Theology and Human Flourishing is a forward-looking review of the life and work of a place with a gentle Christian ethos that has provided sanctuary and healing for many under the leadership of Elizabeth Baxter. The essays in this book, each written in their own distinctive style by experts from a range of relevant disciplines who are supporters of Holy Rood House, cover the variety of provision at Holy Rood House and its theoretical and theological underpinnings. They form parts of an evergreen flowering plant, with shoots, flowers, fruit and foliage above ground, and roots drawing nourishment from the fertile earth with Elizabeth’s inspirational leadership at the centre, “the heartwood”, embodying the vision and orchestrating the whole complex process. As with any vibrant organism or organization there is intertwining, entanglement and integration of the constituent elements.
The word 'belonging' tells us two things about what it means to be truly human. First, we need to belong, to recognize our need for each other. Secondly, we must recognize that we are longing people. We are restless, seeking wholeness. Elizabeth Baxter has provided an environment in which we can both belong and be longing. Many people have much to be grateful to her for. This book will help share her life's work with an even wider audience.
Jack Nicholls, former Bishop of Sheffield
This collection of essays is a fitting tribute to the remarkable legacy of Elizabeth Baxter. It offers profound reflections on the integration of theology, healing, and human flourishing, rooted in the unique community of Holy Rood House. The contributors draw on diverse perspectives to celebrate Elizabeth's pioneering work, making this a deeply enriching read for those invested in theology, pastoral care, and holistic healing. It is an inspiring resource for anyone seeking to connect faith with compassionate care.
John Swinton, Professor in Practical Theology and Pastoral Care, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
This book is a fitting tribute to Elizabeth Baxter's energy, compassion and courage and testament to her continuing legacy. The essays capture something of her vision for Holy Rood House in campaigning for greater inclusion in the church, fostering spirituality for human flourishing and promoting the creative arts in the service of health and healing. Above all, these essays are testament to Holy Rood as a place of generous, Christ-centred hospitality.
Elaine Graham FBA, Professor Emerita of Practical Theology at the University of Chester and a former Trustee of Holy Rood House
About the Contributors
Paul Avis is an honorary assistant priest in the Church of England, serving in the Diocese of Exeter, and a brother to Elizabeth Baxter. He was in parish ministry for 23 years before becoming General Secretary of the Council for Christian Unity. He is currently an honorary professor in the University of Edinburgh School of Divinity. Paul is Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed journal Ecclesiology and Editor of the monograph series Anglican-Episcopal Theology and History (both published by Brill). He has also edited The Oxford Handbook of Ecclesiology. Paul’s recent publications include Jesus and the Church: The Foundation of the Church in the New Testament and Modern Theology (2021), Reconciling Theology (2022), Theology and the Enlightenment: A Critical Enquiry into Enlightenment Theology and its Reception (2022), and Revelation and the Word of God (2024). He is a long-serving consultant to Holy Rood House.
Jonathan Baxter is an artist, peer-educator and curator. He is the second son to Elizabeth Baxter. Jonathan was formerly the Coordinator of the Centre for the Study of Theology and Health (2003–6), where he developed the Centre’s “ecology of health” framework. Jonathan also edited, and contributed to, the Centre’s first publication, Wounds that Heal: Theology, Imagination and Health (2007). Jonathan currently works as an embedded artist in residence at St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh, and as an artist in residence for Art Walk Projects (UK). Both projects address the climate and ecological crisis through practical interventions, peer-led programmes and exhibitions.
Christina Beardsley is a Church of England priest and a Visiting Scholar at Sarum College. Tina has been a parish priest, a healthcare chaplain and a lecturer in healthcare chaplaincy. She was the first transgender trustee of Changing Attitude, England (2007–14) and continues to work for the full inclusion of LGBTI+ people in the Church of England. She is the author of Unutterable Love: the Passionate Life and Preaching of F. W. Robertson (2009), and has co-edited/authored a trilogy of books about trans people and the church: This is my Body: Hearing the Theology of Transgender Christians (2016); Transfaith: A Transgender Pastoral Resource (2018); and Trans Affirming Churches: How to Celebrate Gender-variant People and their Loved Ones (2020). Now retired, she assists in London parishes, north and south of the Thames, and continues to write and research.
