Interrupting the Church's Flow

Revd Dr Al Barrett is rector of Hodge Hill Church in the Diocese of Birmingham. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Queen’s Foundation

This book offers us a renewing and challenging vision of how to be human in unsettling times. It renews political theology as a discipline, building on (rather than rejecting) the movements of recent years; and it renews the Church whose pathway to the life of resurrection is argued to be via a radically receptive way of living.

• Acknowledgments viiForeword, Professor Mike Higton and Dr Sanjee Perera xiIntroduction 1Part One – Church on the Edges of the Public Square1 Locating the drama 172 Public Theology 333 Liberation Theologies 434 Ecclesial political theologies 58Part Two – Engaging Graham Ward: theologian of the postmodern city5 The postmodern city 756 Church as ‘alternative erotic community’ 967 Interrupting the church’s flow: Ward’s ‘schizoid’ christology, and repressed ‘others’ 1238 Tracing Ward’s retreats 138Part Three – Engaging Romand Coles as post-liberal ‘theologian’ of receptivity9 A tension-dwelling ‘visionary pragmatism’ 16110 A ‘christeccentric’, ‘radically insufficient’ church 201Part Four – Developing a radically receptive political theology11 Engaging critical white theology: dis-locating the (privileged) theologian 22512 A radically receptive political ontology: returning to the flow(s) 24313 Practising radically receptive political theology 25414 Returning 264Appendices 276Bibliography 301Index of Names and Subjects 325