ABSTRACT
The last decade of the twentieth century and the opening years of the new millennium have signalled a philosophical, as well as a socioeconomic, shift of seismic proportions. The narratives of faith that guide urban liberation theology, urban Black theology, reformist urban theology and globalization urban theology have grown increasingly distant from the personalized reflexive questions of successive generations of city-dwellers for whom formalized articulations of religious faith have become less binding and less authentic. Has Britain become a secular society, turning away from religion as it develops, as Max Weber, the architect of the “secularization thesis,” suggested was inevitable? 1 A brief survey of national newspapers in a post-9/11 world or a walk through many inner-city communities raises a large question-mark over the assumed inevitability of secularism as does the recognition by national government that faith groups remain key sources of social/religious capital. Former advocates of the “secularization thesis” such as the sociologist Peter Berger have acknowledged that religion has not withered away and died in the face of economic development: “The world today, with some exceptions…is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever. This means that a whole body of literature by historians and social scientists loosely labelled ‘secularization theory’ is essential mistaken.” 2 However, while the emergence of “post-secular” philosophy and public theology in the last decade has been accompanied by recognition of the importance of religious engagement in the public realm, the overarching narratives of religious faith have become less significant and less binding to all but a declining minority. 3 Britain might not have become a secular society but, as my exploration of the work of Pete Ward and Gordon Lynch below will show, we live on a “post-religious” landscape where formalized religion is increasingly irrelevant for a majority of Britons, even though existential questions remain as central as ever. How might it be possible for a liberative urban theology to navigate a path through such a post-religious landscape? It is this dilemma that weaves its way through this chapter. I will draw on one example of “post-evangelical” urban theology and one example of “post-religious” urban theology in an attempt to find an answer to this question.