Jan Berry is a feminist theologian and writer, offering a ministry of spiritual accompaniment, and leading quiet days and retreats. She is a retired minister of the United Reformed Church, who was involved in theological education for 20 years at Luther King Centre in Manchester; and also served for three years as the half-time Director of the Centre for the Study of Theology and Health at Holy Rood House, Thirsk. She writes liturgies, poetry and hymns and has published a collection of her own hymns, prayers and poems in her book Naming God. Much of her writing has been included in various anthologies produced by the Iona Community. She is also one of the editors (along with Andrew Pratt) of Hymns of Hope and Healing (published by Stainer & Bell) which was the result of the Hymns for Healing Project at Holy Rood House.
June Boyce-Tillman is an international performer, composer, hymn writer and keynote speaker. She is an Emerita Professor of Applied Music at Winchester University UK, and an Extra-ordinary Professor at North West University, South Africa. Her large-scale works for cathedrals involve professional musicians, community choirs, people with disabilities and school children. She is editing the series on Music and Spirituality for Peter Lang which includes her autobiography, Freedom Song. She founded MSW—Music, Spirituality and Wellbeing—an international network sharing expertise and experience in this area. She is an Anglican priest serving All Saints, Tooting.
Christopher C. H. Cook is Emeritus Professor in the Institute for Medical Humanities at Durham University, Honorary Chaplain for Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust, and a consultant to Holy Rood House. From 1997 to 2003, he was Professor of the Psychiatry of Alcohol Misuse at the University of Kent. He was ordained as an Anglican priest in 2001. Chris was Professor of Spirituality, Theology & Health in the Department of Theology and Religion, and Director of the Centre for Spirituality, Theology & Health, at Durham University from 2012–22. He has twice been Chair of the Spirituality & Psychiatry Special Interest Group at the Royal College of Psychiatrists and was Co-Chair of the Section on Religion & Spirituality at the World Psychiatric Association from 2022–3. His books include Hearing Voices, Demonic and Divine (2018), Christians Hearing Voices (2020), and (as lead editor) Spirituality and Psychiatry, second edition (2023).
Jane Craske is a Methodist minister and theological educator. She has served in Methodist Circuit appointments in London, Manchester, Leeds and Lowestoft, and also as a tutor in theological education in Manchester and in her current appointment as Director of Methodist Formation at the Queen’s Foundation in Birmingham. She has research interests in feminist approaches to doctrine and in Methodist studies. Her most recent publication was Doing Theology in the Tradition of the Wesleys (2020).
Andrew De Smet is an Anglican priest, counsellor/psychotherapist, spiritual accompanier, trainer and mediator based in East Yorkshire. Until April 2024, he was Pastoral Care Adviser in the Diocese of York. As a priest he has ministered in urban, small town and rural parishes and run a retreat centre. He has published articles on the relationship between spiritual direction and counselling, as well as its role in matters such as forgiveness and bullying. Andrew facilitates a supervision group for spiritual directors and chaplains at Holy Rood House and is one of their consultants. He also enjoys painting icons and landscapes, sketching and being in the countryside.
David Gee is an activist and writer, and a consultant with Holy Rood House. His latest book is Hope’s Work: Facing the Future in an Age of Crises (2022). He lives in Oxford on a narrowboat, Promise.
David Ibrahim is a psychiatry trainee in the second year of training at Northamptonshire NHS Foundation Trust. He is a trainee representative on the executive committee of the Spirituality and Psychiatry Special Interest Group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He has a long-standing interest in the intersection of spirituality and mental health that started from his practice in Egypt in the field of addiction psychiatry and outpatient clinics prior to his move to the UK. David has given lectures on the topic of spirituality and mental health to the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Youth Group in 2022 and the Emerging Peacemakers Forum, second edition, in Geneva in 2023.
