In 2006, he was released from all pastoral oversight in the diocese to concentrate on his 2006 appointment as the Church of England's first "Bishop for Urban Life and Faith", charged with the promotion and dissemination of conclusions of the Faithful Cities report.

[1] In 2004, Lowe commented in a diocese newsletter on the patriotic hymn I Vow to Thee, My Country, criticising it for being "heretical" and calling on fellow Church of England clergymen to think "long and hard" about singing the song due to (in Lowe's view) its nationalist undertones.

[2] In 2006, Lowe defended the Church of England's review of its shares in Caterpillar Inc. and other companies used in the territories occupied by the Israeli government,[3] and the Church's planned sale of Jacob And His Twelve Sons by Francisco de Zurbarán.

[5][6] In June 2008 a report commissioned by Lowe, Moral, But No Compass – Church, Government and the Future of Welfare, by Francis Davis and Elizabath Paulhus was the lead story in The Times and has subsequently been the subject of two House of Lords debates.

Public Theology and the Urban Church (which Lowe had co-authored with the theologian Elaine Graham), was published by Darton, Longman and Todd.