Jason Clark

Peter Aschoff tipped me off to this book, by Richard Sennett. Written in 1977 it charts and analyses the imbalance between private and public life, and the decline in involvement outside of the private sphere by people.

Whilst not directly referring to church and religion his work has huge implications for the way ecclesiology has collapsed from the public into private and intimate spaces. His thesis on the cult of the ‘individual’, sheds much light on why we find it so hard to genuinely engage together in mission in our communities, the public sphere of life.