Summing up 2025: Interview with Dr. James Morris
Our last piece for this year—and a very special one!—is an interview with the first Editor-in-Chief for the Hub.
How did you envision PTH from the start? What was your compass to decide where to lead or what to do?
I got involved with Practical Theology Hub after BIAPT’s 2021 annual conference “Practical Theology as Ecotheology.” If I remember correctly, I had heard Owen Griffiths talk about the idea at the conference, and seeing the call for volunteers, I thought it was something that I could contribute to.
I think my vision of PTH was very much mediated by Owen—it was going to be a publication that allowed readers and contributors to cross different social and religious boundaries. It would carry pieces from across different religious traditions and would provide a space that would allow academics, clergy, practitioners, and students to share their work and interact. I saw these as analogous with some of the goals of another publication that I have long been engaged with called The Digital Orientalist (ISSN: 2772-8374), and indeed I thought that I might be able to take the lessons that I have learnt from that project and apply them to PTH. There were other influences as well. For example, Nigel Pegram of Alphacrucis University College encouraged adopting certain stylistic standards to be used across the publication.
In other words, my overall approach then wasn’t very original. I saw myself as having a certain brief mediated by Owen, believed that I could use my experience elsewhere to benefit the project, and was learning things from other people who were helping out with PTH. There were also limitations imposed by the website, my web design skills, and so on. Where I think I brought some of my own flavour was trying to encourage the publication of things by authors outside of the UK or from outside of Christian religious traditions. I was particularly pleased that I was able to organize a few articles about Shinto. Of course, other team members such as Shruti Dixit and Patricia Palazzo Tsai were a great help in this area.
What would you say is the heart—the central point—of PTH?
I think the central point of PTH is to attempt to provide a meeting place for academics, clerics, practitioners, and students, those of different traditions, and people who wish to interact with the BIAPT community from outside of the UK. Of course, I also think that what is at the heart of PTH can change, so we will have to see how the platform develops in the future.
What do you think are the contributions PTH has made so far?
I think the main contribution that PTH has made so far is greater inclusivity of non-Christian voices into BIAPT spaces. There have been a whole range of articles on Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Shinto, and perhaps from other traditions too. I think this is really valuable, and I would like to see how BIAPT as a whole can capitalize on this.
I also think that the inclusion contributions from outside of the UK have been really important. I was very proud that one of our first articles focused on Christianity in Japan, and it is a joy to see ongoing publications on Christianity in Africa, for example.
Of course, none of this means that voices from within the UK are excluded. I think that the platform has created a good balance in terms of its content.
What advice could you give to readers—scholars or non-scholars alike—in terms of being open to the other and engaging with different ideas, religious traditions, or even going out of their comfort zone in terms of Practical Theology?
This is a difficult question for me, since although I have done theology, I often view myself primarily as a historian. In fact, I often find myself uncomfortable, particularly when it comes to doing practical theology myself, but perhaps discomfort is ok. When it comes to engaging with different ideas and traditions, I think that placing our humanity or perhaps other ideals such as friendship at the centre is key.
How do you envision PTH in the future?
I think that my involvement with PTH has always been grounded in the organizational rather than theological. As such, I fear I have a very sterile vision of the future. Dependent on growing readership and growing authorship, I would like to see an increase in the number of publications. It would be fantastic, for example, if PTH could get to a place where it was publishing articles on a weekly basis. Once resources allow, I would also like to see the publication become more accessible. I would also like to see greater integration into the BIAPT organization. From the outside at least, it often seems that PTH is a sort of forgotten appendage—there are, for example, very few references to PTH on BIAPT’s website. This is unfortunate since PTH ought to be acting as a forum that encourages BIAPT to take greater efforts to include and engage with other traditions, geographic spaces, and peoples.
We thank our readers and contributors for keeping this project alive! We are grateful for 2025 and looking forward to what 2026 brings. If you can, please donate or support PTH in whatever way you can.
© Patricia Palazzo Tsai, James H. Morris, 2025.
This work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
Cover Image: Photo by Patricia Palazzo Tsai.
Patricia Palazzo Tsai teaches at the Buddhist Theology undergraduate program from Instituto Pramāṇa, in Valinhos, and is also Legal Director of the Buddha-Dharma Association in Brazil (http://buda.org.br). She is a Buddhist practitioner from Mahāyāna Geluk tradition. She is a member of the Scholars at The Peripheries research group from University of St. Andrews (coordinated by Prof. Mario I. Aguilar), and also a member of Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women (and also member of the Sakyadhita Sao Paulo chapter). She researches Mahāyāna Buddhism, Buddhist Ethics, and Interreligious Dialogue. She tweets as @PalazzoTsai.
James Harry Morris MTheol, PhD, FRAS is an Assistant Professor at Waseda University. He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of Practical Theology Hub. His research interests are centred on religious history in East Asia and interfaith dialogue.
