a condition of deprivation in which the subject is compelled to seek solace from a nostalgic celebration of sight rather than exploring the phenomenology of blindness itself.

Heavenly merchandize: how religion shaped commerce in Puritan America

Heavenly Merchandize offers a critical reexamination of religion's role in the creation of a market economy in early America. Focusing on the economic culture of New England, it views commerce through the eyes of four generations of Boston merchants, drawing upon their personal letters, diaries, business records, and sermon notes to reveal how merchants built a modern form of exchange out of profound transitions in the puritan understanding of discipline, providence, and the meaning of New England. Mark Valeri traces the careers of men like Robert Keayne, a London immigrant punished by his church for aggressive business practices; John Hull, a silversmith-turned-trader who helped to establish commercial networks in the West Indies; and Hugh Hall, one of New England's first slave traders. He explores how Boston ministers reconstituted their moral languages over the course of a century, from a scriptural discourse against many market practices to a providential worldview that justified England's commercial hegemony and legitimated the market as a divine construct. Valeri moves beyond simplistic readings that reduce commercial activity to secular mind-sets, and refutes the popular notion of an inherent affinity between puritanism and capitalism. He shows how changing ideas about what it meant to be pious and puritan informed the business practices of Boston's merchants, who filled their private notebooks with meditations on scripture and the natural order, founded and led churches, and inscribed spiritual reflections in their letters and diaries. Unprecedented in scope and rich with insights, Heavenly Merchandize illuminates the history behind the continuing American dilemma over morality and the marketplace.

An alternative reading of modern religious education in England and Wales

This paper challenges the overly positive image of the contribution made by religious education in England and Wales to the attainment of liberal educational aims that was recently presented in this journal, in the context of a review symposium on a festschrift celebrating the work and achievements of the influential British religious educator, Professor John Hull. An alternative reading is pursued that provides a more accurate and fair interpretation of the evidence. There is a discussion of the ideological character of British religious education and a consideration of the reasons why assertions of its ‘success’ by religious educators are currently so vocal. Critical attention is focused on two particular issues over which the influence of Hull on contemporary policy and practice is acknowledged: that of his dismissal of the accusation that multi‐faith religious education confuses pupils, and that of current strategies in religious education to promote inter‐religious and intercultural understanding.

The Rise of Pension Fund Capitalism in Europe: An Unseen Revolution?

The pension funds have become America's new ‘tycoons’ – surely the most unlikely masters any society ever had. They have attained this position without any struggle, any crisis, any major ‘problems...

John Hull and the money culture

John Hull's recent educational writings have included several on what he calls the ‘money culture’. This is analysed and criticised in this article. Hull offers a Marxist and a neo‐Marxist account of the role of money in western societies utilising the labour theory of value, false consciousness and the materialist interpretation of history. It is contended here that the labour theory of value is fallacious and that false consciousness therefore lacks significant content: the problematic notion of ideology needs putting on a firm foundation, so teachers can see how best to liberate their student from a bogus spirituality. The materialist interpretation of history is held to be valuable, but not to the extent of invalidating, for example, past Christian hymns for present use. The surface manifestations of the money culture comprise legitimate areas of concern in education, such as popular materialism and economic competition on a world scale. These, it will be argued, can be treated in education, without assuming insecure Marxist foundations. Such areas of concern may properly be approached, in schools and with adults, by the impartial presentation of controversial issues and careful attention to moral values of the world's religious traditions.