Towards a Theology of Cultural Witness

Abstract Taking its impetus from the founding of the Centre for Cultural Witness within the Church of England in 2023, this article explores the concept of witness as a theological and missional category, undertaken within the particular context of contemporary European culture and drawing on the work of Karl Barth, Lesslie Newbigin, Stefan Paas and Walter Brueggemann. The notion of Jesus Christ as the true witness provides the starting point for a theology of witness, suggesting witness as the primary posture of the Church’s engagement towards the world, particularly within the context of the Church’s place in late modern European culture. It argues that the Church, as the people gathered by the testimony of Christ, rather than the academy or individual Christians, is the primary location of Christian witness in the world and that one of the primary ways in which such a witness will take place is in the redescription of reality in the light of the coming of Christ.