As the child of Guatemalan missionaries Jennifer Guerra Aldana has had to negotiate issues of race and displacement.  She now serves as pastor in a bilingual congregation. In a video interview with Alan Roxburgh she describes how in her ministry they seek to hold the tension of an inter-cultural approach which values insights from the juxtaposition of cultures. In the light of this, Alan Roxburgh introduces the conversation about a theology of place and his growing awareness that this conversation sometimes makes assumptions based on white privilege...

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The books mentioned propose that the modern, liberal Western imagination is at the root of our current crises and malaise. Liberalism isn’t something that needs to be fixed or adjusted; it is the problem. The challenge isn’t fixing but the construction of a fundamentally different imagination rooted in the Christian and Classic understandings of virtue and the Good. Liberalism is an ideology...

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This issue of JMP has focused on the meaning of place in contemporary societies and its implications for the life and witness of Christian communities. Each of us, as we read this, are situated in some place – our home, work place, local coffee shop, etc., that locates and gives shape to our everyday lives. We have learned through this issue that the places where we dwell are complicated geographies that in our late modern contexts, raise complex questions...

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Perched on a stool at the end of the bar, just beneath an enormous screen showing Britain's Got Talent for those whose interests quite understandably lay elsewhere, I gave a talk on the way that Catholic social thought provides resources for thinking about the current migrant crisis. It was an evening when I was (unsurprisingly) cheered and heckled in equal measure: political theology as a fittingly extreme sport. At the end of my talk I suggested to the crowd...

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The Wages of Rebellion is shaped initially by an analysis of Western revolutionary theory from the 19^th century forward. Revolutions, Hedges proposes, are not fermented by ideas promulgated by elites. They occur when intolerable gaps develop between ordinary people and the reigning narratives of the state, its economics and its elites.
Alan Roxburgh reviews this book and introduces a number of other books on a similar theme.

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An understanding that all of creation is God’s shapes Scripture. There is a deep, fundamental covenant that human beings hold the creation as a gift for all and ensure that every human being is cared for with dignity and honor. This is about the common good. As stated in the Jeremiah passage, it is part of the vocation of God’s people to seek the welfare of the city in which we abide. Connected to this basic framing of Christian vocation is the critical question of how it can be practiced. At one level the challenges confronting Western societies are immense...

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Anna Rowlands is a political theologian at Durham University and a community organizer with Citizens UK. Anna explains the concept of ‘the common good’ which has its origins in Catholic Social Teaching. She indicates how its principles may help reconcile differing views of the common good. Her example is the current political challenge of mass migration but it is possible to see how these principles could help as we seek to find a 'common good' with our neighbours in our localities.

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The opening question posed by Martin revolved around the simple observation that communities, societies and even nations are having difficulty in finding ways to hold the centre ground. There seems to be a fracturing and a dividing of communities, people groups, ethnicities, cultures and identities as fear of the “other” grows.   So, in those circumstances how does the centre hold and how do we create ways of living together that speak of creative connections as compared with fearful withdrawal?

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Reflection- video conversation between Martin Robinson and Alan Roxburgh

The first experience of ministry, for one of our editors, was a small inner city church in Birmingham, England. That congregation had at one time been vitally involved in the local life of the community, bringing hope, nurturing leaders, offering much needed resources. It was a relationship which generated a dynamic and living conversation between church and community. The dramatic changes of the post war period had ended that vital community conversation and what was left...

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Lesslie Newbigin’s sharp critique of western culture, offered in a relatively brief but incisively penetrating publication, The Other Side of 1984, came as a shock to many who read it for the first time in the middle of the 1980’s....