Edward Jarvis (author)


Edward Jarvis FRAI FRAS is a British author of social and religious history, religion and politics, and theology. His academic studies of the Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church and the lives of Carlos Duarte Costa and Ngô Đình Thục were the first ever systematic scholarly monographs on those subjects. They have contributed to the historically very small body of academic literature on the paradoxically widespread phenomenon of Independent Catholicism, and the relatively limited body of scholarship on Vietnamese Catholicism.

Early life and education

Edward Jarvis was born in Kingston upon Hull, England, in 1975, to an English father and an Italian mother. His great-grandfather was the Italian film actor Umberto Sclanizza. Jarvis attended the Malet Lambert School before studying theology and religious studies at Trinity & All Saints College, York St John, and the Logos Institute of Theology. He lectured in contemporary religious ethics at Liverpool Hope University and later worked at Durham University's Centre for Catholic Studies.

Work

Ten years of research resulted in the first ever biography of Brazilian bishop Carlos Duarte Costa, and God, Land & Freedom: the true story of ICAB, the first full-length historical, theological, and anthropological study of the Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church to appear in its 75-year history. This work has been called "engaging and informative... provocative and stimulating" among other positive responses. According to the publisher's website his work focuses on dissent, the phenomenon known as Independent Catholicism, and religion and politics. He has contributed to periodicals of church and current affairs. He is also the first and only biographer of the Vietnamese archbishop Ngô Đình Thục, influential brother of President Ngô Đình Diệm, and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2019. He was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Selected bibliography

*