Life on the Breadline

Chris Shannahan is an interdisciplinary activist political theologian committed to the development of an austerity age theology of liberation that can resource the struggle to make poverty history.He works as a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham, a Lecturer in Modern Theology at the University of Manchester and an Associate Professor of Political Theology at the Centre for Peace and Security at Coventry University.His recent three-year Life on the Breadline research project, which was funded by the ESRC, explored Christian responses to contemporary poverty and forms the basis for this book.

At a time when communities are being pushed to breaking point by increasing need and declining resources, Chris Shanahan offers a detailed examination of the role of the Church and the contribution of theology. Building on the careful listening to the lived experience of local church communities undertaken for the Life on the Breadline study, the author offers the much-needed perspective of the critical friend, challenging and encouraging the Church to be bolder in bringing a prophetic voice to the public square, shining the light of the Gospel on the structural and systemic injustices that push people to the margins of society. It is a hope-filled vision that makes a compelling case for the transformative contribution that a socially-engaged theology, in dialogue with other academic disciplines, can make.