Kevin Hargaden

Kevin Hargaden is Social Theologian at the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice. Kevin works in conjunction with the team to reflect theologically on political and policy issues. He holds a PhD in Theological Ethics from the University of Aberdeen.

WHAT IS “SOCIAL THEOLOGY”?

Contemporary Ireland is defined by a curious paradox: we have never been more connected by technology and prosperity, yet we have rarely felt more socially fragmented. In a context where the State is often incapable of providing supports as basic as housing, a hyper-individualism prevails whereby people seek to maximise their own gain.¹ This is intense self-interest, very different from simple selfishness.² While not discounting specific contexts where thick communal care is still exhibited,³ it can seem increasingly that Irish society exists to maintain and grow a booming economy.⁴

In this vacuum, social virtues – solidarity, the commitment to the common good, civil speech – can seem to be withering. If we are to address the disconnect seen in protests on our streets and the democratic deficit detected in our policy, we need a theological framework discontent to be merely comfortable in church sanctuaries or academic ivory towers.

In this context, Social Theology becomes a necessity.

While some may see Social Theology as an ambiguously defined concept, in this essay I intend to present it as a vital bridge. Usage of the term stretches back to the nineteenth century.⁵ Its contemporary usage might be well described by reference to the Irish theologian, Dermot Lane. In his 1984 text, Foundations for a Social Theology he describes how:

“being a Christian involves belonging to that larger reality we call the People of God. It also entails membership of that organic entity that we call the Body of Christ. Christianity is essentially a social religion and as such has important social implications. The working out of some of these social implications is the task of social theology.”⁶

Arguably, this particular definition leaves us with too much room to manoeuvre. If it is true that Christianity is essentially a social religion (and it is true), then rather than carving out space for a particular task known as “social theology”, we’re compelled to admit that all of theology should consider the “social”.

This is an implicit conviction of the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice. As a social policy research centre grounded in the Catholic Social tradition, we are engaged in academic theology both in terms of research and teaching. But such engagements are directed towards the aim of strengthening our work within wider society by drawing on the rigor of the university.

When I feel the risk of getting lost in definitional clarity, I remind myself that the demarcation of theological reflection into all of these different sub-disciplines – systematic, historic, moral, etc. – is a historical consequence of the emergence of the modern university.⁷ Such demarcations are not essential to the activity to which we are called. While specialization is useful, perhaps it is also true that specialization is for insects.⁸

But we can begin this essay by situating it in relation to other lines of inquiry available to the theologian. As a task, it sits under the broad heading of Moral Theology/Christian Ethics. It is closely positioned to Public Theology, Practical Theology, and Political Theology. But it has its own distinctive task which warrants its own space.

Public Theology takes on the task of dialogue in the civic space, often assuming a fundamentally apologetic stance, as it seeks to articulate Christian belief and practice to an increasingly secularised wider society. Practical Theology invariably involves appropriating social scientific methods to reflect on and interpret the practice of the faith.⁹ Political Theology concerns itself with the exercise of power, and the systems and structures of governance in society from a theological perspective. As William Cavanaugh and Peter Scott frame it, it involves “the analysis of political arrangements… from the perspective of differing interpretations of God’s ways with the world.”¹⁰

Like Public Theology, Social Theology is pressed into dialogue with those outside the church. Like Practical Theology, Social Theology draws deeply on the wisdom of the social sciences. And like Political Theology, it is concerned with how authority is established and expressed in society. But what marks it out as distinctive is its specific concern with how these different dynamics result in public policy.¹¹ Many theologies are satisfied to point to a horizon for our moral imagination. Social theology aims to map the journey towards it.¹² Necessarily it blurs the distinction that some might want to insist on between describing a reality and agitating for it – theological appeals to the moral imagination are worse than hollow if they don’t actually seek to enact some kind of justice in the world. Social Theology inherently transgresses the disciplinary boundaries of modern knowledge because it compels the theologian to place ancient arguments into dialogue with contemporary problems.

BEYOND THE GREAT SILENCE

To do Theology – to be a Christian at all – in Ireland today is to live under the shadow of the conduct of the churches over the last century. If all our failings were written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written. There are many fine pieces of meticulous scholarly research (along with many more popular treatments) which seek to remember and account for these abuses.¹³ But perhaps, considering the scale of the travesty, the artist reaches farther than the academic.

