Urban Theology

Often times the Bible is associated with rural pastoral settings. The Israelites wandering in the desert wilderness living in tents, David playing his harp for sheep out in the pasture, and Jesus strolling along dusty roads between remote villages. But what if I told you that the Bible is an urban book and that the center stage for where the drama of biblical events played out was truly the city? Starting in Genesis, all of the way to the end of the Bible in Revelation, the whole trajectory of humanity and the focal point for the Missio Dei was and is urban and not rural. When Jesus erupted into history through the womb of a teenager he lived in the most urban region in the world. The early church was birthed in the city and spread to the largest most influential cosmopolitan urban centers of the day. For the first-century Christian, to be a follower of Jesus was synonymous with being an urbanite. The Urbanity of the Bible explores the urban nature of the Bible and displays the urban trajectory of the Missio Dei. The city was and is a dominant theme of the setting, backdrop, and purposes of God throughout history. As the world today has flooded to the cities this book is good news. We were meant to live in the city.

The aim of the research was to observe and scrutinise how chaplains go about facilitating a sacred space when requested, in the last days and hours of death.  It sought to identify the context in which chaplains are compelled to facilitate religious and spiritual rituals and what perspectives participants have of chaplains when creating a sacred space within non-orthodox, clinical spaces. It also sought to understand the added value of chaplaincy in relation to high quatlity patient care and who was best placed to faciliate a sacred space at the point of death and dying.

The research used a cross sectional design study with purposive sampling and carried out ten one to one interviews with hospital staff, who had experienced chaplaincy.  They were selected from different areas of the hospital.  Additionally, the research used the participant observations of the researcher who is a chaplin.  Using a thematic annalysis process to identify emerging themes, the research was able to achieve an indepth understanding of the contributions made by chaplains to patient and family experience, at the point of death and dying. 

The research concluded that death is perceived as a significant rite of passage which requires marking; subject to a variety of expectations and that those best placed to deliver this service are chaplains, perceived as practioners in this field.  The research indicated that chaplains care and are compassionate, courageous, competent and committed to providing high quality patient and family experience.  Recommending that there should be greater collaboration between clinicians and chaplaincy because chaplains use their experience and knowledge when they are alongside patients and family, normalising death and contribute to a good death.

Canned food or De-lata is closely linked to the condition of the urban poor.  According to a saying quoted by Aoanan: “Ang kalidad ng pagkain na ating kinakain ang siyang sukatan ng kalidad ng ating buhay” (The quality of the food we eat is the measurement of the quality of our lives).  Moreover, George Byarugaba argues that “food consumption habits are not simply tied to biological needs but serve as mark boundaries between social classes, geographic regions, nations, cultures, genders, lifecycle stages, religions, and occupations, to distinguish rituals, traditions, festivals, seasons and times of the day.”  At this point, I see de-lata as a perfect embodiment of the urban poor’s life struggle.  The nature of de-lata that is ready-to-eat, economical, easy to store, and does not easily spoil, plays a vital role in the lives of the poor and those people who are victims of the calamity. 

De-lata depicts the life of the poor: their full and rich potentials, their continuous hope and struggle for liberation, and their desire to crash down the unjust system that limits them to experience the fullness of life.  However, it also pays attention to the fact that though de-lata is the source of sustenance given by the Sustainer God for the urban poor, it is still not the optimal state and best in their lives.  Because as we know, many de-lata products have high sodium content that may cause many chronic diseases in the heart, lungs, and kidneys.  What is best for them is healthy and nutritious foods.  In addition, de-lata is the communion food for the urban poor, the unleavened bread, that symbolizes their endless stories of God’s providence and struggle toward liberation.  De-lata also creates a vision of the poor, the oppressed, and the alienated to a new world order where the reign of God becomes a reality – a new economic structure that is inclusive and takes care of all creation.

"Success" in any ministry endeavour is fraught with challenges. Thus to be critically aware of the pitfalls and mixed motives is crucial -- as are the ingredients for any possible outcome and/or effort that could be a "successful". Three substantial case studies are presented and, with the help of social theologians (e.g. Bretherton), conclusions are proffered.

Die ganze Studie wird erscheinen: Deutsche Publikation: Margit Eckholt/Stefan Silber(Hg.), Glauben in Mega-Cities. Transformationsprozesse in lateinamerikanischen Großstädten und ihre Auswirkungen auf die Pastoral. Grünewald-Verlag, Ostfildern 2014 Spanische Publikation: Margit Eckholt/Stefan Silber (Hg.), Vivir la fe en la ciudad hoy. Las grandes ciudades latinoamericanas y los actuales procesos de transformación social, cultural y religiosa,

