Professor Graham Ward - research

Specific research interests:

Current research projects:

My current research lies, then, in the following fields of enquiry:

• Christian social ethics
• Political theory
• Cultural hermeneutics

I am also involved in a large international research project, sponsored by the British Academy, concerned with examining 'The New Visibility of Religion in European Democratic Culture'.

My research began by focusing upon issues concerning Christian theology and representation. Earlier investigations into the theology of language (in Karl Barth, for example, or Jacques Derrida) gave way to concerns with the relationship between rhetoric and belief. So the question which has dominated my thinking more recently is what makes a belief believable? This has led me to develop an analysis of the way in which theology represents its thinking and the wider cultural context within which that representation takes place.

With Cities of God (Routledge, 2000) I began to situate this examination of representation within a contemporary urban context. That book treated the postmodern situation and the inadequacy of certain older forms of theological discourse on the character and significance of the city with respect to that situation. It attempted to construct a new way of doing theology from within the postmodern context that challenges some of the key assumptions and trajectories of postmodernity, but without either standing counter-culturally over against it or being irrelevant to it. Cities of God was conceived as the first of two volumes, the second, Cultural Ethics: Christian Polity, would then employ the new approach to theology in an urban and postmodern context to dominant aspects of contemporoary culture: globalisation, surveillance, the new visibility of religions, the crisis of liberal democracy and internet culture. But in beginning that second volume I found the need to develop considerably the methodological basis of my engagement between theology and culture. Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice (CUP, 2004) forms then the methodological bridge to what will now be the third volume.

Whilst engaged upon this research other smaller projects arose which led to: True Religion (Blackwell, 2002) in which I developed a genealogy of 'religion' with respect to its new visibility in our contemporary, post-secular setting; Christ and Culture (Blackwell, 2005) in which I explored classical and contemporary issues in Christology; and Political Discipleship (Baker Press, 2006) that explores the relationship between Christian practices and the public sphere. In connection with political concerns I have recently edited (with Dr. Michael Hoelzl) Religion and Political Thought (Continuum, 2006).