Product Description

The era of post-colonialism and globalisation has brought new intensities of debate concerning the existence of diversity and plurality, and the need to work in partnerships to resolve major problems of injustice and marginalisation now facing local and global communities. The Church is struggling to connect with the significant economic, political and cultural changes impacting on all types of urban context but especially city centres, inner rings and outer estates and the new ex-urban communities being developed beyond the suburbs. This book argues that theology and the church need to engage more seriously with post-modern reality and thought if points of connection (both theologically and pastorally) are going to be created. The author proposes a sustained engagement with a key concept to emerge from post-modern experience - namely the concept of the Third Space. Drawing on case studies from Europe and the USA primarily, this book examines examples of Third Space methodologies to ask questions about hybrid identities and methods churches might adopt to effectively connect with post-modern cities and civil society. Particular areas of focus by the author include: the role and identity of church in post-modern urban space; the role of public theology in addressing key issues of marginalisation and urbanisation as they impact in the 21st century; the nature and role of local civil society as a local response to globalised patterns of urban, economic, social and cultural change.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1362433 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 166 pages

About the Author
Chris Baker has been Director of research for the William Temple Foundation since 2003. Prior to that he was the Foundation's Development Officer, a post he has held since 2001. The Foundation's current research programme (2002 - 5) is analysing the rapidly changing nature of urban space in the UK and its impact on emerging understandings of urban sociology and civil society. The research is also reflecting strategically and theologically on emerging patterns of church-based response to these changes, especially with regard to the current political debate about the nature of regeneration and civil society. This research is emerging in several teaching contexts and numerous articles and book chapters (see website - www.wtf.org.uk for further details) Chris is also a member of the Scargill community - an ecumenical Christian community in North Yorkshire.

Customer Reviews

Strong Analysis
This book is a serious and pretty successful attempt to focus on the importance of urban space as a way of reinterpreting the mission and identity of the church for the 21st century. Chris Baker uses the idea of the Third Space (a concept that has been around in post-colonial and cultural studies for over 20 years) to offer a way of understanding the new form of the city - namely the diversity of the hybrid, post-colonial and postmodern urban space. He uses thinkers like Bhabha and Sandercock for these theories and argues that the church should closely follow the grain of hybrid cities, including new forms of civil society and systems of governance, in order to occupy the fluid spaces created by the interaction of both networks and institutions, of the local and the global, and religion and secularity. Baker gives several case studies to back up his case for the development of what he calls local practical theologies which focus on developing partnerships with both faith and non-faith-based partners. These local practical theologies combine several methodologies and approaches simultaneously; a commitment to risk and experimentation; expanding core identities in ways that build on existing identities and values (in other words evolution not revolution); being highly reflexive but also strategic in thinking; and rising to the challenge of learning new skills. The book argues convincingly for this way of working by laying out a radical Christian Realism tradition following in the tradition of such thinkers as Bonhoeffer, Niebuhr, Temple, Preston and Atherton. In other words, the author is saying that Third Space ecclesiology and theology are already at work - what is now required is the need to understand and develop this new spatial language of the hybrid Third Space in order to help public theology engage with the complexity of rapidly-changing cities and societies.