In her novella, Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan is unflinching in her condemnation of Irish institutional religion. But she is also surgical in exposing how, rather than this being imposed on the people, it was something that – in a complicated way – was enabled by many citizens who actively subdued their consciences to passively comply with the social structures of authority.¹⁴ The local business owner, Mrs Kehoe, grants to the hero of the piece, Bill Furlong, that the nuns are dangerous but advises him to “Keep the enemy close, the bad dog with you and the good dog will not bite. You know yourself.” Keegan has Furlong “stand back then” and suggest: “Surely they’ve only as much power as we give them, Mrs Kehoe?”¹⁵

Working within the churches today involves a strange, dual-citizenship. We are heirs to a history of institutional violence that largely predates our birth but which – rightfully – lingers. In the same breath we can say that we were drawn into this church because we caught a glimpse of the Kingdom Jesus inaugurated and find it irresistible. While we cannot forget the harms inflicted by people who were meant to be ambassadors for the Prince of Peace, we also have received from dozens of generations before us a wisdom about the intrinsic value of every human being,¹⁶ the responsibility to care for creation,¹⁷ and the fact that the riches of
this world are abundant and not scarce.¹⁸

In this difficult situation, Social Theology occupies a sensitive space. The church is a social proposition. The Second Vatican Council threw open the windows of that church to the world.¹⁹ And yet any social intervention made here, now, in Ireland faces a legitimate credibility burden. The moral authority of the church has been bankrupted by the excesses of ecclesial institutions that abused the privileged place they held in society. How can anyone even dream of speaking a “Christian” voice into the public square?²⁰

One appropriate response to this would be silence. There is a deep, almost gravitational pull towards a self-imposed, penitential muteness. One could argue that the most faithful act an Irish Christian could perform today, in the darkness of these shadows, is to simply leave the public square. The sectarian, quietist impulse is always attractive. And there is a sense in which – even without the excavations of Irish ecclesial scandals – it is in keeping with the spirit of Jesus.²¹

But while this approach may be coherent for some branches of the Christian tree,²² the Catholic tradition in its fullness cannot navigate this path. “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age” beckon Catholics out from amongst themselves and into the world.²³ Even if there was a desire to retreat into the holy huddle that marks the sect, the church is summoned into being as leaven, and it cannot perform its function if it is kept on the shelf, safe within a sealed jar.²⁴ Or, to frame it in the way that Pope Francis made famous, the church needs “the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle. … Heal the wounds, heal the wounds. And you have to start from the ground up.”²⁵

It is exactly in this sensitive space that Social Theology can be critically important. If the theology of the 20th century church can be characterised as being about control, Social Theology fit for the 21st century must seek to be a theology of contribution.²⁶ Concerned as it is with the detail of how law is enacted in policy, Social Theology starts from the ground up with concrete realities, confronting the real limitations that face a society in its quest for justice.

But Social Theology also starts from the ground up of ecclesial reality. At this point in Irish history, the church has no right to set itself up as a moral authority. Such a path will be seed thrown on rocky ground (Matthew 13:5-6). But the Christians who make up the church – as a movement more than an institution – are formed (can be formed?) by a rich vision of the common good and a theory of politics that goes beyond technocratic expertise²⁷ or libertarian autonomy.²⁸ Whatever contribution that the Social Theologian makes to policy discourse, shaped as it is by the rhetoric of evidence-based approaches,²⁹ does not rest simply on their own competence or creativity. Rather, it is shaped by the logic and witness of Christian tradition and practice.³⁰ Social theology is a contemporary expression of what it means to bear witness to the Christian conviction, most powerfully captured by Augustine, that politics is a negotiation about the loves we share in common.³¹ It has the capacity to furnish the church with words to speak – faithful to the apostolic deposit but coherent to our neighbours – with a humility appropriate for the legacy of abuse that we also inherit and cannot discard.

HOW SOCIAL THEOLOGY WORKS

Ireland has rapidly moved from a society permeated by public religion to one where religion is consistently downplayed.³² This transition is not the only significant change marking Irish society over the last generation. The travails of the end of the Celtic Tiger notwithstanding, the country has experienced a dramatic rise in material prosperity³³ (though not without dramatic gaps in the social fabric).³⁴ Sustained migration flows have also had a transformative impact.³⁵ Claire Keegan might struggle to write a sequel to Small Things Like These set in today’s socially and religiously diverse New Ross.