As a global Wesleyan-Holiness denomination coming of age in the twentieth century, the Church of the Nazarene has both dramatically confronted and yet largely complied with the emerging hegemony of both federated and nation states, particularly across North America. For all the introspection scholars and church leaders have done leading up to the denominational centenary and following, we have yet to address how the Church of the Nazarene has come to organize itself administratively, especially in declaring district boundaries. Moreover, we have yet to account for how such geo-logistical decisions support or otherwise hinder the church’s local mission. In this paper, we analyze the paradigm shift from organizing districts creatively around urban centers to more arbitrarily dividing districts along geopolitical lines, especially state/provincial lines within the USA and Canada. The former practice was directly aligned with the mission, as P. F. Bresee put it, to “evangelistic and city mission work.” The latter development, however, demonstrates the extent to which the denomination lost sight of that initial, proximal impetus. Instead, the Church of the Nazarene succumbed to a subversive, even if unintended, Manifest Destiny of its own—a colonial, imperialistic agenda in service to “spreading of the doctrine and experience of Christian holiness” divorced from the cities where it took root. Therefore, we suggest new ways the Church of the Nazarene may exercise a prophetic imagination in revising the organization of districts, zones, fields, regions, and other geographically realized administrative areas. That is, as an act of confronting hegemonic structures with which the church has been so complicit and, in turn, recapturing the original vision for a church organized around people rather than in service to political powers.

The verb place-making can be used to describe the human action aiming to get from "place as it is" towards "place as it can be". One of the endeavors of the Christian church in Western society has always been to create and maintain sacred places within the public domain. By doing so Christians have been making a contribution to the overall livability of our society, driven by their vision of and belief in Gods kingdom breaking through in this world. According to Van der Leeuw we are living in "the old Jerusalem", but in the meantime we are able to encounter here and now what place can be: "the New Jerusalem". These encounters can be labeled "sacramental" and one of the ways in Christian tradition to explore them is by walking. By embarking on these walks, the Christian congregation functions as a learning community, since it is educated about "place as it can be". In this paper I will explore this phenomenon of learning-by-walking. After presenting a theoretic framework, I will describe the empirical research that was carried out for this paper in Amsterdam-East. Finally, in the concluding remarks, I will reflect on this question: How (and what) do wanderers learn about “place as it can be” when photo-walking with the city?

This study aims, through the praxis cycle, to find a prophetic, theological response that is transdisciplinary, to end homelessness in the City of Tshwane. It is guided by a spirituality that is justice-seeking, life- and dignity-affirming which demands the creation of a new epistemology. A new epistemology is rooted in the lived experiences of homeless people. Homeless people require an epistemological preference and priority in our theology if we want to understand the will of God for our society. This study draws from a collaborative Research Process during November 2014 to May 2015. In this study I take the position that homelessness is an infringement on people’s basic human rights and dignity. We are all made in the image and likeness of God, and this image is defiled when we allow injustice to take place in any form, including homelessness.

The ‘ecclesial turn’ in political theology has much to commend it: an attention to the particularity of the Church’s worldview and, at best, the concreteness of its practices. The ecclesial turn also, however, risks creating new exclusions, or deepening old ones.
Through a close reading of the theological work of Graham Ward, I seek to highlight: firstly, the pregnant possibilities of Ward’s ‘schizoid christology’ for the renewal of a politically-engaged urban theology; and secondly, some of the exclusionary dangers of Ward’s (and others’) turn towards the bodies ecclesial and politic, which fail to resist neoliberal capitalism’s own deepening tendency towards ‘expulsions’ (Saskia Sassen). By developing Ward’s christology beyond Ward’s own ecclesial limitations, with the help of Quaker theologian Rachel Muers and postcapitalist theorists JK Gibson-Graham, I take up Sassen’s challenge of recognising and attending (theologically, here) to the ‘spaces of the expelled’, with a politically-engaged receptivity. In doing so, I seek to help Graham Ward revisit the homeless person on Manchester’s Oxford Road who haunts Ward’s Cities of God, and, in his returning, to discover new ways of resisting ‘walking by on the other side’.

The basic motivation for this article is to explore the critical, yet hopeful vision which urban theologians – and specifically ecofeminist urban theologians – have for justice, reconciliation and abundance of life in urban Gauteng. This requires that urban spatiality, with its conflicting sides in a rampantly capitalist Gauteng, needs to be understood. It also requires an understanding of how urbanity and ecology may – yet so often do not – overlap. According to ecofeminist theologian Anne Primavesi, space and place needs to be understood in relation to the earth as the body of God – a web of interrelated and interconnected subjects and living beings which constitute the earth with its various ecosystems. This belies the established understanding that space and place is created mostly through the anthropocentric activity and mastery of people. Such an ecological understanding of space, place and urbanity leads to my exploration of a missiology of space as the manifestation of the presence of God in the spaces of nature and human civilisation. I conclude by proposing the practice of urban mission as making the liturgical and sacramental links between ecology, space, and the reclamation of urban space as sacred by Christian and other agents of urban activism.

