Abstract
This chapter provides some of the conceptual tools that we need if we are to study religious and other organisations and understand the kinds of relationships that we need to build between them. It defines ‘religion’, ‘institution’, and ‘organisation’, understands both religion and society as institutional realities, and locates religious organisations in a sector of their own, and faith-based organisations as hybrids lying on the boundaries between the religious and other sectors. It defines ‘mediating institutions’ as institutions standing between secular institutions and religious institutions and their role in facilitating relationships between the religious and the secular, and discusses the differences between organisational mediating institutions and non-organisational mediating institutions. The chapter understands the relationship-building context as one of multiple secularisations and desecularisations in an urban world, and introduces the Thames Gateway as the location of many of the case studies contained in the book’s other chapters.
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