Interrupting the Church's Flow

Interrupting The Church’s Flow: A Radically Receptive Political Theology in the Urban Margins deserves a careful reading. What assists such a reading is attending to the four parts of the book and then unpacking the volume’s governing title. That the book evolves out of author Al Barrett’s doctoral dissertation is partly its promise and partly its difficulty; since, for whom is the book really for?

Part 1’s “Church on the Edges of the Public Square” introduces the reader to the city dynamics of the author’s parish setting. Chapter 1 locates the drama of the city and parish, literally and symbolically, and what inspired Barrett to undertake the work as a whole. Part 2 involves the central, key theologian of the book, Graham Ward, whom Barrett engages throughout, especially to develop ways to understand the church as an “alternative erotic community” and to reflect on Ward’s notion of “interrupting the church’s flow” (chapters 5-8).  This seems a prophetic move with rich content for pastors. This part of the book requires a strenuous reading and likely some understanding of Ward’s work and how it fits within the context of UK theology. (An appendix interview with Ward is a welcome addition, where questions and answers are clearly expressed, and in earthy language.)

Part 3 engages a second major thinker for Barrett, Romand Coles. While not a theologian, Barret nevertheless describes him as a “‘theologian’” of receptivity,” and his seminal political thought is pertinent to the book’s subtitle. Here again, the reading is demanding, with Barret employing dense concepts like “tension-dwelling visionary pragmatism” and a “christeccentric, radically insufficient church” to advance the title’s stated goal: to interrupt the church’s flow (more on this in a moment). Part 4 presents a “radically receptive political theology.” This section could be profitably read first, with the reader then backtracking to appreciate how Barrett arrives at his ambitious theology. The book’s excellent index can help with such a task.

The book’s title itself warrants exegesis. The church’s regular “flow” is centered on bureaucratic concerns and duties and is aimed at mere survival and minimal risk-taking; for this reason, an “interruption” is needed. Otherwise, an entrenched status quo reigns. Prayer as an alert receptivity is needed, as is a willingness to engage in “perpetual reanimation.” Both help us identify “cracks” in our understanding of what it means to be a church (11-12; note 21 leans into Canadian folk singer and spiritual searcher Leonard Cohen to make this point).

What matters, above all, is a careful, humble listening to those people on the margins—hence what is needed is a type of liberation theology in the tradition of John Vincent and the Sheffield Urban Theology institute. The earlier work of Michael Northcott on urban theology in the UK (and beyond) could also help with this task. Then, a grasp of what political theology yearns to express and convey and out of this, how a “radically receptivity” to political theology is understood and applied. This may well be an evocation of the rich notion of “praxis”, though not named, since the term connotes what we need to learn out of and from the practices of our activities (hindsight insights). Barrett helps with this task in the final chapter, “Returning.” The first and last chapters, then, are likely as close as we get to the author’s own storyline and reason for the book.

Barrett’s ambitious book offers hints, clues, and hunches as to what steps—in the present and future—the church, even a parish (always more than the mere building), is challenged to take and make. The book’s very last paragraph thus expresses: “And what of the returning women [of John’s gospel chapter 20), early on the Sunday morning, … passionate constancy?”(272).

All told, Barrett duly credits many sources: friends, parish members, mentors, and copious academic writings and research pieces. One counts 19 companions and 34 thesis consultants ("memorable conversations") out of which this book emerged. The book does a good job surfacing suppressed imaginations and neglected publications, which will serve both professional theologians and the "average" lay person. The bibliography is amazing in scope and depth. Anyone researching, reflecting on, and writing in and for the fields of political theology, urban theology, practical theology, community ministry, spiritual autobiography, the art of participant-observation/participant-action, and grounded theory could benefit. Grounding is especially important: we must aim "never to lose theory's grounding in practice: from the lived questions of Christian living on an outer estate in the urban margins of east Birmingham..." (3-4). 

In sum, this is in many ways a brilliant book, an anthology of thoughts based on copious research, inspired by personal and corporate experience in the fields of church ministry, and driven, above all, by an earnest attempt to offer bold sketches of urban, political theology for the present and next generation of church practitioners. Its brilliance, however, is tempered by the fact that it may attempt too much in too little space.

Barry K. Morris is an independent scholar in Vancouver, BC.

Barry Morris

Date Of Review:

August 31, 2022