What has been the culture of urbanism this last century? This is a precursor to studying Postmodernism. What have been theological responses? This is the Powerpoint that undergirds the Vimeo 540-7 TUL540-7 Urbanism: Theological Respeonses to Urban Culture at https://vimeo.com/322370054

1. Theological
Responsesto
Urbanism
Viv Grigg, 2019

2. A.Introduction
Urbanism vs Urbanization
An International Urban Culture
Theological Engagement with Urbanism
and Secularism
Urbanism defined by Geographic Density
2

3. B.Featuresof
Urbanism
Anonymity
Mobility
Evolving Marriage Roles
The Pluralist Society
Injustice
3

4. Urbanism = Culture of the Modern City
• A Complex Matrix of Social,
Political Religious,
Psychological and Ethnic
actors
• Urbanism and Secularism coexist
• Urbanism is defined by large
numbers of people densely settled
in the Modernist era.
• Later Modernism ->
Postmodernism
4

5. 1.Anonymity
5

6. Anonymity
• Multiple interactions
• Less Depth
6

7. Anonymity
• Primary or Organic Relationships
• Secondary or Functional
Relationships
7

8. Harvey Cox on Progressions from Organic to
Transactional Relationships
During my boyhood my parents never referred to 'the
milkman'. 'the insurance agent', 'the rent-collector' These
people were, respectively, Paul Weaver, Joe Villanova, and Roxy
Barazano. All our family's market transactions took place
within a web of wider and more inclusive friendship and
kinship ties with the same people. They were never
anonymous.
In fact the occasional salesman or repairman whom we did
not know was always viewed with dark suspicion until we could
make sure where he came from who his parents were, and
whether his family was 'any good'. Trips to the grocery store,
gasoline station, or post office were inevitably social visits,
never merely functional contacts.
Now, as an urbanite, my transactions are of a very different
sort. If I need to have the transmission on my car repaired,
buy a television antenna, or cash a cheque, I find myself in
functional relationships with mechanics, salesmen, and bank
clerks whom I never see in any other capacity (Cox 1965:56).
8

9. Anonymity
• The Faceless Society
• The Circle of Friends.
9

10. Alienation: Loneliness in the City
[Urban man] Is used, consumed, eaten away, possessed in heart
and soul, and the city gives him new complexes, requires of him
new reflexes, transforms his tastes and his mental make-up. The
demons push him on with their enormous power, forcing him to
find in the city the realisation of his desire for escape and liberty.
In response to the impossibility of living in the midst of his
neighbour's yelling and slamming and bickering, man might try to
find satisfaction in the anonymity of the city.
"I am never more alone than in a crowd," goes the obscene
paradox. "I am never freer than when faced with blank stares."
But this is a "delirious lie. The liberty of rising up against
oppression and perhaps against other men is not the same thing as
the anonymity of not knowing even one's next-door neighbour. To
be simply a stranger is not to be a free man. This is the solitude of
suicide, of a drowning man.
(Jaques Ellul, The Meaning of the City 1970:169) 10

11. Anonymity
• Multiple interactions
• Less Depth
• Primary or Organic Relationships
• Secondary or Functional
Relationships
• The Faceless Society
• The Circle of Friends.
11
Peter Paul Rubens - Self-
Portrait in a Circle of
Friends from Mantua

12. 2.Mobility
12

13. Mobility
Sociology
• Passing Though
• Moving Up
Theology
• Sojourner
• Migrant
• Apostolic Mobility
13

14. Two SociologicalViews of Mobility
Dark: A Rootless Society
• Loss of Identity
• Loss of Community
• A Competitive Urban Jungle vs
Cooperative Life
• Mental Stress (Psychic Overload) – George
Simmel.
• Loss of City Cohesion and Sense of Duty –
Hence Extra Agencies and Regulations
• Chaos and Social Disorder
Dancing: Opportunity and Liberation
• Choice and Freedom
• Breakdown of Uniform Social Code
• Escape from Rigid Categories of a
Hierarchical Society
• More than anything Mobility provides
opportunity to escape poverty and
oppression
• Those in Power find mobility threatening.
14

