When political theology takes an ecclesial turn, who is left out in the cold?

Through a close reading of the theological work of Graham Ward, Barrett seeks to highlight, firstly, some of the exclusionary dangers of Ward’s (and others’) turn towards the bodies’ ecclesial and politic, but, secondly, the pregnant possibilities of Ward’s ‘schizoid Christology’ for the renewal of a politically engaged urban theology. By developing Ward’s Christology beyond Ward’s own ecclesial limitations, with the help of Quaker theologian Rachel Muers and postcapitalist theorists J. K. Gibson-Graham, Barrett take up Sassen’s challenge of recognising and attending (theologically) to the ‘spaces of the expelled’, with a politically engaged receptivity. In doing so, Barrett seeks to help Graham Ward revisit the homeless person on Manchester’s Oxford Road who haunts Ward’s Cities of God and, in his returning, to discover new ways of resisting ‘walking by on the other side’.