ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses the impact of the Church on urban policy and urban deprivation since 1986 to shed light on the changing relationship between Church and State. Since the seventeenth century, the Church of England has enjoyed a unique status within the British Constitution which has bestowed privileges upon it, and subjected it to constraints, not shared by any other organization in either the public or voluntary sectors. The public retain certain expectations of the Church’s political behaviour. Faith in the City attached a lot of importance to the need for urban deprivation to be attacked along a broad front. Although it is hard to point to specific changes of policy arising from Faith in the City, there are signs that the Government is beginning to take a religious perspective seriously in its deliberations on urban policy, even to the point of setting up machinery to give expression to this.