15. 3.ThePluralist
Society
15

16. Changes in Male-Female Roles
Liberation of Women
• Opportunities for women to work outside
home
• Opportunities for professional identity
• The flip side is this is no longer a choice
• Economics no longer allow women to
remain at home, apart from birth.
The Disappearing Male
• As women are less in the home
• Who cares for the children?
• What happens to traditional male roles as
provider, and authority?
16

17. The Pluralist Society
Large Numbers, Diverse Origins, Close Proximity
Geography of Heterogeneity
• Migration: Pockets of Homogeneity
• Plurality of Ethnicities & Languages
• Plurality of Religions
• Modern Urban Context: Heterogeneity
• Emergence of New Lifestyles
• Emergence of Economic Differentials
• Increased Division of Labor
• Geographic Enclaves & Socio-economic Enclaves
17
The Theological Response:
Search for Dignity of Cultures, Equailty of Opportunity and Lifestyle,
Reconciliation, Creating Dialogical Public Space

18. The Pluralist Society
Large Numbers, Diverse Origins, Close Proximity
18
The Theological Response:
Search for Processes to Enable:
• Dignity of Cultures (Rev 21)
• Equality of Opportunity and Lifestyle
• Reconciliation (Luke 4: 20 ff)
• Creating Dialogical Public Space (James 3)

19. A Faithless Generation?
Proximity of Faiths
• Rejection of fundamentalisms of ones own faith
• All belief systems become devalued
• A variety of groups lay claim to contradictory
versions of truth leading to cynicism as to
objective truth
• Relativism is the order of the day
• Religion and morality become marketed
• Tradtional religions struggle
• Spirituality becomes a search independent of
traditional structures
19

20. OrThe Freedom to Believe?
Conditions for the Gospel to Flourish
• Freedom is the prerequisite of conscious and personal
faith
• Those who are in church are there by choice, with
depth of commitment.
• Peter Berger, The Heretical Imperative (1979)
20

21. 4.Injustice
Close Proximity and juxtaposition of
extremes means heightened
awareness of injustice
• Distribution of resources
• Flow of Power
21

22. Confronting or Modifying Injustice?
Geographic Juxtaposition of Wealth and Poverty
• Wide disparity of basic services, employment,
housing, public utilities, services, community
life, health, education, location.
• Any analysis of the city environment must take
into account the distribution of resources
within the city, and the flow of power.
• Because of structural injustice in the urban
environment, almost any element of 'need
provision' will have a political element.
22

23. Confronting or Modifying Injustice?
Geographic Juxtaposition of Wealth and Poverty
• It is essential for urban missionaries to
understand clearly the functioning of these
political, largely depersonalised processes. Only
so can they understand the inner meshing of
the urban mechanism
• Tonna, Benjamin. (1982). A Gospel for the Cities A Socio-
Theology of Urban Ministry. Maryknoll: Orbis. p. 72.
23

24. Resources
• Cox, Harvey. (1965) The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization
in Theological Perspective. NY: Macmillan.
• Harvie M. Conn. (1987) A Clarified Vision for Urban Mission,
Dispelling the Urban Stereotypes. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, p42.
• Goudzwaard, Bob and Harry de Lange. Beyond Poverty and
Affluence, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans
• Newbiggen, Leslie. (1989). The Gospel in a Pluralist Society,
Eerdmans.
• Berger, Peter. (1979) The Heretical Imperative, Contemporary
Possibilities of Religious Affirmation. N.Y: Anchor.
• Tonna, Benjamin. (1982). A Gospel for the Cities A Socio-Theology of
Urban Ministry. Maryknoll: Orbis.
24

25. 25
Urbanism: The Way of Life of
Urban dwellers dlobally in the
Modern Period which continues
today into Postmodernism.

26. ThankYou
Viv Grigg
admin@urbanleaders.org
www.urbanleaders.org

27. Customize thisTemplate
Template Editing Instructions
and Feedback
27