Without falling into naïve boosterism, there are many ways in which life in Ireland is good and/or improving. And while the place of Christianity has changed, it might be a much healthier place for the church to be.³⁶ But there are drawbacks to the emerging religious settlement around what a post-Catholic Ireland should look like. There is a real danger that the same hyper-individualism that marks the wider society would form (and de-form) religious culture. Christian faith, individualised, runs the risk of being socialised by a populism that serves sectoral interests, rather than by the concern for the common that serves all.³⁷

The tensions within our communities have surfaced in different ways, ranging from the Agricultural Blockades we saw earlier this year to the riots that engulfed Dublin’s north inner-city in November 2023. In differing ways, it is not straightforward to interpret the meaning of these protests but they both testify to a disconnect between “the government” and “the people”. Laws may be drafted and policy enacted in an evidence-based fashion, but a democratic deficit can be observed in how those initiatives are received.

The riots were ignited by (erroneous) rumours about a violent attack by an asylum seeker. The blockades erupted over the price of fuel but prominently featured a truck fitted out to look like a hearse, carrying the “coffin of Ireland” and members of the protest were directly implicated in a racist attack on the Muslim Sisters of Éire as they sought to feed hungry people on the streets of the capital.³⁸ We can imagine a Pastoral Theological response that aims to equip parishes to address these tensions on a local level. We can imagine a Political Theological response that excavates how these populist nationalist movements are often integrated within a global movement of influence and finance. But the Social Theological response attends to the concrete policy arrangements that frame these movements.

SOCIAL THEOLOGY IN OPERATION

When the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice engages in environmental policy research, it does so from the “integral ecology” position articulated by Pope Francis in Laudato Si’ which asserts that questions of environmental justice and social justice are not distinct, but are two sides of the same coin.³⁹ Thus, we are in a position to robustly articulate how Irish policy responses to the fuel crisis exhibit the State’s captive imagination – it simply cannot conceive of a world beyond diesel and so we’re caught flat-footed when the protestors acted so decisively.⁴⁰ On questions as pressing as energy poverty, we need the wisdom of economists and engineers but theology offers this sharp concern for the lived experience of the person forced to choose between heat and light, between being cold or being hungry. Making that argument in terms coherent within the policy arena is a significant contribution.

We can see how Social Theology works even more clearly when we consider the much more explicit questions of social integration prompted by the Dublin riots.⁴¹ There we witnessed overt racism in a most destructive mode.⁴² And when we attended to the policy environment in which the riot was unleashed, we found a worrying oversight that ran through the State’s response. While much effort and considerable funding has been invested in the area through the “NEIC” body, there has been practically no recognition that the diversity present in the north-east inner-city of Dublin has a religious dimension.⁴³ Utilising social scientific research methods, the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice engaged in a six month-long research project mapping and documenting the ways in which faith-based communities help to maintain and expand the social fabric of this neighbourhood.⁴⁴

The resulting report received extensive coverage in the national⁴⁵ and local media⁴⁶ and, more importantly, its impact was felt within Dublin City Council. The recommendations spanned a range of domains, from the potential of faith-based communities to strengthen public health initiatives, to the need for theological faculties to provide continuing professional development options for politicians, public servants, and civil servants around religious literacy. But the overarching argument demonstrates that theological concepts – human dignity, common good, solidarity – have direct salience to contemporary social questions.

One might consider the Faith in the North-East Inner-City report as a proof of concept in the contemporary Irish contect. There are various places where Irish democracy seems to be under stress, and they tend to coalesce around the ways – to varying degrees – people feel threatened by the increase in diversity. Moralistic interventions about how people should feel will not achieve much.⁴⁷ Avoiding the issue will make things worse.⁴⁸ The “moral monopoly” of the 20th century has been replaced with a kind of administrative neutrality. There are gains to this, obviously. But there are gaps too. It can feel at times as if those at the different levels of our society cannot begin to understand each other.⁴⁹ Our approach was to identify and then describe the mediating institutions that can bridge that gap. The deployment of spatial data and qualitative research was directed by and towards a theological end: social integration is a good but it is impossible if the State disregards the very communities that provide people with a sense of home. By making the invisible social capital of faith communities visible to the administrative state, Social Theology performs a valuable function. It says something that couldn’t be said another way. And it does so with the humility appropriate to ecclesial speech in Ireland.

