THE NEIGHBOURHOOD CHURCH in an INDIVIDUALIZED WORLD By
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THE NEIGHBOURHOOD CHURCH IN AN INDIVIDUALIZED WORLD by ANDREW JOHN LUNN A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Theology and Religion The University of Birmingham November 2011 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract Many local churches in Britain have adopted a neighbourhood paradigm, in which the neighbourhood is seen as the primary locus of mission and ministry. Social change increasingly calls that paradigm into question. This thesis engages in a reflective conversation between the sociological context of neighbourhood churches in the United Kingdom and theological themes which resource the self-understanding of such churches. Beginning with action research, and then through a review of literature from ecclesial sources, the neighbourhood paradigm is explored and then critiqued. The critique comes particularly through the sociology of individualization. Alternative models of church are explored as they begin to address these issues. The action research, analysis of the neighbourhood paradigm, and the study of individualization all point to ambivalence and hybridity as key experiences in late modernity. Theological reflection on individualization and ambivalence develops an understanding of Christian freedom which can engage with ambivalence and social change. This provides a theological resource for relating to the sociological context of local churches. This resource recognizes the essentially mixed and hybrid nature of contemporary lives and contemporary neighbourhoods, and provides a foundation for a renewed hybrid paradigm for neighbourhood ministry. In memory of my parents. Acknowledgements My thanks go first to my site team who joined in the original action research which sparked off this thesis, working with me over a period of two years, meeting regularly, and planning together. It was out of your work and friendship that this thesis grew. Staff and fellow students at the Urban Theology Unit (UTU) in Sheffield have been a regular source of support and help. Often, returning to UTU after several months, I was reenergised and encouraged by our deliberations. Thanks particularly to Christine Dodd for her gentle encouragement, and also to other staff at UTU including Ian Duffield, Keith Lackenby and Oliver Simon. I have also been supported greatly by colleagues at the Wesley Study Centre, and the wider community at St John’s College, Durham. Without the time you allowed me, including two sabbaticals, and the encouragement received, I wouldn’t have completed this project. Thanks also to the Durham and Deerness Valley Circuit, the Darlington District, and the Methodist Church connexionally for support and help from colleagues and structures, providing the time and resources I needed. A number of other people read and commented on drafts in their various stages, so thank you to David Goodhew, Andrew Orton, and Sally Rush. A special thank you to my wife Julie for showing continuing concern and interest throughout my studies, from being part of the site team at the beginning, right through to proof-reading my work at the end, and for always being there to remind me of the really important things in life. Contents Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Beginnings 1 1.2 Social Change 4 A. Individualization 4 B. Secularisation 5 C. Globalization 7 1.3 Other Preliminary Clarifications 8 1.4 The Structure of the Thesis 11 Chapter 2 Practical Theology as Methodology 14 2.1 Theological Reflection 14 2.2 A Theological Method 18 A. Speaking of God in Public 18 B. Three fields of Perception 20 C. Three phases of reflection 22 D. Adapting the method 25 Chapter 3 Neighbourhood Defined: Bowburn and Beyond 28 3.1 A Particular Place—Bowburn 29 A. Place 32 B. Churches 3.2 Defining Neighbourhood 39 A. Particular neighbourhoods 40 B. Neighbourhood as a place 43 C. Neighbourhood and community 47 D. Neighbourhood as phenomenon 52 3.3 Ministry in Neighbourhood—What the Site Team did 59 A. Beginnings 59 B. An initial discussion 60 C. Stories of God’s people 61 D. Needs 64 E. The impact of social change 67 F. The outcomes of a project in neighbourhood ministry 71 3.4 The Neighbourhood Paradigm 76 A. The neighbourhood paradigm in the Methodist Church 75 B. Wider expressions of the neighbourhood paradigm 82 C. The neighbourhood paradigm and the Church of England 86 Conclusion 89 Chapter 4 The Circumstances of a Contested Paradigm 90 4.1 Ambivalence found in the experience of neighbourhood 92 A. Social and personal vectors out of neighbourhood 93 B. Social and personal vectors into the neighbourhood 104 C. Theological