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Author Archives: Peter Lumsden

Reweaving the fabric of society: partnership working with the faith sector in Lancashire

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Industrial Lancashire was characterised by cotton, and the weaving of cloth – but poverty and inequality were rife. Today, the challenge is to reweave the fabric of society so that, in a line from the recent Gather summit: ‘I see a city where the evil of poverty and injustice is being eradicated’.

Our hope is that we extend that vision across the whole of Lancashire.

The Covid pandemic posed a huge set of challenges to civic society, but also intensified and accelerated other crises – the parlous state of the NHS, the cost-of-living as an issue, an emerging crisis with mental health to name but a few. As elsewhere in the country, the faith sector is making a significant contribution in responding to these challenges. Having retired early from an academic role at the University of Central Lancashire, my ongoing Inter Faith work has led me to the nexus of the faith / voluntary sector, the health service, and local authorities, operating as what might euphemistically be termed a ‘sector connector’, and therefore well placed to offer an overview of some of these responses.

The faith sector is a huge, diverse, and often hidden asset; here in Lancashire there are around 600 churches, over 100 mosques, plus two places of worship each for Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and a small but active Ba’hai community. Often with buildings in key strategic locations, many with excellent facilities and not a few with groups of volunteers, this really is a massive resource which, with more partnership connections, could make an even greater contribution to the health and wellbeing of civic society. 

Encouragingly, there is a well-documented change in the attitude of many public sector partners to working with the faith sector (the “F” in the VCFSE – voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector). At the same time though, there is a recurring refrain of ‘we want to work with the faith sector, but….we don’t know who we should be talking to’. Conversely, members of faith groups often do not know how their local public sector infrastructure is organised, or who are the key contacts. 

One approach to making connections, providing information and building relationships is being developed in East Lancashire. In late 2023 I made a successful bid to the Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB (integrated care board) Small Groups funding stream, for a project entitled ‘Connecting Faith Groups with Community’ (a pilot in Pendle). The aim of this work is to

This is a collaboration with Rev Mark Cowling (centre of picture below) of the Gather movement, a Christian organization which works to bring about ‘transformation of towns and cities – socially, culturally and spiritually’. This neatly encapsulates the contexts in which faith groups operate and contribute, and indeed aligns with a model I was already propounding.

The Gather model for this transformation has five stages; we are following these in Pendle and two other districts of East Lancashire, and as far as we know, this is the first time in Lancashire that this approach has been used. The first involves an initial mapping of provision by churches / mosques / faith settings, in three specific areas – mental health; food security; family support. The data gathered, usually from telephone ‘interviews’, populates a spreadsheet, which in turn generates an interactive map, with locations being RAG rated. 

The initial mapping stage of this partnership process is now also starting to happen in the districts of Burnley and the Ribble Valley. Here a particularly encouraging development is that the Community and Neighbourhood team managers from the Children and Family Wellbeing service have allocated staff to help us carry out the mapping work. As this involves telephone or in-person contact with faith leads to complete the detailed questionnaires devised by Gather, this in itself has led to the development of relationships between those faith leads and local authority staff. 

There then follows an initial meeting of faith leaders with public sector leads, sharing the mapping information, and establishing new relationships.  Stage three involves (more) representation from the faith sector at local network meetings – in Pendle, the Family Hub network meetings and the ‘People of Pendle’ community forum are two such networks.  A fourth stage is to bring together a steering group of church / faith leaders as the beginning of a Unity network. An intentional focus of transformation ‘socially, culturally and spiritually’ can breathe new life into existing Churches Together groups, and potentially, we hope, may do the same for groups of mosques, or local interfaith groups such as Building Bridges Burnley or Building Bridges Pendle.

Finally though, and as so often with the VCFSE, what is needed (stage 5) is a dedicated, paid post to extend the basic ‘sector connector’ role which I have been filling on a voluntary basis to a ‘partnership enabler’ position (as operates elsewhere e.g. the Lichfield diocese). Such a post-holder could provide specific advice to faith groups needing to improve governance, increase capacity (e.g. training of volunteers), and manage communications, as well as make connections with local public and voluntary sector partners as I have been doing.

Beyond the social action provision which the faith sector is offering, we must return to the vision at the beginning of this blog – eradicating poverty and injustice. To realise this, then as well as social action – the response to a need, we also require social justice – the taking of steps to prevent the need arising. Here there is synergy with the professed aim of the NHS to move from a treatment to a prevention model (see NHS long-term plan), and here then is another role for the faith sector, championing social justice and challenging systems and structures which result in long-term inequality and poverty. 

