ABSTRACT
Public theology is necessarily always contextual. It responds to situations, theories and issues which change over time, while endeavouring to hold fast to a tradition which has a constant core. Public theology responds to challenges, but some of these challenges are not generally recognized as being on the public agenda; indeed public theology sometimes challenges that agenda and its priorities. For a long time this emergent ecumenical public theology lived quite happily at peace with liberalism and with the social gospel as developed particularly in America. And soldiers returning from the horrors of the trenches and finding poverty and unemployment rather than homes fit for heroes were often profoundly disillusioned, and disenchanted with the Churches, and with Christian faith. The confession which is constitutive of the true Church, and which has its indispensable ethical component is simultaneously a basis for unity and a cause of division.