vectors 108 D. A note about conflict 111 4.2 Some ecclesial responses to social change 113 4.3 Towards new paradigms 121 A. A counter-cultural church 122 B. A network paradigm 128 C. Liquid church 130 D. Hybrid church 134 Conclusion 138 Chapter 5 Individualization 140 5.1 Individual and Society 141 5.2 Individualization 146 5.3 The ambivalence of the individualized subject 151 A. Greater autonomy and less clarity 153 B. More self-development and fewer shared meanings 158 C. Greater privacy and less solidarity and security 160 5.4 The Individualized Neighbourhood 165 A. Autonomy but less clarity 167 B. Self-development but fewer shared meanings 169 C. Privacy but less solidarity and security 171 5.5 Individualized freedom and liberty under Christ 172 A. The liberty of God and the liberty of women and men 174 B. The liberation of the oppressed 178 Conclusion 191 Chapter 6 Ambivalence 193 6.1 Zygmunt Bauman on ambivalence 196 6.2 Living Hopefully with Ambivalence 202 A. Affective ambivalences 206 B. Cultural and political ambivalences 209 6.3 The ambivalences of freedom in the light of Christian theology 218 A. Autonomy and relationship 218 B. Self-development and vocation 224 Conclusion 239 Chapter 7 Faith in Individualized Neighbourhoods 241 7.1 The Hybrid Paradigm: Facing the Consequences of Social Change for the Church 243 7.2 Hybrids of Networks and Neighbourhoods 247 7.3 Hybrids of Values and Freedoms 253 7.4 The Hybrid Paradigm and Liquidity 260 Conclusion Advocating Neighbourhoods 267 Appendix Project Proposal: Exploring Christian Community in Bowburn, County Durham 273 Bibliography 300 FIGURE Figure 1 20 Diagrammatic presentation of Whitehead and Whitehead’s method NOTES Abbreviation: The Church of England report Mission-Shaped Church is referred to as MSC . Bible version: Biblical quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version. Gender-exclusive language: Some sources cited use gender-exclusive language and I have chosen not to point this out in each individual case. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The church of Christ in every age, beset by change but Spirit-led, must claim and test its heritage and keep on rising from the dead. Fred Pratt Green. 1 1.1 Beginnings In 2003 I moved to County Durham after sixteen years of working as Methodist minister in urban areas. Bowburn, an ex-mining village typical of County Durham with about four thousand inhabitants, was to be my home for the next five years, and during the first two I worked part-time with the local Methodist congregation. It was during this period that I undertook the initial research which led to this thesis, focussing on church life within that particular context. One of the key things which came into the foreground very quickly was 1 Fred Pratt Green, ‘The Church of Christ in every age,’ in Hymns and Psalms: A Methodist and Ecumenical Hymnbook (Peterborough: Methodist Publishing House, 1983), no. 804. 1 the sense of a church which belonged to a very definite and defined place: a neighbourhood. While I had always been aware that Methodist churches frequently thought of themselves as neighbourhood churches with a particular mission to the area in which they were located, in Bowburn this seemed to take more prominence. However I found that not much had been written of the idea of ‘neighbourhood’. In this it might be contrasted with ‘community’, which has been analysed and argued over, while neighbourhood by comparison has been left relatively untouched. Maybe it is because community is more focussed on social relations that it has received so much more attention. Henderson and Thomas write of a poverty of neighbourhood theory, saying that there is no overarching understanding of what neighbourhood is.2 This thesis sets out, at least in part, to address that lack, particularly with regard to the church in neighbourhoods. Bowburn Methodist Church’s self-understanding of itself as a neighbourhood church seemed to come alongside a more general sense of belonging among many who lived in the village. Several factors about Bowburn pointed to this feeling of neighbourhood. First, the relatively clear-cut boundaries of the place. Looking at a map of County Durham I found it striking how many villages stood out as isolated spots of orange, each settlement separated from its neighbours by open space. Second, Bowburn’s history as a homogeneous mining village. This was a place which had been dominated by a single employer, and in which everyone’s life had been dominated by the coal-mine. While the pit closed forty years before my research started, the coal-mining history of the village has left a continuing print, through memories, allegiances, and symbolic events.