David is a graduate from the Emerging Peacemakers Forum that was held in Cambridge in collaboration with Rose Castle Foundation and the Muslim Council of Elders as a representative of the Coptic Orthodox Church. This has helped grow his interest in interfaith and intercultural dialogue and the effect of different faiths on mental health.
Alison Jasper was a teacher of Religious Education in a variety of English secondary schools before she received her PhD from Glasgow University for a thesis on feminist biblical hermeneutics and took up an academic position teaching Religion in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Stirling University. Before her retirement in 2019, she was instrumental in establishing a master’s level programme in gender studies to which she contributed for a number of years as lecturer and tutor. She has published widely on topics relating to feminist biblical hermeneutics, feminist theology and feminist theory. Since retiring she has been an honorary research fellow in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Stirling and has continued participating in research, writing and some teaching at master’s level.
As a member of the Scottish Episcopal Church, she has served on both its Doctrine and its Liturgy Committees. In 2021 she headed up a small group that organized an online conference on gender and liturgy, Responding to the Sacred: Conversations between Liturgy and Gender. In 2023, the team organized a second online conference under the title of Responding to the Sacred: Inclusive Liturgies, Porous Walls. She is hoping to organize a follow-up event. She has visited Holy Rood House and Hilda House on many occasions, acting as a theological consultant, and, in 2022, participated in the annual Summer School, giving an address entitled, “A theology of hope for partial survival and flourishing in a damaged world”.
David Jasper is Emeritus Professor at the University of Glasgow, where he was for many years Professor of Theology and Literature. He has also taught in universities in China, Australia and the USA. He holds degrees from the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Durham and Uppsala. He has been an Anglican priest for almost 50 years. For most of that time, he has been licensed within the Scottish Episcopal Church and has served in a number of charges in south Glasgow during his years of teaching at the University. He was Canon Theologian of St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow from 2017–23. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His recent books include Heaven in Ordinary: Poetry and Religion in a Secular Age (2018) and (with Jeremy Smith) Reinventing Medieval Liturgy in Victorian England (2023).
Jenny Kartupelis started her career in public relations, establishing two consultancies in Cambridge, where she was involved the growth of the ‘Silicon Fen’ area, working with some of the leading technology businesses and their support services. In 1998 she was invited by faith leaders to help set up a regional multifaith body and for her work as its director, she was made an MBE. She is also a Director of the company Faith in Society Ltd., which advises on co-operative work between faith groups, and with public sector bodies.
Since 2014, Jenny has given much of her time to researching and writing on the care of older people, being given access to visit and interview in a wide variety of charitable, private and Local Authority care settings. Her work has resulted in two published books (2018 and 2021) about the theory and practice of relational care, a concept which she has developed over the last ten years. Her work in this respect has been the subject of an Open University research project into the conditions that promote its benefits, the findings of which were launched in 2023. Jenny is a Visiting Fellow at The Open University and is now working with its academic team to promote the value and implementation of relational care across the sector through consultation, publicity and policy engagement.
Jenny lives in the Peak District with her husband Trevor, with whom she enjoys walking and travelling; and her labradoodle Joy, who shares her enthusiasm for open water swimming.
Helen L. Leathard is Professor Emerita of Healing Science and Pharmacology at the University of Cumbria, Honorary Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society, and Honorary Associate Priest with Permission to Officiate in Blackburn Diocese. She has been involved with Holy Rood House for more than 25 years, originally as a consultant to the Centre for the Study of Theology and Health and then more generally. After researching and teaching in London medical schools, she moved back to her northern roots, for family reasons, in 1992. At St Martin’s College, Lancaster, she taught biomedical sciences to nurses and other healthcare professionals, and evolved her research interests to explore holistic health and Christian spiritual healing, supported by taking an MA in Theology and synergizing with her nascent Anglican Reader Ministry. Also, as Director of the Graduate School, she led a generic PhD programme (under the auspices of Lancaster University) as the college prepared for university status. As a long-standing member of the Council of the Guild of St Raphael, she edited their journal, Chrism, from 2009 to 2015, developing their publishing collaboration with Holy Rood House. She helped steer the reuniting of that Guild with the Guild of Health, serving as a trustee until 2020.
