In the context of the UK this chapter explores particular Christian faith-permeated practices in socioeconomically deprived areas. The chapter engages with forms of praxis that are born out of a critical dissidence with the way faith is often (not) translated into action and is at times physically distant from ‘nearly forgotten places’ (Thompson, 2010, p 120).

The importance of this chapter is to highlight an emerging turn in some faith-based organisational practice. While most faith-based organisations (FBOs) establish an organisational presence among the socially marginalised, there has recently been a move towards a more incarnational personal presence among such people (Cloke, 2010). This faith-motivated praxis involves choosing to live in among the excluded, serving as a neighbour rather than as a volunteer or worker, who vocationally breezes in and out of these areas.

There are three sections to this chapter. The first outlines how particular reflexive critiques have shaped portions of the Christian church to consider how it should re-engage and re-connect with socioeconomically deprived geographic communities. Drawing on three short case studies I examine how Christians in the UK have responded differently to these criticisms. The second section gives an account of the key discourses that structure this diverse range of faith-permeated practices: incarnation, community and mission. These discourses help collectively make sense of the vast array of faith-permeated practices discussed in the first section. Making sense of these discourses also draws out their motivational distinctiveness in comparison to their non-faith-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) counterparts. Drawing on a more in-depth case study, the third section highlights how these discourses are variously translated into action and embedded into a local geographic context. This brings light to some of the ways in which faith communities engage with local geographies and are enmeshed into emergent ethical spaces.

Critiquing the Christian church

Many critical questions have been asked of how the Christian faith should be practised in the light of the socioeconomic and political needs of surrounding communities. A good number of these criticisms have been from outside of faith networks (see Allahyari, 2000), while others have emanated from within (see Frost, 2006). Recently the resurgent critique that has prompted the Western church to question how it relates to ‘the poor’ has come from within (see Wilson, 2005; Claibourne, 2006; Bishop, 2007).