Towards a theology of new towns : the implications of the new town experience for urban theology

• Main Author: Baker, Christopher Richard
• Published: University of Manchester 2002
• Subjects: 253.01973
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.549181

This dissertation examines the relationship between churches and English new towns designated and built under the 1946 New Towns Act. Using primary research sources, as well as historical survey, it accounts for how the churches' mission and ministry evolved to meet the challenge of connecting with the experience of these new communities, an evolution that is seen to parallel the evolution of new town planning itself. This thesis, on the basis of its research, presents key aspects of what will emerge as a new town theology. However the implications of this theology will, it is claimed, alert urban theology as a whole to the need to take into account certain areas of extra and shared experience that up to now have largely been ignored. The new towns represent both a discrete entity in terms of urban experience, but also a paradigm for emerging commonalities whose experience is marked by mobility, fragmentation, one-centredness and freedom to choose. These are themes emerging from the new towns that are increasingly identified with the post-modem, postindustrialised settlement - themes which challenge urban theology and practice to engage more with the emerging global context