Sarah Irving-Stonebraker on the history of religious freedom

In this episode, Simon chats to Dr Sarah Irving-Stonebraker, who is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Western Sydney University. Sarah is a graduate of the University of Sydney and Cambridge University. She is an intellectual historian, whose work has until recently focused on the interplay between British imperialism, natural science, and Christian theology. Her first book was published in 2008 with Routledge and is entitled Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire. However, this episode focuses on Sarah's more recent research on the history of religious freedom, which was the topic of her 2020 Richard Johnson Lecture. We cover topics like the ancient Christian roots of religious freedom, the importance of conscience in the framing of modern human rights, the important role of Christian thought in the history of the concepts of rights, and the significance of history more generally. Sarah's personal website: https://www.stonebraker.com.au/ Watch Sarah's 2020 Richard Johnson Lecture here: https://www.publicchristianity.org/free-to-be-me-the-forgotten-story-of-religious-liberty/