MACMILLAN Mediating Institutions: Creating Relationships between Religion and an Urban World

This original book studies a wide variety of mediating institutions, both organizational and non-organizational, in workplaces, residential areas, and in wider society. Focusing upon institutions in the Thames Gateway and with case studies across south-east London, Europe and the USA, Meditating Institutions highlights the importance of understanding, creating and maintaining these organizations that facilitate relationships between religious institutions and others within society. Discussing their structures and activities, the author asserts that good relationships between religious institutions and other groups in our society are essential for a cohesive and peaceful society.  Review “Despite reports to the contrary, religion has not ceased to be a major force in contemporary society. Whether promoting terrorism or shoring up the welfare system it is, as Malcolm Torry argues in the preface to this indispensable book, ‘everywhere demanding our attention’. Drawing on a lifetime’s experience and a profound knowledge of the literature, he has equipped us with an authoritative  guide to the unsung but crucial ‘mediating institutions’ that provide the means of forging the relationship between religion and other social institutions which can help us to build a cohesive and harmonious society.”  (Colin Rochester, former Director of the Centre for Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Management, Roehampton University, and current Visiting Senior Fellow, London School of Economics, UK. He is the Author of Rediscovering Voluntary Action (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)) “Malcolm Torry is both an academic and a priest, and has produced a remarkable, reflective and judicious meditation on those institutions that mediate relationships between religion and our secular world. He explores in depth the role that mediating institutions play in civic society and in our local communities, and how these institutions are shaped and presided over. Torry brings that rare blend of practical wisdom, hands-on experience and intellectual insight to his subject, and thereby offers us a profound and illuminating account of the serious work of mediating institutions that are catalysts within communities. This is an exemplary book by one of the leading writers in the field.” (The Very Rev’d Professor Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford) From the Back Cover This original book studies a wide variety of mediating institutions, both organizational and non-organizational, in workplaces, residential areas, and in wider society. Focusing upon institutions in the Thames Gateway and with case studies across south-east London, Europe and the USA, Meditating Institutions highlights the importance of understanding, creating and maintaining these organizations that facilitate relationships between religious institutions and others within society. Discussing their structures and activities, the author asserts that good relationships between religious institutions and other groups in our society are essential for a cohesive and peaceful society.  About the Author Malcolm Torry is an honorary research fellow at the London School of Economics and Roehampton University, UK. Previously he worked in the full-time ministry of the Church of England for thirty-four years, and is the author of Managing Religion, published by Palgrave.