Demant

VIGO AUGUSTE DEMANT (1893 - 1983)

The theologian and social critic was born in Newcastle, the son of a professional linguist and translator who had a language school in the city. His father was an Unitarian and a follower of Auguste Comte. After school in Newcastle, Demant spent some time at the Sorbonne before returning to the North East to study engineering at Armstrong College. After a meeting with Charles Gore, Demant converted to Anglo-Catholicism and was ordained priest in 1920. He became director of research for the Christian Social Council, producing reports such as The Miners' Distress and the Coal Problem (1929), The Just Price (1930) and This Unemployment: Disaster or Opportunity? In due course Demant became Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford.

Demant was closely connected with the journal Christendom from 1931 to 1950. His grasp of a wide range of subjects and languages was unusual in the Church of England, and he helped to introduce the work of Berdyaev, Maritain and Kirkegaard to Anglican circles. Demant's conviction that an incarnational theology cannot be separated from the condition of human beings in society, and that the problems of society are structural rather than individual, can be seen in the books he wrote in his London years: God, Man and Society (1933), Theology of Society (1947) and one of the most influential Religion and the Decline of Capitalism, broadcast in the 1950s and published in 1952.

An abiding interest of Demant's was the authorship of the works of Shakespeare. Following J.T. Looney (q.v.) he urged the claims of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, even travelling to the USA to lecture on the subject.

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
VIGO AUGUSTE DEMANT (1893 - 1983) The theologian and social critic was born in Newcastle, the son of a professional linguist and translator who had a language school in the city. His father was an Unitarian and a follower of Auguste Comte. After school in Newcastle, Demant spent some time at the Sorbonne before returning to the North East to study engineering at Armstrong College. After a meeting with Charles Gore, Demant converted to Anglo-Catholicism and was ordained priest in 1920. He became director of research for the Christian Social Council, producing reports such as The Miners' Distress and the Coal Problem (1929), The Just Price (1930) and This Unemployment: Disaster or Opportunity? In due course Demant became Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford. Demant was closely connected with the journal Christendom from 1931 to 1950. His grasp of a wide range of subjects and languages was unusual in the Church of England, and he helped to introduce the work of Berdyaev, Maritain and Kirkegaard to Anglican circles. Demant's conviction that an incarnational theology cannot be separated from the condition of human beings in society, and that the problems of society are structural rather than individual, can be seen in the books he wrote in his London years: God, Man and Society (1933), Theology of Society (1947) and one of the most influential Religion and the Decline of Capitalism, broadcast in the 1950s and published in 1952. An abiding interest of Demant's was the authorship of the works of Shakespeare. Following J.T. Looney (q.v.) he urged the claims of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, even travelling to the USA to lecture on the subject.
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