ABSTRACT
The case study in this chapter is based upon my experience as a faith practitioner, who set up an inclusive urban sacred space, namely a night time church within the context of the night time economy of a medium-sized city in the northwest of England. The account is informed by three factors, concepts of the night time economy, networked urban governance theory and introducing faith into the urban public sphere. The study also draws on assemblage thinking and a Foucauldian understanding of power relations to cast light upon the complex relational web that was found to form around the creation of ‘Night Church’. Alliance with, and the involvement of, a range of other governmental and religious organisations was found either to enable and sustain this faith practice or to create difficulties. In particular, the gendered nature of contested power relations with other, more established faith institutions and their male leadership proved problematic. As an auto-ethnographic study, the findings are person-specific and contextual. But they provide new insights into the under-researched field of the relationship between faith practice and urban governance and how faith actors are negotiating complex and multiple power relations in the public sphere. Therefore, relatively speaking the emphasis is more upon the networks that constrained the running of the night church, rather than upon the characteristics of the church and its members.
