Matthew Andersen

DPhil Student

Brasenose College

Research Topic

'A Middle Way Between Pessimism and Utopia: A Genealogy of Christian Realism c1933 - 1968'.

I am interested in the relationship between political thought and religious ideas in the mid-twentieth century, particularly within the debates concerning social, political and international thought in the Anglophone world. My project can broadly be regarded as an intervention in the intellectual history of postwar Anglo-American liberalism. I am working on a genealogy of the idea known as 'Christian realism' which can be understood as the attempt by theologians and political philosophers to secularise some of the core presuppositions of Jewish and Christian theology to reinvent social and political liberalism intellectually. The heart of this study lies in the work and thought of the American theologian and public intellectual Reinhold Niebuhr and the English historian Herbert Butterfield. My work seeks to place Christian realist discourse within its broader context of the crisis of democracy and Anglo-American liberalism from the interwar years to the early Cold War, as well as to emphasise the interconnectedness between Cold War liberalism and political theology.

Academic Background

2018 - 2021: BA in History, Christ Church, Oxford. (First Class)
2021 - 2022: MSt in Intellectual History, Christ Church Oxford.
2022 - 2025: DPhil in History, Brasenose College, Oxford.

Academic Honours

2019 - Christ Church, Academic Scholarship
2021 - Christ Church, Final Honours School Book Prize
2021 - Wylie Thesis Prize for best Undergraduate Dissertation in American History
2021 - Dixon Scholarship for continued study at Christ Church