William Temple helped to found the modern welfare state, but what would he make of it today? If we re-examine his seminal Christianity and Social Order in the light of the development of the modern welfare state, it seems clear that Temple would be deeply disturbed and disappointed. Not disappointed with the idea of the welfare state, but disappointed with what we’ve done to that idea.
Temple took his readers back to the very heart of the Christian tradition, and explored the kind of society that Christians should help build. His vision for the welfare state is a Christian vision, but it is also a vision that welcomes others; he claims no special place for the Church or for Christians. Instead, at its heart is love – love in the form of justice. Temple recognised that justice gives us rights and duties, but that we must also work to fulfil them in a spirit of equal citizenship. Our deeper purpose must be to ensure that we each have the freedom to develop to our full potential and this means creating communities with the necessary securities and opportunities to enable that development.
But, while Temple’s vision certainly helped inspire the creation of the welfare state, it is often difficult to see the relationship between that vision and the reality of today’s system. The early achievements of the welfare state are too often taken for granted, and we have moved into an era of ‘welfare reform’ when the word ‘reform’ has become code for ‘attack’. Politicians, journalists and the general public now accept without question a whole series of falsehoods or distortions:
“Welfare spending is unsustainable”
“Too many people are on benefits”
“Welfare fraud is a major problem”
“Public services need to be more efficient”
The welfare state has become an object of scorn and there are few prepared to provide it with a robust defence. How has this happened? How has such an important achievement become so problematic?
One culprit may be the resurgence of liberalism: the philosophy of individualism, consumerism and the growing power of business or ‘the market’. Yet, while there is some truth in this, there is a danger that blaming liberalism is too simplistic. If we are not careful we simply rehearse the hollow debates, from both the left-wing and right-wing, which have left us in this situation. We need to think more deeply about the kind of welfare state which is needed.
This is a problem that goes right back to the birth of the welfare state. For, while Temple’s vision certainly inspired its formation, the welfare state was rarely informed by that vision. The systems that were put in place in the 1940s, and in the following years were well intentioned, but they were also deeply paternalistic, meritocratic and bureaucratic. The design of the welfare state was somewhat blind to citizenship, to rights, to the value of diversity in our communities or to the full potential of every human being.
Keynesian economics helped to assure people work; but this was work as defined by the state and big business. The benefits system provided people with a minimum income, but it stigmatised those who needed it. The value of out-of-work benefits is now so low that the UK has become the third most unequal developed country in the world. Even those institutions, like schools and the NHS, which were designed to promote equality, are organised to put Whitehall in power. The UK has the world’s most centralised welfare state. One symptom of this extreme centralisation is the constant reorganisation of public services, each according to the latest political fad, yet each without any demonstrable benefits.
At a deeper level many of these problems may be constitutional. Today, as the country wrestles with ‘austerity’ we find that cuts in spending are actually targeted at the poor and disabled people. For instance, there are now 25% fewer people receiving social care (support for disabled and older people) than there were five years ago. Mortgage rates (which affect the wealthiest) have been slashed, but the poor are forced to rely on the likes of Wonga. The most likely explanation for this is not the wickedness of politicians, but the fact that the votes of the poor are much less important than the votes of those on middle incomes. The political rhetoric of the ‘squeezed middle’ is an inversion of the truth – politicians pander to the middle, because this is where elections are won or lost. We live in a “medianocracy” – a land where the median earner is king.
We are in grave danger of seeing much of what Temple and the Church worked to achieve being undermined and lost. There is very little sign that modern politicians or voters understand the need for equal citizenship; instead it is increasingly acceptable to buy your way to the front of the queue. We have forgotten that human beings are wonderfully diverse, and that all of us have a God-given potential to develop; instead we meekly accept the Government’s presumption that it can dictate the purpose and methodology of our children’s education. Instead of building welcoming and diverse communities together, we have subsidised the development of institutional services, like residential care.
But this is why there has never been a better time for the Church to act. When party political structures have evolved so that they can no longer protect minorities or the vulnerable, then the Church must speak out. When thinking is dominated by out-of-date and bankrupt concepts, then the Church must speak afresh the language of love and truth. When communities have lost heart and have begun to accept the fate handed down to them by the powerful, then the Church must help people to find renewed strength.
If William Temple came back today to examine the welfare state I am sure he would challenge the Church to remind people why we need the welfare state, and he would encourage us once again to imagine what kind of welfare state would really be true to the Christian vision of love, truth and justice.
David Cameron’s recent ‘Easter message’ continues to attract media attention. In the unlikely case that you didn’t see it or hear about it, the message affirmed not only a deepening development of his own Christian faith, but also reminds the nation as a whole of the importance of its Christian identity and heritage. Some have welcomed this message as an example of refreshing candour and a riposte to the assumption that Britain has become irretrievably secular and humanist – indeed post-Christian. Others interpreted it is as a more strategically motivated attempt to appease traditional Conservative voters in the rural heartlands, disenchanted with Cameron’s more liberal pronouncements on issues such as same–sex marriage, and tempted to join the UKIP fold. Another sector of opinion claimed these pronouncements were designed to neutralise church–led criticism of the more devastating impacts of government welfare policy on the most vulnerable sectors of our society, which has led, for example, to the unwelcome but increasingly normalised provision of food banks.
