Celebrating Forty Years of Faith in the City

Monday 13th October 2025

Adrian Alker reviews Celebrating Forty Years of Faith in the City, edited by Terry Drummond and Joseph Forde.

Forty years have passed since the Church of England published the report “Faith in the City’ in December 1985, the work of Archbishop Robert Runcie’s Commission on Urban Priority Areas, chaired by Sir Richard O’Brien with Bishop David Sheppard of Liverpool acting as vice-chair. Context is all important as we try to recall what England and its established church were like forty years ago. In 1981 there were riots and disturbances in some of our major cities including Liverpool (Toxteth), London (Brixton), Birmingham (Handsworth) and Manchester (Moss Side). Poverty, inequality and powerlessness was endemic in urban areas according to the Commission. Bishop Sheppard had written his seminal work, ‘Bias to the Poor’ in 1983. The Thatcher government ruled over an increasingly fractured society and quickly damned Faith in the City and its 61 recommendations to government and to the Church. Relations between Margaret Thatcher and the established Church of England had been under severe strain since Archbishop Runcie had acknowledged the Argentinian war dead in the St Paul’s Cathedral service marking the end of the Falklands War. Many bishops opposed the government stand in the miners’ strike. Faith in the City was seen as a clear repudiation of much government policy towards the welfare state and the landscape of deprivation. Such were the times. And this was the church into which I had recently (in 1979) been ordained.

This book marking the 40th anniversary of Faith in the City is a fascinating and informative analysis not only of the many issues highlighted in the report but also references the contemporary challenges in Church, State and welfare today. The many contributors to the book’s collection of essays offer different insights. Andrew Bradstock reminds us of the historical context whilst Alan Billings, Ian Duffield and the present Bishop of Manchester offer their own personal reflections from that time. The longest section deals with how the churches are involved today in their work and ministry amongst poor and marginalised communities. I found the essay by Sophie Cowan, a priest with lived experience of life on estates and the essay by Susan Lucas focussing on the role and importance of the parish to be particularly challenging.

Readers will come to this book from a variety of positions and seeking many different insights. An older reader like myself was reminded of my early days as a Youth Employment Officer in Liverpool in the 1970’s and later a priest ordained by David Sheppard. It is painful to recall the levels of poverty and lack of opportunities in places like Kirkby and Prescot where I worked. Even more painful after all this time is to see similar levels of deprivation today in so many parts of our towns and cities. But forty years ago there were inspiring church leaders like David Sheppard and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, Derek Worlock, who worked together across a city to heal Protestant -Catholic tensions in the days of course of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

From these essays certain themes reoccur. We are reminded how different is the standing and significance of the churches today compared to forty years ago. Faith in the City felt very much as if the spirit of Archbishop William Temple was alive and well, when the State listened to what the Church was saying. Today with the numerical decline of the churches and, argues Joe Forde, its internal preoccupation with matters of sex and gender, there needs to be a reprioritizing of the Church’s efforts to engage with the present and future governments in matters of welfare provision, poverty and alienation. Alan Billings and others argue that in recent decades there has been a loss of conviction by church hierarchies that local parishes, served by their clergy are the bedrock of the life of the church in the community and its cohesiveness. Rather, the talk is of growing disciples, associational gatherings of like minded people. Terry Drummond praises the twenty years after the publication of the report of commitment by the churches to social action and theological reflection but notes that by the beginning of the twenty first century there has been a shift ‘to a renewed interest in mission based on a personal evangelistic approach in which individual faith and personal growth become more important than challenging the social problems in urban parishes’(p.138).

The book also stresses the success of the Church Urban Fund which had raised over £36 million pounds in the fifteen years after the report was published. But despite the recommendation that the historic resources of the Church should be redistributed more equitably to support the more deprived parts of the country, many bishops today, such as John Perumbalath, Bishop of Liverpool when this book was published, claim that the Church has miserably failed to take care of its own poor parishes.

Today it is unlikely that the Church of England or any other denomination would produce this kind of report, calling both government and Church to change. Indeed Ian Duffield in his essay warns against public grandstanding or virtue signalling. Better he says is to stand with or sit alongside the poor in humble, sharing, mutually supportive ways. Perhaps with its declining and ageing congregations, many churches can do only this, acting locally, operating a foodbank, showing a welcome to asylum seeker and homeless person alike. In her essay, Jenny Sinclair, the daughter of Bishop Sheppard, writes of her enthusiasm for the tradition of Catholic Social Thought and how Christians today need to rethink how we address and tackle worsening poverty in a time of geopolitical and cultural upheaval. The somewhat paternalistic approach of books and commissions of the past (citing her own father’s!) which call upon the government to increase its welfare provision needs to be replaced with the principle of empowering people and working with them at the local level. Churches need to practise listening to their neighbourhood, a sensitivity grounded in prayerfulness.

This book offers a range of insights and opinions about the demanding social issues face by our society, in which the churches, congregations and their leaders have a necessary part to play. For those who can look back on the last forty years of the Church’s role in society, for those interested in theology and its application in society and for those who yearn for a more equal and just commonwealth, this book is a most valuable read.