The landscape of ideas, ideals and the political terrain in which the church in this country and the wider world finds itself has shifted dramatically across the latter half of the last century. In order to understand how the Christian church is to fulfil its salt-light functions within this new ordering of powers, the practitioner must be equipped with a range of frameworks including the theological, in order to comprehend its own reactions within this situation, as well as to appreciate the changing spaces in which it seeks to advance the redemptive causes of God. This unit supplies a range of such interpretive frameworks. * Theologies of God and society: From deism to process views. * Sociology of Religion and major figures, Weber, Durkheim, Troeltsch, and their influence * Historical Sources of the decline of the church influence in culture and the rise of popular atheism. * Postures of the church toward wider culture: Church, sect, boundary-blurring and denial. * The promise and pitfalls of spirituality and the yearning of the spirit. * Appropriate apologetics and ethics on a shrinking shared platform: Catholic, Reformed/Evangelical, Radical, Liberationist, Liberal and Mystical options. * Building a communication bridge: The aesthetic, ethical and political possibilities. * Church ministry and self promotion: assumptions, blind spots and contradictions.