ABSTRACT
This mostly biographical introduction reconstructs the details of the life and work of Canon Howard E. Root (1926–2007) with reference to numerous archives, including those of the Root family. A significant figure in the recent history of British Christianity, Root became Chaplain of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1954, a position which he held through 1956 when he became Dean of the same. He then became Lecturer in Divinity, University of Cambridge, in 1957. In that same year, he was elected Wilde Lecturer in Natural and Comparative Religion (1957–60) at the University of Oxford. It was Root who suggested to Alec Vidler that they might convene a small group to discuss the state of Anglican theology, a conversation that resulted in the publication of Soundings, a key text in the history of 1960s Cambridge radicalism. Root was then invited to observe the Second Vatican Council. He was appointed first and last Professor of Theology at the University of Southampton, and eventually served as Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome. Root’s 1972 Bampton lectures, ‘The Limits of Radicalism’, are considered with this biographical context in mind before a final section considers Root’s contemporary relevance in relation to David Brown.
