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focus on performance has become a core element within the policing context later in

this chapter.

This brings us to the third key feature which focuses upon secularisation and the
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perceived decline of religious practice within society . As we have outlined within
post-modernism the accent is upon micro-narratives, and so all cultural expressions
hold equally their own truth and validity. A culture established upon a faith, becomes

one of many faiths, and indeed none. The result is that even as formalised religion
regresses there can be a resurgence of the sacred as illustrated by the rapid growth
in holistic or so called ‘New Age’ spirituality (Graham 2000:108). Here the focus is

undoubtedly subjective with individual spirituality replacing communal religion, and
interior authority replacing transcendent forms (CES 2005:17-18). In this spiritual shift

there is discerned another cultural tension between the religious and the secular. It is
one that has implications for those that are involved in pastoral ministry as we shall
explore.

ii) Policing, performance, and post-modernism

Like most public institutions the police service has been undergoing a period of
persistent change, reorganisation, and rebranding over the past twenty years. Within

this ongoing development can be discerned the cultural impact of post-modernism.
The driver of this change has been a wider government agenda in which the

principles of performance, plurality, and diversity have come to the fore, and where
even social networks, and the relationships between individuals have come to be
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understood in economic terms . The turn to the subject here is also a real one. It is
just that it has been made at a community, or rather a neighbourhood level.

This brings us to the development of Neighbourhood Policing which emerges out of a
wider New Labour policy of neighbourhood renewal, based upon social capital,

citizenship, and the eradication of poverty, that together situate communities at the

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Malcolm Hamilton outlines a lack of consensus regarding secularisation. In essence it is concerned with a
perceived decline in formal religion in modern society as a result of scientific developments. The theory is
disputed in that while formal religious practice may be in decline, religiosity or spirituality remains. In general
terms however the evidence supports a decline in religion within Western industrial societies including Britain
(1995:165-182).
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The reference here is to Social Capital. The National Statistics Office defines it as “the pattern and intensity of
networks among people and the shared values which arise from those networks”. Its main characteristics include
citizenship, neighbourliness, social networks, and civic participation (www.statistics.gov.uk).