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

• 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

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.