David McDonald qualified as a medical practitioner in 1969 and has worked as a consultant psychiatrist for over 40 years in adult forensic and child and adolescent mental health services, and as an analytic and systemic psychotherapist for individuals, groups and families. He has also been involved in training and advising clergy and pastoral teams in mental health disorders relevant to the healing and deliverance ministries of the church. He was a co-author of Deliverance (ed. M Perry, 1996), and a member of the House of Bishops’ Working Party publishing the book A Time to Heal (2000). His clinical work, embracing a wide diversity of individuals and cultures, led him to study for an MA degree in Theology and Interreligious Dialogue in 2004. He is currently Chair of Trustees to the Centre for Health and Pastoral Care at Holy Rood House, and a trustee to the Guild of Health and St Raphael.
John Pritchard is a retired Bishop of Oxford and author of many books on prayer, apologetics and the Christian journey. He previously served as Bishop of Jarrow, Archdeacon of Canterbury, and Warden of Cranmer Hall, Durham, after enjoying parish ministry in Birmingham and Taunton. He is married with two daughters and five grandchildren and is a theological adviser to Holy Rood House.
Nicola Slee is Professorial Research Fellow at the Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education, Professor of Feminist Practical Theology at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Visiting Professor at the University of Chester and a Visiting Scholar at Sarum College. She has published widely over four decades in the fields of feminist theology and liturgy, practical theology, poetry and spirituality, including Praying Like a Woman (2004), Fragments for Fractured Times: What Feminist Practical Theology Brings to the Table (2020) and Abba Amma: Improvisations on the Lord’s Prayer (2021). She is an experienced leader of retreats, writing workshops and creative events, enjoying working collaboratively with others (including a number of those associated with Holy Rood House). She is also a spiritual accompanist, as well as an experienced supervisor and examiner of doctoral research, who has worked internationally as well as widely in the UK. She is honoured to be a Patron of Holy Rood House, as well as a Vice-President of Women and the Church (WATCH).
Wendy Wilby was ordained deacon in 1990, followed, in 1994, by ordination to priesthood, to which she had felt called for well over 30 years. After a number of diverse parish ministries and chaplaincies, Wendy was the first woman Canon Residentiary to come into the Bristol Cathedral Chapter in 2007. There she served as Precentor, thus employing both her musical gifts and skills, developed at the University of Oxford and the Royal College of Music, and her passion and expertise for liturgy. In addition, she also took over the role of Dean of Women’s Ministry for Bristol Diocese in June 2011, eventually becoming Chair of the National Association of Diocesan Advisers in Women’s Ministry. NADAWM aims to be a resource to the Church of England, advising and supporting the National Church, Diocesan Senior Staff and women in ministry on a range of issues. The organization aims to make the Church of England a place where women can flourish in their calling. Wendy has served as a trustee of Holy Rood House, including as Vice-Chair, for several years.
Elaine Wisdom holds BA Hons. Fine Art; Post Grad. Dip. Art Psychotherapy; Dip. Social Studies; and Dip. Pastoral Theology. She has a mixed denominational background, having been baptized into the Methodist Church, confirmed in the Church of England, and joined the Roman Catholic Church in her mid-twenties. She spent some years in a Roman Catholic religious order specializing in the education of girls, during which she completed several theological courses in Dublin and Heythrop College in London. She joined the community at Holy Rood as a residential member in 1996, retraining in Art Therapy while setting up the Creative Arts space at Juliet House (then Thorpe House). She now lives on the edge of the North York Moors and coast and continues her association with Holy Rood as a volunteer since retiring from her art therapy role in 2018. She also now serves as a consultant to Holy Rood House.