CONCLUSION: TOWARDS A POST-SECULAR CONTEXT

If a decade of work as a Social Theologian has taught me anything, it is that the ambiguity of the title is to be welcomed. Theology can appear today to be a relatively obscure activity. But if it has been marginalised, then that means it now enjoys great freedom to cross boundaries and engage in dialogue with other disciplines.⁵⁰ Through its ecclesial dimension, it should always have been roaming outside the boundaries of the university. Social Theology is thus a fully coherent way of practicing faith seeking understanding.⁵¹

The argument so far expounded in this essay assumes that we are living in a post-Catholic Ireland. But the findings of our research into the faith-based communities of Dublin’s north-east inner-city emphasise how what we need to craft is a post-secular Ireland.⁵² This would be a context where the Irish Catholic church remains distant from the seats of privilege it was afforded in the 20th century. But it would also be a context where the contribution of the Catholic church – and the Pentecostal congregations and the Muslim masjids and the mindfulness centres approaching spirituality through a syncretistic yoga – would not be discounted because they are classified as “religious”. In the post-secular context, the “church’s voice” is not a command but a contribution. It ought to listen before it speaks and keep sufficient distance to be able to offer prophetic critique when needed.

Social Theology, then, is a discipline that maps a path to justice that can actually be inhabited. It is a task that acknowledges the destruction embedded in our own history, without giving up on the hope of flourishing.

The task of the Social Theologian is not to be the translator who renders the Christian message coherent to calculation by the social sciences and the secular realm but rather to bear witness to the enduring truth of the Gospel – remaining attentive to the rigorous work of colleagues in the social sciences and supportive of those neighbours wrestling for justice through the blunt instrument of public policy. In the post-secular horizon, we discover that the most pressing theological task is often the patient, unglamourous work of ensuring that the dignity of the person is embedded in the very architecture of our communal life. Ultimately, Social Theology suggests that our love for our neighbour is only as real as the structures we are willing to build – and maintain – in conjunction with them.

