Christian Theologies of Culture in Hull, City of Culture 2017

In this thesis, I explore the theologies of culture emerging from Hull, one of the UK’s most marginalised and deprived cities, in 2017, when Hull was the UK’s City of Culture. Using visual research methods and grounded theory method, I interviewed 20 church leaders from different denominations, both before and after Hull was City of Culture 2017. My research explores these participants’ understandings of culture: their concept of culture as “high culture”, culture as lived experience, and culture as “other”, and how they saw Hull as “cultureless” because it lacked this “high culture”. I explore how the City of Culture project’s understanding of culture as the ‘brightest and best’ in human experience played into these concepts of culture. My research examines my participants’ theologies of culture, both before and after City of Culture 2017. Sitting within Hull’s context of pain and shared loss, I argue that my participants had an overwhelmingly positive approach to Hull’s culture. They saw God working in and through Hull’s culture in 2017, building self-esteem, joy, community and creativity in the city, to allow the people of Hull to flourish. I explore the literature of theologies of culture, and reject the use of models to explore theologies of culture in favour a more complex mapping of the interrelation of gospel and culture. I argue that my participants show a broadly socialist approach to culture, gently liberative, and unconsciously Trinitarian theologies of culture. My participants’ theologies of culture, regardless of their denomination, echo Timothy Gorringe’s understanding of culture as ‘furthering humanity’, enabling people to flourish and live life in all its fullness.