But perhaps most eye-catching was the Prime Minister’s (repeated) claim that, ‘Jesus invented the Big Society 2000 years ago; I just want to see more of it’. In particular he cited, ‘the millions of Christians … who live out the letter of the Bible’ by setting up clubs and volunteering (including the setting up of food banks). He also recommended Christianity as a moral code by which to raise children. The increasingly confident and comfortable way in which Cameron claims the public space back for Christianity (and religion in general) seems out of step with what on the surface appears to be a widely-held assumption that religion is increasingly irrelevant and in terminal decline.
The marginalised atheist and socially conservative Christian – strange bedfellows?
A collection ofatheist and humanist voiceswere quick to object to Cameron’s claim that Britain is a ‘Christian country’, stepping-up to the challenge set by Guardian columnist Zoe Williams for ‘atheists to show faith in themselves’. Williams’ arresting article published earlier this year depicted a well-meaning group of tolerant and decent people who don’t like to make a fuss, but who find themselves ignored for it. Williams’ writes of British atheists yet her illustration reminded me of so many popular depictions of the Church of England and hand-wringing Anglican vicars (think Derek Nimmo sitcoms from the 70s).
Meanwhile, Williams’ complaints that the public debate is generally hostile to the atheist/humanist perspective, runs parallel to conservative voices who cry foul over institutional and cultural discrimination of Christianity (despite Cameron’s more recent protestations of ‘evangelical’ fervour). Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury has claimed, for example, that it is no longer possible to state traditional Christian viewsabout the uniqueness of Christ or marriage without being accused of being anti ‘other faiths’ or homophobic.
How have we managed to create a public square where both atheist and religiously conservative citizens are so equally convinced of their marginalisation that they contemplate political lobbying to address their plight?
The confused space of the postsecular public sphere
One possible answer to this pressing conundrum is the idea developed by the Marxist-influenced social theorist and philosopher Jurgen Habermas – we have moved from a secular to a postsecular society. The postsecular is not the triumphant return of religion into the public sphere at the expense of secularism and secularisation, but rather a new and uncharted territory whereby, ‘the vigorous continuation of religion in a continually secularizing environment must be reckoned with’. The twentieth century ‘one-size fits all’ version of the public square, in which religion is confined to the private sphere and only neutral (i.e. secular) symbols and language are permitted, no longer addresses the realities of the twenty-first.
Habermas argues that the religious and secular actually need each other. The relationship between the two is symbiotic, not hierarchical. Religion, he claims, helps provide the deepest ethical and moral imperatives by which to shape public life. On the other side, the dynamism of the secular helps convert religious ideas into progressive political agendas; for example, the Christian doctrine of Imago Dei (that every human being is created in the image of God) is translated into secular ideas of human rights and equalities. This complementary understanding of the religious and the secular provides a profound ethical challenge: to forsake our right to feel offended by others in favour of something far more risky; a willingness to engage and listen and then act together. It makes, says Habermas, ‘a difference whether we speak with one another or merely about one another’.
No one has the monopoly on being progressive
The key word here is progressive. Progressive is a word that has been used as a stick to publically beat others with. To label your opponents as non-progressive suggests that they are ignorant and backward looking – i.e. regressive.But this is a sterile and immature debate. We need to capture less narrow understandings of these terms.
To be progressive means essentially that you are outward looking, ready for opportunities to move forward with others for the sake of the common good. To be regressive is to be inward looking, and willing to work only with those who share your view of the world. There is growing evidence to suggest that as many citizens seek alternatives to the current politics of despair, that ‘progressive’ people of religion and no-religion are coming together ‘to do something about something’. This coming together can be risky and contested, but at least it’s real. And more often than not it is remarkably effective and helps challenge reductive stereotypes.
Can we create together a genuinely bold and transformative vision of the Big Society?
Regressive minded people of whatever stripe, who are interested only in policing the public sphere and looking for wrongs to be righted, are of no help in the present context. That is why we need a progressive atheism and humanism, proud and comfortable in its own skin and willing to work in honest collaboration with those who share agendas for hope and transformation across the ideological divide. To shift the debate about the Big Society on from Cameron’s preferred vision of familial morality and enthusiastic volunteering, we need to develop together a more transformative view of the Big Society that offers much more than just warm hearts and a safe pair of hands (not to mention opportunities for still further privatisation of public services). I am not opposed to the flourishing of enthusiastic local groups caring for those less fortunate citizens amongst whom they live and work. But we also need to generate genuine alternatives to the way society is structured, and the distribution of wealth and opportunity. New affinities or alliances between progressive people of all religions and of none-religious beliefs can create a genuinely progressive shared (Big?) society.
For the postsecular society is here to stay – let’s see it as a glass half-full, not half-empty.