ABSTRACT
The onward march of rationalism has not led to the death of religion. While it may have changed and, in some parts of the Global ‘North’, the number of people self-defining as non-religious continues to increase, faith remains a central element in many local communities and a key player in civil society politics. 1 The old secularist orthodoxy is increasingly under fire as a new postsecular social contract is hammered out. In this essay I consider the impact that postsecular discourse has had on theology. Shaped by a liberative approach to theological reflection, I will suggest that academic debates about postsecularity largely fail to reflect the dynamic diversity of the contemporary city and do not engage with the multiple struggles for social justice that characterize an urban landscape in the grip of an ongoing ‘age of austerity’ and the resurgent xenophobia that has accompanied the election of Donald Trump as US President and the Brexit phenomenon in the UK. I will argue that debates about postsecularity need to be people-centred rather than process-driven if they are to foster a social ethic of mutuality capable of resourcing a culturally credible, urban theology of liberation.
