Theology from the Suburbs: The Challenge of Life for the City as a Whole

Abstract

This article seeks to interrogate critically and problematize the silence on the suburb in urban theology: in the process the article seeks to illustrate the importance of the suburb through examining it considering the soteriology underpinning apartheid spatial planning and its persistent quasi-soteriological envisioning of the good life in the ongoing spatial imagination of the South African city. While this proposal does not present a fully developed contextual or public theology in response to the complex place of the suburb in the city, it highlights the persistence of this silence and illustrates key theological questions that could underpin such a focus in the future.