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Stale Expressions: the Management-Shaped Church

Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, john.milbank{at}nottingham.ac.uk

Managerialism in the Church is rooted in the very character of Reformation theology. The letter's understanding of salvation as imputation and its reduction of the importance for salvation of belonging to the Church encourages the idea that there is a religious 'product' which can be managed and marketed. Modern evangelicalism consummates this tendency and uniquely allows a combining of the capitalist product with the capitalist actor. 'Fresh Expressions' in the Church of England fuses this trend with a liberal ideology of choice and the assumption that parish life must inevitably decline. The new modes of Church which it sponsors deny the very idea of the need to encounter different others in a specific locality which is crucial to the Pauline notion of the Body of Christ. It is hence a misconstrual of Christianity as such.

Key Words: Anglicanism • capitalism • church • England • evangelicalism • mission-shaped • parish • Protestantism

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