Baker, ChrisGraham, Elaine2018-01-222018-01-222017-09-30Baker, C.R. & Graham, E.L. (2017). Urban Ecology and Faith Communities. In K. Day and S. Kim (eds.), Brill Companion to Public Theology (pp. 390-417). Leiden: Brill.978900433605610.1163/9789004336063_019http://hdl.handle.net/10034/620803This chapter seeks to address a framing question of this volume, ‘What does a public theology look like in the 21st century?’ It will do so with reference to the strikingly pervasive and fluid material cultures and imaginaries of the urban which are influencing our increasingly globalized understandings of what it means to be ‘in community’ with others. The chapter will locate this contemporary context within an historical trajectory which moves from the origins of biblical theology and reflection on the city as site of divine providence and covenant, to the emergence of the modern industrial city of the mid-nineteenth century, when ‘[b]eing self-consciously urban’ definitively transformed the church’s understanding of ‘the context of mission and the possibilities of wider engagement’ with corresponding implications for the nature of public theology itself.enhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Urban TheologyPublic TheologyBook chapter