Dr Peter Lumsden is a local preacher in the Methodist church, a trustee of Building Bridges Burnley, and represents Faith Networks on the VCFSE alliance for Lancashire and South Cumbria (pjlumsden58@gmail.com)

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Building a strong society: a framework of faith

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Peter Lumsden, a member of the Lancashire Forum of Faiths, reflects on the role that faith groups have played in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in Lancashire.

With numbers of COVID cases rising steeply again, directors of public health in Lancashire recently issued a letter urging places of worship to close. This letter went directly to a wide constituency, where it was met with general agreement—though there was concern in some quarters that faith leaders had not been alerted in advance. This incident nicely captures the situation in the county: relationships between the local authority and the voluntary sector are not fully forged. In areas of deprivation, especially in the east where there is a significant community of Asian heritage, COVID cases have been particularly high.

As the Methodist district interfaith officer, and part of the Lancashire Forum of Faiths (LFoF), I have found myself unexpectedly involved in the framework of local authority, health service, and voluntary sector. Whilst consultation and communication between these partners and faith groups has been encouraging, it is clear to me that secular partners do not always appreciate the multi-faceted nature of faith. It would, I think, be helpful for all parties to distinguish between different contexts in which faith groups operate and contribute—the social, the cultural and the spiritual (equating to body, mind and spirit).

Social

The involvement of faith groups in social action is widely acknowledged; food banks are a very visible example. Recently, a BBC news item from Burnley—just a few miles from me—featured pastor Mick and Church on the Streets giving out food to the desperately poor. In April last year, when overseas students at my University were stranded, Sikh friends at the local Gurdwara organised and delivered emergency food to them. And in Preston, Muslims friends run the street kitchen, providing free food four evenings a week.

It is not just food though. At Christmas, my own church in Clitheroe teamed up with The Buddy Bag Foundation and, by promotion through Facebook, we received a flood of donations such that we were able to make 160 gift bags, with more clothes left over. It was humbling and gratifying to be able to take some of these extra clothes bags to women’s and family refuges in Blackburn.

If it is our connections and collective behaviours which create the fabric of a healthy society, then these and other good works represent a crucial thread—a thread that can be defined as building social capital, and which, through COVID, has become more visible.

Cultural

As well as what we do, a cohesive society also depends on what we think and perceive. Differences in culture, language and tradition need to be understood, respected, and tolerated. Here, local authorities sometimes have a negative view of faith groups, being suspicious of proselytising, or aware of tensions arising from differences in customs and traditions.

My own approach to interfaith work revolves around the principles of educating and building relationships. It has been a delight to be involved in the Near Neighbours programme in East Lancashire. This has included events, such as a wedding exhibition held in Blackburn cathedral, and the Faith Friends initiative, in which I was paired with a Muslim woman to make visits to a local college where we shared aspects of belief and tradition. Students saw us modelling good relationships, and can openly discuss topics such as sexuality, mental health, and aspects of theology. I have also developed close relationships with a Muslim group, the Light Foundation, who hold regular discussions addressing potentially contentious topics such as ‘Is the UK ready for sharia law?’ And through LFoF we have run webinars for local authority partners on culturally relevant topics such as dying, death and grieving.

Such activities help to educate and deepen relationships, a process that I would define as building cultural capital. The COVID-enforced migration to online meetings has increased the frequency of our LFoF meetings and deepened our relationships with each other.

Spiritual

Beyond social and cultural capital, though, faith groups also deal in spirituality. During the pandemic, I have witnessed many new forms of connectivity and spirituality emerge. I am making more pastoral phone calls to vulnerable church members; saying a prayer over the phone has become common. Sunday services have moved online and, in our circuit, Zoom has allowed attendance from some who would normally be physically excluded, such as care home residents. Complementing this, I have been running a weekly online meditation session, which has allowed some people to engage in a more contemplative form of religious practice.

Bringing spirituality more openly into the public domain has been a welcome surprise during COVID. For example, some of us from LFoF are now part of a multi-faith ‘reference group’ recently established at the Royal Preston hospital to support the chaplaincy service, allowing matters of spirituality to be widely discussed. Through LFoF we have also organised and run public webinars on spiritual topics, including one on hope. Input from seven different faiths and the county’s director of public health revealed a welcome commonality in perception: hope is ‘an expectation of a positive experience’, that requires both worship and serving others. I would suggest, therefore, that along with what we do (the social), and what we perceive (the cultural), it is the spiritual that really gets at who we are. As such, spirituality is perhaps the strongest thread which faith groups provide in weaving the fabric of society.

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