The essays in this volume emerged from a special colloquium held in Manchester in 2003 to mark the ninetieth anniversary of Ronald Preston's birth. The volume therefore has two objectives: firstly, to identify Ronald Preston's distinctive contribution to Christian social ethics, to set him in the context of his own influences and concerns and to evaluate his work; and secondly, to consider how far his legacy might fare into the twenty-first century. A central question at the heart of many of the papers in this volume is therefore the extent to which Preston's work offers contemporary Christian social ethics a viable tradition by which some of the central concerns of Preston's thought - economics, Church and state, ecumenism and public theology - can be carried forward into a changing world. Preston's work that still provides significant inspiration for Christian social ethics in the twenty-first century, and that many of Preston's core preoccupations, such as the nature of Christian moral reasoning, the possibilities for a 'public theology' in a plural society, and the vital importance of political economy for a credible Christian witness, still remain as vital and relevant today.