Footnotes

1. At the time of writing, Ellen Coyne discovered that almost a hundred women gave birth to babies in a context of homelessness or dire housing precarity at just one hospital in 2025. We are far from fulfilling the foundational promise of the State: to cherish all children equally. Ellen Coyne, ‘Five Pregnant Women Forced to Sleep Rough among Those Who Gave Birth at NMH in 2025’, The Irish Times, 30 April 2026, https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/housing-planning/2026/04/29/more-than-100-mothers-who-gave-birth-at-nmh-last-year-either-homeless-or-at￾risk-of-it/. ↩︎
2. This social trajectory is wrapped up in Ireland’s very successful (in a certain narrow measurement of success) adoption of neoliberalism. Bruce Rogers-Vaughn, Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 70. ↩︎
3. For example, not far from the JCFJ offices, you can encounter the remarkable social enterprise that is the Bohemians Co-op. Katlyne Armstrong, ‘Bohs Co-Op’, Bohemians Cooperative, Dublin, 2026, https://bohemians.coop/home/. ↩︎
4. For the most compelling account of what is at play here, consider: Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Beacon, 2001). ↩︎
5. Where the author says theology must be social ‘because the Christianity of Christ and his disciples was pre-eminently a social movement, and because we are looking at everything to-day from the social rather than the individualistic point of view.’ DeWitt Hyde, Outlines of Social Theology (Macmillan & Co., 1895), vi. ↩︎
6. Dermot Lane, Foundations for a Social Theology: Praxis, Process and Salvation (Paulist Press, 1984), 2. ↩︎
7. Johannes Zachhuber, ‘Schleiermacher and the University of Berlin’, in The Oxford Handbook of Friedrich Schleiermacher, ed. Andrew C. Dole et al. (Oxford University Press, 2023). ↩︎
8. The protagonist of Robert Heinlein’s famous novel, Time Enough for Love, Lazarus Long, keeps a notebook full of aphorisms and reflections which includes the following: ‘A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, coon a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.’ He concludes: ‘Specialization is for insects.’ Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (Berkley, 2001), 348 ↩︎
9. As one influential definition puts it: ‘Practical Theology is critical, theological reflection on the practices of the Church as they interact with the practices of the world, with a view to ensuring and enabling faithful participation in God’s redemptive practices in, to and for the world.’ John Swinton and Harriet Mowatt, Practical Theology and Qualitative Research Methods (SCM Press, 2016), 6. ↩︎
10. William T. Cavanaugh and Peter Scott, ‘Introduction’, in The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, ed. William T. Cavanaugh and Peter Scott (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), 1. ↩︎
11. It may be helpful to think of the work of the Anglo-Irish barrister and theologian, David McIlroy. His research interrogates the basis of law from a theological perspective. Yet while McIlroy himself, as a leading lawyer, is deeply familiar with how particular laws are enacted (especially in the financial realm), his work is concerned with a higher level of interrogation. His rich work is a theology of law, which leaves space for theologians of policy to intervene. Consider: David McIlroy, A Biblical View of Law and Justice (Authentic, 2004); David McIlroy, A Trinitarian Theology of Law (Wipf and Stock, 2009); David McIlroy, The End of Law: How Law’s Claims Relate to Law’s Aims (Edward Elgar, 2019). ↩︎
12. While Social Theology should be read as an ecumenical endeavour, it may take on different forms in different traditions. One might consider the similarities and differences with the Orthodox conceptualisation of ‘social ethos’: David Bentley Hart and John Chryssavgis, eds, For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church (Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2020) In the specific case of the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, the form it takes is shaped by Catholic Social teaching. ↩︎
13. For example: Marie Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church: Gender, Power, and Organizational Culture (Oxford University Press, 2011). ↩︎
14. As Derek Scally has suggested, Irish society still has considerable intellectual and moral work to do – he proposes we borrow the German concept of Vergangenheitsbewältigung – in processing the trauma inflicted on a vast number of women, children, and other vulnerable people at the hands of ecclesial institutions. The Best Catholics in the World, especially 285-302. ↩︎
15. Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These (Faber and Faber, 2021), 94–95. ↩︎
16. Psalm 8. ↩︎
17. Numbers 35:34. ↩︎
18. Psalm 24. ↩︎
19. Pope Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes (Vatican, 1965), §26 ↩︎
20. This is before we even consider the growing spread of ‘Christian nationalist’ influence: Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, ‘The Rise of End Times Fascism’, US News, The Guardian (London), 13 April 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/13/end-times￾fascism-far-right-trump-musk. ↩︎
21. Consider, for example: Eberhard Arnold, Selected Writings (Plough Books,1999) ↩︎
22. Bruderhof Communities, ‘Learn about a 100-Year-Old Christian Community’, Bruderhof, Bruderhof Communities, 2026, https://www.bruderhof.com. ↩︎
23. Pope Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes, §1. ↩︎
24. This applies particularly to the laity. Consider: Pope Paul VI, Lumen Gentium (Vatican, 1964), §31. Though, as Pope Francis emphasised, the ordained should “smell like the sheep” which implies, again, going out amongst the people in the public square (Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday, March 28, 2013). ↩︎
25. Antonio Spadaro S.J, ‘A Big Heart Open to God: An Interview with Pope Francis’, America Magazine (New York, NY), 30 September 2013, https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2013/09/30/big-heart-open-god-interview-pope-francis/ ↩︎