This article is primarily directed at American ministers who habitually proclaim a message of unconditional love and fail to see a glaring blind spot in doing so. I wrote this article for Patheos. The title for the blog is “When is it Time to Push Back on Unconditional Love? A Lesson from the Riots in Minnesota”

In addressing the challenge of homelessness, it would be critical to  nurture dialogue with those deemed as "homeless" themselves. This dialogue breaks silences, but also, I argue, are the key starting point for scholarship, ie teaching, research towards transformation and justice.

Abstract: As cities grow and morph around the world, churches are trying to find ways to be agents of transformation. Churches are using a variety of models with the hope bringing needed change to their cities. In this article I survey the range of transformation models and offer strengths and weaknesses of each one. An awareness of the range of models can benefit churches as they “seek the welfare of the city” (Jer. 29:7).

Cities have always been the centerpiece in our conceptions of society. The Bible says a lot about cities past, present, and future that warrants our attention. With well over a thousand uses of the word “city” in the Bible (and even more references to cities by name), the city emerges as a theme running through the biblical meta-narrative. Although a city in the Old Testament looks significantly different than our towering cities of today, there are shared basic components calling us to study the urban theme in the Bible as we examine our cities today. A biblical theology of the city is imperative to understanding how the church engages cities in our day.

Metrospiritual: The Geography of Church Planting is about church planting in the city. There is an outpouring of new expressions of church being started throughout metro areas across North America. Where are these new churches being started? Maybe a more subterranean question is, "Why"? Why are churches being started where they are and why is there is a bias towards one part of the city and an overall neglect of other parts? Metrospiritual explores these questions and more as it builds off of recent research and surveys of hundreds of church planters in seven large cities in the United States and Canada. There is a deeper look at pivotal issues such as gentrification, the Creative Class, community transformation, urban renewal, and the role new churches play in all of these.

The basic motivation for this article is to explore the critical, yet hopeful vision which urban theologians-and specifically ecofeminist urban theologians-have for justice, reconciliation and abundance of life in urban Gauteng. This requires that urban spatiality, with its conflicting sides in a rampantly capitalist Gauteng, needs to be understood. It also requires an understanding of how urbanity and ecology may-yet so often do not-overlap. According to ecofeminist theologian Anne Primavesi, space and place needs to be understood in relation to the earth as the body of God-a web of interrelated and interconnected subjects and living beings which constitute the earth with its various ecosystems. This belies the established understanding that space and place is created mostly through the anthropocentric activity and mastery of people. Such an ecological understanding of space, place and urbanity leads to my exploration of a missiology of space as the manifestation of the presence of God in the spaces of nature and human civilisation. I conclude by proposing the practice of urban mission as making the liturgical and sacramental links between ecology, space, and the reclamation of urban space as sacred by Christian and other agents of urban activism.

“What people group are you trying reach?” Recent decades saw a shift in missions focus from geopolitical nations to ethnolinguistic people groups. This new focus on “hidden peoples” ushered in new ways of considering the missions task and the ways in which Christians went about this task. Over time, the task became focused on Christian witness to “every” ethnolinguistic people group with the eschatological hope of finishing the task citing Matt 24:14. Although much good came from this shift in focus, it developed into a missiology based on a narrow reading of selected biblical passages and neglected the full breadth of the biblical witness. It has also met with pragmatic challenges in the burgeoning urban melting pots around the world. In a world of increasing urbanization and ethnolinguistic confluence, a fresh examination of key biblical passages suggests new ways to conceive of the missions task. This paper explores biblical challenges to people group missiology and suggests a geographical framework with urban centers as the launching point. In particular, this paper will look at the way New Testament authors relied on the Old Testament. This study highlights a mandate to reach all people. The pattern used by Paul and others in the New Testament is based on geography, rather than people groups, using key cities as starting points.

Soul can be seen as the anonymous force on which the community is built, becoming visible in the way individuals behave and act. Apart from that places, can be loaded with soul as well. Or even better: with souls-plural-since the contemporary city exists of a multitude of different cultures. For this paper three dynamic notions are connected with each other, in order to understand how the souls of the city can be understood: the notions of place-making (the human action to get from place-as-it-is towards place-as-it-can-be), of sacredness (the experience of emotive human desires being fulfilled in a multisensory way) and of souls (the anonymous forces that hold societies and cultures together). Two case-studies in Amsterdam (Artis Square and Chestnut Square) illustrate how in the interaction between place-making, sacredness and souls of the city, sacredness seem to happen and souls sometimes seem to materialize — but also how place, sacredness and souls are captured in a constant flow and cannot be fixed in stable meanings.

Liberator God You are found on the margins, living in the hi-rise blocks amongst the condoms and syringes, on the street with the homeless family, chased by police beside the polluted canal because Your hoodie marks You out, embracing the Somalian family hated and demeaned and the unemployed young man poisoned by racist myths. Amidst the blocks and the traffic, in the city but hidden away we cry out to You -Are you listening?