Interrupting the Church's Flow

Al Barrett

Description

How can we develop and embody an ecclesiology, in contexts of urban marginality, that is radically receptive to the gifts and challenges of the agency of our non-Christian neighbours?
Drawing on resources from political theologies, and in particular conversation with Graham Ward and Romand Coles, this book challenges our lazy understanding of receptivity, digging deep to uncover a rich theological seam which has the potential to radically alter how theologians think about what we draw from urban places. It offers a game changing liberative theology rooted not in the global south but from a position of self-critical privilege.
Full Text – Description for sales people (Text)

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Theology
• Philosophie et théologie
• Ecclesiology

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 30 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780334059929
• Langue: English

Extrait

SCM RESEARCH
Interrupting the Church’s flow
Developing a radically receptive political theology in the urban margins
Al Barrett






© Al Barrett 2020
Published in 2020 by SCM Press
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 33405 990 5
Typeset by Regent Typesetting
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd



Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword, Professor Mike Higton and Dr Sanjee Perera
Introduction
Part One – Church on the Edges of the Public Square
1. Locating the drama
2. Public Theology
3. Liberation Theologies
4. Ecclesial political theologies
Part Two – Engaging Graham Ward: theologian of the postmodern city
5. The postmodern city
6. Church as ‘alternative erotic community’
7. Interrupting the church’s flow: Ward’s ‘schizoid’ christology, and repressed ‘others’
8. Tracing Ward’s retreats
Part Three – Engaging Romand Coles as post-liberal ‘theologian’ of receptivity
9. A tension-dwelling ‘visionary pragmatism’
10. A ‘christeccentric’, ‘radically insufficient’ church
Part Four – Developing a radically receptive political theology
11. Engaging critical white theology: dis-locating the (privileged) theologian
12. A radically receptive political ontology: returning to the flow(s)
13. Practising radically receptive political theology
14. Returning

