Being Interrupted

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Beginning with a 'Street Nativity Play' that didn't end as planned and finishing with an open-ended conversation in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Being Interrupted</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> locates an institutionally-anxious Church of England within the wider contexts of divisions of race and class in 'the ruins of empire' alongside ongoing gender inequalities the marginalization of children and catastrophic ecological breakdown.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In the midst of this bleak picture Al Barrett and Ruth Harley open a door to a creative disruption of the status quo 'from the outside in': the in-breaking of the wild reality of the 'Kin-dom' of God. Through careful and unsettling readings in Mark's gospel alongside stories from a multicultural outer estate in east Birmingham they paint a vivid picture of an 'alternative economy' for the Church's life and mission which begins with transformative encounters with neighbours and strangers at the edges of our churches our neighbourhoods and our imaginations and offers new possibilities for repentance and resurrection.</span></p>