Review and Reflection on “Cities of Tomorrow and the City to Come” by Noah J. Toly

This is a short, quick read at only 64 pages of content. Having said that, there’s a lot packed into the book. The subtitle is “A Theology of Urban Life” and that’s what caught my attention. Cities have been a mainstay in human civilization for a very long time. Humans coming together into a society and living in close quarters, sharing culture, and more are key features of what civilization is all about. So what is our urban theology? This whole subject comes in contrast with a more evangelical American outlook on faith and society, where the focus is on the individual and their personal faith. But faith isn’t just a personal thing. It is also social. And no more social than in our urban centers where people aren’t just dealing with faith, but also social challenges that can’t be solved individually. Or, as Gene Green puts it in the Forward to the book, “We believe that the gospel is relevant not only to our inner life, but to life in the world.” (Pg. 11).

Cities carry with them large challenges, just by the nature of what they are. Cram large crowds of people together and with that comes basic questions of how you house them, feed them, move them, make sure they stay healthy or get well once sick, deal with crime and safety, work, and so much more. Again, these aren’t just individual challenges — they are challenges that also affect the whole. The author puts a keen focus on all of this, “There are no detached observers of what the author of the letter to the Hebrews…