26. Although, it should not be overlooked that Irish theology in the 20th century was widely regarded – even by its finest exemplars – to be (at best) an intellectually thin tradition. We cannot discount in advance that this marginalisation of the critical faculties available to the church offered by well-resourced and formed theologians is somehow a factor in the abuse scandals. Consider, for example: Enda McDonagh, Faith in Fragments (Columba, 1996), 65 ↩︎
27. Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ (Vatican, 2015), §106–14. ↩︎
28. Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti (Vatican, 2020), §168 ↩︎
29. Frances Ruane, ‘Research Evidence and Policymaking in Ireland’, Administration (Dublin) 73, no. 3 (2025): 127–47 ↩︎
30. ‘We call this new creation, church. It is constituted by word and sacrament as the story we tell, the story we embody, must not only be told but enacted. In the telling we are challenged to be a people capable of hearing God’s good news such that we can be a witness to others.’ Stanley Hauerwas, ‘The Church as God’s New Language’, in Christian Existence Today (Brazos, 2001), 53. ↩︎
31. Augustine of Hippo, City of God (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 19.24 (p. 960). ↩︎
32. It can be construed in a flat, ‘culture war’ fashion, but the absence of the historic figure of St Patrick from the celebration of the national holiday is a worthwhile example, in a large part because the official State seems unaware of how groundbreakingly liberatory his writings are. Kevin Hargaden, ‘Thousands of Tourists Flock to Ireland for St. Patrick’s Day. But One Figure Is Missing: St. Patrick.’, America Magazine (New York, NY), 12 March 2025, https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2025/03/12/ireland-saint-patrick-day-tradition-250145/. ↩︎
33. Kathleen Lynch et al., Austerity and Recovery in Ireland, ed. William K. Roche et al. (Oxford University Press, 2017), 252–71. ↩︎
34. Keith Adams et al., ‘Tenant State of Mind: How Cost Rental Public Housing Can Reverse the State’s Transformation Into a Tenant’, Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, 2022, https://www.jcfj.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Tenant-State-of-Mind-Web-1.pdf. ↩︎
35. Bryan Fanning, Diverse Republic (University College Dublin Press, 2021). ↩︎
36. Kevin Hargaden and Ciara Murphy, Parish as Oasis: An Introduction to Practical Environmental Care (Messenger, 2022), 11–20. ↩︎
37. Kevin Hargaden, ‘The Faith That Does Justice in Partnership: Creative Fidelity in Company’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review (Dublin) 115, no. 457 (2026): 37–47. ↩︎
38. Muslim Sisters of Éire, ‘April 10th Update’, Facebook, Muslim Sisters of Éire, 10 April 2026, https://www.facebook.com/muslimsisterofeire/posts/pfbid032ZJQ1595jbpA9sVQZWFU3Ry8ZAozVUn9LQw3xxocAJBqjZfxrqSWSm3mSsY4pLg6l ↩︎
39. Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, §139 ↩︎
40. Kevin Hargaden and Ciara Murphy, ‘Secondary Victims: Exploring Collateral Poverty and the Iranian Energy Shock’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review (Dublin) 115, no. 458 (2026), 200-207. ↩︎
41. Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, ‘The Voices of the North-East Inner-City’, in Working Notes, vol. 95 (JCFJ, 2024). ↩︎
42. Sofia Clifford Riordan and Noel Wardick, ‘Reading the City Centre Riots: Thoughts, Feelings and Reactions of the Dublin City Community Co-Op’, Working Notes (Dublin) 38, no. 95 (2024): 5–14. ↩︎
43. Keith Adams et al., Faith in the North-East Inner-City: How Faith-Based Communities Help Dublin to Flourish (Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, 2025), 54, https://www.jcfj.ie/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Faith-in-the-North-East-Inner-City.pdf. ↩︎
44. Adams et al., Faith in the North-East Inner-City: How Faith-Based Communities Help Dublin to Flourish. ↩︎
45. Breda O’Brien, ‘Amid the Tricolours of Dublin’s Inner City, 50 Faith Communities Are Doing Vital Work’, The Irish Times (Dublin), 9 November 2026, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025/11/09/breda-obrien-not-far-from-the-tricolours-of-dublins-inner-city-50-faith-communities-are-doing-vital-work/. ↩︎
46. Eoin Glackin, ‘Look to the Many Faith-Based Groups to Boost Integration in Inner-City, a New Report Advises Council’, Dublin InQuirer (Dublin), 23 October 2025, https://www.dublininquirer.com/look-to-the-many-faith-based-groups-to-boost-integration-in-inner-city-a-new-report-advises-council/. ↩︎
47. Kevin Hargaden, ‘Interrogating Irish Racism’, Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice in Ireland, 25 August 2020, https://www.jcfj.ie/2020/08/25/interrogating-irish-racism/. ↩︎
48. Jackie Fox and Sandra Hurley, ‘Security Review of All IPAS Centres after Arson Attack’, News, RTE News (Dublin), 2 November 2025, https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/1102/1541711-drogheda-ipas-centre/. ↩︎
49. Tom Inglis, Moral Monopoly (University College Dublin Press, 1998). ↩︎
50. I am deeply influenced here by the example of the German theologian, Hans Ulrich, who confidently and yet humbly engaged in a decades-long dialogue with the Geneticists and Biologists at Erlangen University. In conversation with Hans, he gave me the impression that this was so successful not because Theology is so important, but exactly because it is not. Its academic obscurity is a form of (intellectual and institutional) liberation. Hans G. Ulrich, Transfigured Not Conformed: Christian Ethics in a Hermeneutic Key, ed. Brian Brock (T&T Clark, 2022), 206–29. ↩︎
51. To cite the classic definition of Theology that we draw from the work of St Anselm: M. J. Charlesworth, trans., St Anselm’s Proslogion (Clarendon Press, 1965), 104, 105. ↩︎
52. While the first port of call for thinking about post-secularity may be Habermas, we suspect that something more like the grounded approach from the theologian, Luke Bretherton, offers a better prospect: Jurgen Habermas, Between Naturalism and Religion: Philosophical Essays (Polity Press, 2008); Luke Bretherton, Christ and the Common Life (Eerdmans, 2019). ↩︎