Contending Modernities in east London

Contextual Theology Centre Director Angus Ritchie has just written on the University of Notre Dame’s Contending Modernities blog about exciting research project the Centre is undertaking as part of that wider programme.

He outlines the project as follows:

How do migrant communities with diverse religious and cultural identities shape a common life? Professor Vincent D. Rougeau has argued for the possibility of a “new cosmopolitanism,” rooted in a faith and culture and also committed to the dignity of all human beings — and, in consequence, willing to work with neighbours of other faiths and cultures to negotiate and pursue a shared vision of the common good…

The east London project will consider the relevance of such a “cosmopolitan” vision to migrant communities in our local context. Catholic and Muslim migrants have historically both been treated with some suspicion in the UK — in part because their faith involves loyalties that reach beyond the nation-state, to an avowedly international Church or Ummah.

The experience of Catholic and Muslim engagement in broad-based community organizing runs counter to such suspicions. Community organizing harnesses precisely the “problematic” quality of these faiths — above all their loyalty to a truth that transcends the nation-state, and a “critical distance” from the status quo — as a means of working for justice in the local area.

You can read the full post here