Appendices
Bibliography




Acknowledgments
One of the most wonderful challenges of writing a book on radical receptivity, whilst learning to practise it, is attempting to make any kind of comprehensive list of the people whose wisdom and insight, questions and challenges, have made a significant contribution to the words that been written here. There are so many!
Most recently, I am thankful for David Shervington and his colleagues at SCM Press, for everything they have done to bring this book to publication. I am thankful to Professor Anthony Reddie, for his wise and generous mentorship, as I have sought to navigate the journey of academic publishing. I also owe an ongoing debt of gratitude to Professor Mike Higton and Dr Sanjee Perera, not just for their generosity in writing Forewords for this book, but for the ways in which each of them has become a vocal advocate for the further exploration of radical receptivity within theological education and the structures of the Church of England. If it’s possible to identify fruit already being borne from this research and writing, it has been found in conversations across the institutions and networks of the church, with those who are – like myself – multiply privileged, and with those for whom ingrained divisions of race, class and gender (among other factors) have meant their voices have often gone unheard, or ignored. Mike and Sanjee have brought to those realities vital energies for change – and I am profoundly thankful to have been able to support them in some of that work.
I am thankful for those who have paid closest attention to the writing of my PhD thesis on which this book is based: those who encouraged the countless tangential trains of thought, helped me find a focus and, most critically, helped me stick to it and see it through. For my supervisors, Richard Sudworth, David Hewlett and Eddy van der Borght; and for those who shared smaller parts of the supervisory journey, Nicola Slee, Ashley Cocksworth and Kevin Ellis. I am thankful for those who read my PhD as examiners, who offered helpful and insightful comments on the first draft (Fernando Ens, Mike Higton, Rachel Muers, Tim Noble and Anna Rowlands), and for those members of the panel at VU Amsterdam in October 2017 who asked searching questions of me at my thesis defence. I am also immensely thankful to Mark Pryce and Bishop David Urquhart, both for agreeing financial support to help make this possible, and for their encouragement along the way.
I am thankful also for those who, entirely voluntarily, have read (or attempted to read) either selected chapters or the entire draft, and responded with encouragement, questions, suggestions, or urges to expunge every superfluous inverted comma: Chris Allen, Andy Delmege, Tim Evans, Jessica and Simon Foster, Sophie and Keith Hebden, Rachel Mann, Sally Nash, Jane Perry, Andrea Russell, Cormac Russell and Susie Snyder.
I am deeply indebted also to those who, in January 2014, sat around a table at the Queen’s Foundation with a ridiculously ambitious proto-proposal in front of them, and enthusiastically identified at least seven different PhDs that could have sprung from it: Sam Ewell, Gary Hall, David Hewlett, John Hull, Kate Pearson, Nicola Slee and Richard Sudworth. And for those who, a few months later, offered comments on a slightly-more-coherent proposal, that enabled me to begin to find that elusive focus: Chris Allen, Ruard Ganzevoort, Rachel Mann, Jane Perry, Nigel Pimlott, John Reader, and Anna Rowlands.
The work here has also been profoundly shaped in spaces where I have had the privilege of being able to ‘try out’ some of my thinking on both academics and practitioners (and many people who are both, and much more). Some of those spaces (and those who have convened them) include: ‘Thinking Aloud’ sessions in Hodge Hill (especially those involving input from Anna Ruddick and Mike Pears) Birmingham ‘Strengthening Estates Ministry’ gatherings (Andy Delmege) Bishop of Birmingham’s Round Table Theology Group (Mark Pryce) West Midlands Urban, Political and Public Theology group Research seminars, Queen’s Birmingham (Nicola Slee) ‘Gendered approaches to faith’ module, Queen’s Birmingham (Nicola Slee & Donald Eadie) Gatherings of clergy and community workers in Chester (David Herbert), Durham (Val Barron), Lichfield (David Primrose) and Nottingham & Southwell (David McCoulough) Dioceses Gathering of the Church Urban Fund’s Together Network development workers (Jenny Baker), and a couple of Church Urban Fund annual conferences (Bethany Eckley) Church of Scotland Priority Areas annual consultation 2014 (Martin Johnstone, with Ann Morisy) Inhabit Conference 2015 / New Parish Conference 2016 (Rosalyn Clare) ‘Between Theology and the Political’ Conference, University of Manchester, 2015 (Charlie Pemberton) ‘Self and the City’ Conference, University of Manchester, 2015 (Ben Wood) ‘Politics of Hope’ conference 2015, William Temple Foundation & Livability (Chris Baker) Society for the Study of Christian Ethics Conference 2015 (Anna Rowlands) Interview with Graham Ward at Christ Church, Oxford, 2015 Theology & Religion seminar, University of Leeds, 2016 (Rachel Muers) Liberation theology seminar, University of Durham, 2016 (Anna Rowlands) Church Action on Poverty ‘Church of the Poor’ conference 2016 (Liam Purcell & Niall Cooper) Sandwell Churches Link Conference 2017 (Laura Nott)
Countless conversations have arisen more spontaneously, through which insights have been first glimpsed, ideas tested out, thoughts clarified, pretentiousness challenged, and much more. Here I most risk missing out significant people, but some of the most memorably helpful conversations have been with Jo Bagby, Julia Bingham, Mole Chapman, Andy Delmege, Bethany Eckley, Kathy Evans, Tim Evans, Sam Ewell, Jess Foster, Simon Foster, Andrew Grinnell, Simon Heathfield, Keith Hebden, Marilyn Hull, Martin Johnstone, Alison Joyce, Peter Kenyon, Mike Mather, Sarah Maxfield, Ann Morisy, Rachel Muers, Sally Nash, Kate Pearson, Jane Perry, Fred Rattley, Anthony Reddie, Anna Rowlands, Cormac Russell, Chris Shannahan, Andrew Smith, Susie Snyder, David Warbrick, Keith White and Paul Wright.
More practically, some people and communities have offered hospitality, care, food and childcare at times when those things have been most needed, in the midst of the pressures of full-time ministry and part-time PhD-writing. Among them I owe the deepest gratitude to my mum and dad (Lesley and Peter Barrett), my parents-in-law (Jim and Liz Andrews), and Ria and Tim Evans, and to Genny Tunbridge at Hodge Hill’s Old Rectory Community House, the sisters of the Community of St John the Divine, Alum Rock, and the brothers of the Franciscan house at Glasshampton.
I am quite frankly amazed that friends and colleagues, neighbours and congregation members, in Hodge Hill have patiently borne with me over the last nine years as my attention has been distracted, my mind over-full, my sermons and meetings all-too-often ill-prepared, my availability and diary constricted and my competence reduced by this ‘other thing’ that I have somehow shoe-horned into my life. Not least among them, I am deeply grateful to Jenni Crewes, Tim Evans, Penny Hall, Sarah Maxfield, Martin Millman, Sally Nash, Florence Parkes, Lucy Poulson, Gloria Smith, Genny Tunbridge, Sarah Ward and Paul Wright.
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