ABSTRACT
To debate the future of liberal theology invites certain value-judgements about its past. Those aspects of its legacy tha t are most valued, the essential visions which it embodies, carry with them the seeds of reconstruction and renewal. But this is not the place to rehearse such a history; merely to state a few working premises from which I derive the key principles on which I want to move forward. As a practical theologian, the development of my own discipline within the modern era was integrally linked with a tradition represented by Schleiermacher and others in which Christian theology and practice sought to understand, analyse and engage with scientific and social-scientific bodies of knowledge that had emerged independent of theology as 'queen of sciences'. Liberalism, like modernity, of course, has taken something of a battering at the hands of various critics; and liberal theology, too, has fallen into disrepute. Yet I have never understood liberal theology to be uncritical of the contexts within which it found itself called to articulate its claims; merely summoned to give an account of itself that was accessible and credible to its audience.1
