Life on the Breadline

Austerity-age poverty represents a clear and present danger that has ruptured the social fabric of British society. Life on the Breadline represents the first fieldwork-based book by an academic theologian to explore the theological and political implications of Christian anti-poverty activism in the UK since the 2008 global financial crash. Drawing on extensive, UK-wide case studies and interviews, this interdisciplinary book represents a milestone in three ways. Firstly, it provides the first theologically-led interdisciplinary analysis of the impact that the UK government's austerity policies have had on the Christian engagement with poverty and inequality. Secondly, it demonstrates that theologians within the academy and within the Church stand at a Kairos moment of opportunity and judgement in relation to their understanding of and response to multidimensional poverty. Social science researchers have written extensively about the 'Age of Austerity' but academic theologians have barely considered this hugely damaging period. Thirdly, on the basis of three years' primary research and a re-reading of theologies of liberation and the common good, this book is the first to outline the contours of an intersectional theology of austerity age poverty that has the capacity to stimulate and resource prophetic anti-poverty activism within and beyond the Church in the UK and in other comparable urbanised societies.