Christ in the City: A Brief Theology

This article examines the growing scholarly interest in urban religion, situating the topic in relation to the contemporary analytical significance of cities as sites where processes of social change, such as globalization, transnationalism and the influence of new media technologies, materialize in interrelated ways. I argue that Georg Simmel’s writing on cities offers resources to draw out further the significance of “the urban” in this emerging field. I bring together Simmel’s urban analysis with his approach to religion, focusing on Christianities and individuals’ relations with sacred figures, and suggest this perspective opens up how forms of religious practice respond to experiences of cultural fragmentation in complex urban environments. Drawing on his analysis of individuals’ engagement with the coherence of God, I explore conservative evangelicals’ systems of religious intersubjectivity to show how attention to the social effects of relations with sacred figures can deepen understanding of the formation of urban religious subjectivities.

2017

In the tradition of The First Urban Christians by Wayne Meeks, this book explores the relationship between the earliest Christians and the city environment. Experts in classics, early Christianity, and human geography analyze the growth, development, and self-understanding of the early Christian movement in urban settings. The book's contributors first look at how the urban physical, cultural, and social environments of the ancient Mediterranean basin affected the ways in which early Christianity progressed. They then turn to how the earliest Christians thought and theologized in their engagement with cities. With a rich variety of expertise and scholarship, The Urban World and the First Christians is an important contribution to the understanding of early Christianity.

Great Commission Research Journal, 2011

The last 300 years have witnessed the worldwide urban population jump from just two percent in 1700 to fifty percent at the turn of the twenty-first century. The Christian community has sought to adapt and respond to this current trend in the form of developing an urban theology. This article seeks to provide what is intended to be a helpful critique of some aspects of urban theology. Specific attention will be given to three aspects of urban theology that are in need of critique: urbanization, the gospel and social justice, and biblical theology. Following an analysis of these three areas, a way forward will be offered in the conclusion. The last 300 years have witnessed the worldwide urban population jump from just two percent in 1700 to fifty percent at the turn of the twenty-first century. 1 The explosion of urbanization has left-and continues to leave-numerous effects on societies throughout the world as governments, economies, and cultures scramble to adapt and respond to growing urban populations. Likewise, the Christian community has sought to adapt and respond to this current trend. This truth is

Urban Loft Publishers, 2015

Often times the Bible is associated with rural pastoral settings. The Israelites wandering in the desert wilderness living in tents, David playing his harp for sheep out in the pasture, and Jesus strolling along dusty roads between remote villages. But what if I told you that the Bible is an urban book and that the center stage for where the drama of biblical events played out was truly the city? Starting in Genesis, all of the way to the end of the Bible in Revelation, the whole trajectory of humanity and the focal point for the Missio Dei was and is urban and not rural. When Jesus erupted into history through the womb of a teenager he lived in the most urban region in the world. The early church was birthed in the city and spread to the largest most influential cosmopolitan urban centers of the day. For the first-century Christian, to be a follower of Jesus was synonymous with being an urbanite. The Urbanity of the Bible explores the urban nature of the Bible and displays the urban trajectory of the Missio Dei. The city was and is a dominant theme of the setting, backdrop, and purposes of God throughout history. As the world today has flooded to the cities this book is good news. We were meant to live in the city.

The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, vol. ΙΙ: Genres and Contexts, ed. S. Efthymiadis, Ashgate: Farnham 2014, 419-452

The Citywide Church: Biblical Evidence & Practical Application, 2019

A topic that has had little scholarly discussion is the concept of a citywide church. Rather than discussion, the citywide church receives brief mention during lengthy discussions of subjects such as house churches, multisite churches, and church polity. Those finding evidence of the city church concept claim New Testament Christians in a particular city considered themselves to be members of one citywide church. D. A Carson writes, "…only 'church' (ekklesia in the singular) is used for the congregation of all believers in one city, never 'churches'; one reads of churches in Galatia, but the church in Antioch or Jerusalem." 1 The purpose of this paper is to conduct a thorough analysis of the New Testament's descriptions of the church to see if evidence of a citywide church structure exists in the New Testament. It will then provide application based on the findings, with specific consideration to multisite church situations. Defining the Terms and the Subject The terminology surrounding the citywide church is muddy. Most mentions in books and articles use "city church" or "church in the city" to define this group of believers who comprise the church in that city. The problem with these terms is, a search for them in academic circles provides an abundance of sources for urban ministry and urban churches, but little to nothing on 1 D. A. Carson, "Church, Authority in The," in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Daniel J. Treier and Walter A. Elwell, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017), 345, accessed April 29, 2019, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/swbts/detail.action?docID=5188207. Evaluating the First Century City While a definite number cannot be established, scholars believe Ancient Rome had a population between 450,000 to 1,000,000. 5 Jerusalem, by contrast, was an average city of the period, and had an estimated population between 20,000 and 75,000 in the mid first century. 6 These cities, along with many others in between of various sizes, were the hubs of the ancient world, where commerce took place and knowledge was discovered. They were also where churches began, the Gospel was preached, and the message then went out to various other locales. Ancient cities were not only populous, but they were dense. Most ancient cities packed many people within the protection of its walls, and were only five to ten acres. Frank Frick notes that the population density was around 240 people per acre. 7 The early church began in larger cities, covering more acreage, but even so, these were not the sprawling metropolises common in the United States today. Ancient Rome was under 3500 acres in size. 8 By comparison, Atlanta,

Religion and Urbanity Online, 2024

The phrase New Testament and urbanity refers to ways New Testament writings attest to practices and imagination of urban spaces and the ways urban spaces affected the practices and forms of imagination those documents describe. The phrase rests on a heuristic model of urbanity described by Rau (2020) as ‘a city-related phenomenon that materialises, takes spatial and temporal form. Taking spatial form means urbanity can emerge out of spatial practices and that these practices can also be translated into spatial structures. Taking temporal form means urbanity can emerge out of temporal practices and that these practices can also be translated into temporal structures – rhythms, for example.’ When applied to New Testament writings this heuristic understanding prompts us to ask, what role did religious actors, practices, and ideas found in the New Testament play in the emergence and ongoing development of cities and urbanity? What role did urban spaces and urban practices play in the emergence and ongoing development of Christ religions attested to by New Testament writings? How did spatial practices and forms mutually shape one another? What forms of temporality were expressed by that mutual formation? What urban rhythms arose, consequently? We refer to differing modes of urbanity, which is to say different kinds of relations and practices of urban spaces expressed through the various kinds of literature that constitute the New Testament (apocalyptic, gospel or sacred biography, types of letters, etc.), demography (ethnicity, economic power, social status), and the variety of imperial locations in which they were produced. The confluence of these elements resulted in rich spatial imagination and practices that reconceptualised urban spaces even as those spaces prompted forms of thought and practice.

Choice Reviews Online, 1995

Space and Culture, 2017

This article tackles a gap in our understanding of holy cities by proposing an approach that accommodates both the centrality of these cities in a religious sense and their socioeconomic peripherality from state-capitalist system perspective. Through the combined use of urban survey and ethnographic fieldwork in the case of the holy city of Safed, this article understands “center” and “periphery” not as dichotomous notions but as relational concepts that are mutually constitutive by Avodat Hamakom, a Hebrew-language concept with a double meaning that turns on the two different meanings of the word Makom—that of “place” and one of the many names for God in the Jewish tradition. So the performance of “God’s work” is the work of urban place. Avodat Hamakom strengthens the city as a religious center and simultaneously limits the ability of individuals to enter the labor market, so it brings the city to be a peripheral city in the socioeconomic sense. Adopting a critical way of thinking,...