Mez McConnell, The Least, the Last, and the Lost: Understanding Poverty in the UK & The Responsibility of the Local Church Published by Evangelical Press 2021 ISBN 978-178397-328-6
Reviewed by Greg Smith, Associate Research Fellow William Temple Foundation
Mez McConnell has, with some contributions from his colleagues, produced a passionate book about urban and estate ministry which should be required reading for anyone involved in the field. It is also aimed at complacent middle class evangelical Christians whom he sees to be in denial about social class in the UK.
McConnell writes as an insider who grew up in a tough unchurched environment, fell into addiction, crime and homelessness, but miraculously experienced a new birth and transformation of his life through an encounter with Jesus Christ. For the last two decades he has served as a pastor and church planter in a working-class housing scheme (council estate) in Edinburgh. He now leads a Scottish network of church planting and revitalisation called 20 Schemes.
As in Paul Keeble’s recent Urban Tract, McConnell underlines the importance of being there, and staying there long term, with a deep appreciation of yet without assimilation to local culture, and a spiritual life rooted in the deep love of Jesus and of people. He stresses above all the importance of the gospel, proclaimed in church, and in the street, in a clear evangelistic message calling for repentance and faith. He expects that some among the least, the last and the lost will respond in professions of faith, conversion and a journey of discipleship, as the church will provide personal mentoring and Biblical teaching. In his opinion, the local church is the only organisation or community that can tackle the deepest problems of such neighbourhoods.
McConnell’s work is not the first to highlight the importance of stories in urban culture and is rich with examples. The stories shared in the book are full of realism, of struggle, of disappointment, of life in a bleak environment, yet interspersed with moments of joy, strength of family and community ties and overcoming difficult circumstances.
McConnell should be commended for recognising the agency of people struggling with poverty, rather than trapping them in dependency and hopelessness. He also recognises the potential among people living on housing schemes for leadership in church and community and suggests models of training that are more appropriate and effective than traditional Bible College courses. Such training does not simply need to “dumb down” on Biblical knowledge or theology, but should rather be on an apprenticeship or in-service basis, applying the learning to real life situations.
At 527 pages, this lengthy volumedoes not say everything McConnell wanted to say (there is more online at 20schemesequip.com). The first half of the book is about poverty, class and culture in the UK and draws somewhat uncritically, on research, including government statistics, reports from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and published and unpublished narratives about life on urban estates.
The assumptions are largely about communities dominated by the “white British working class”, which is both increasingly difficult to define, and demographically questionable in an era of diverse intersecting identities. While McConnell repeatedly expresses his reluctance to stereotype, and his contempt for the genre of “poverty porn” media depictions, it felt difficult to finish the book without these established perceptions being confirmed or strengthened, rather than appreciating estate life in all its nuanced variety.
The second section presents an excellent basic overview of the Biblical material on poverty from the Law and Prophets in the Old Testament to the Gospel narratives and the teaching and practice of the early church. However, his reading of the texts is very much “plain sense” without exploring the contextual settings either of the writers or of today’s readers. One can sometimes detect a tendency to prioritise “the poor in spirit”, though without neglecting compassion for the materially poor.
Perhaps the biggest weakness is the limited treatment of the Kingdom of God as among us now but not yet on earth in fullness. The author is steeped in Reformed theology which stresses God’s sovereign rule over the whole universe, a doctrine which has led many Christians to redemptive involvement in art and culture, science, medicine and social care politics and business. Yet he does not promote this as within the mission of God.
This view could discourage the development of meaningful public theology, and Christian involvement in attempts to influence local decision makers or work for legislative reform to mitigate poverty, a theme very much part of the 19th Century evangelical heritage.
In the third and fourth sections, which concentrate on the life of the church, there are a number of statements that may likely be a cause of discontent. Readers from outside Reformed and Evangelical tribe will perceive a traditional gospel of exclusivity, narrowness and perhaps even arrogance.
The God McConnell offers is holy, just, and merciful, yet the vast majority of us seem destined (deservedly) for the eternal torments of hell. Church life and worship is centred on traditional expository sermons, and a ‘complementarian’ theology means that church leadership and authority is vested in men. Despite this, the book has some useful material on women’s ministries.
On the other hand, Christians within conservative Evangelical tribe may also likely to be provoked. White British Evangelicals abound in affluent suburbs, but are rarely found living and serving in inner city or estates communities. At best their churches provide occasional opportunities for urban Christians to share testimonies and stories of front-line work—and in return promise prayer, or sometimes some financial support (though large sums of money rarely trickle down to urban churches as David Robertson argues in Part 3.4).
Help in terms of long-term missionary personnel is extremely rare, while short term raids often do more harm than good. McConnell is critical without much nuance of “mercy ministries” (such as food banks and homeless shelters) especially when these are delivered by para church organisations. He argues that they tend to trap people in dependency and fail to communicate in words the gospel of salvation, simply by being too nice.
While I am in many ways enthusiastic about this clarion call to urban mission and rejoice in the work of McConnell and 20 Schemes, through which estate residents are coming to faith in Jesus and local churches are beginning to flourish, the book often appears to lack appreciation of the wider urban mission movement, its history and literature. Indeed, McConnell has little time for pluralism within Christianity: while mainline liberal denominations get some credit for being present in urban estates, they have abandoned the gospel, and charismatics and Pentecostals, (especially prosperity preachers) are seen as heretical.
I see some similarities between Mez McConell and the brilliant, if annoying General William Booth whose passion for “the Least, the Last and the Lost” of the book’s title, led to the foundation of the Salvation Army. The later development of that movement as a major charitable service provider suggests that the urban church cannot live by hellfire preaching alone.
The William Temple Foundation, in partnership with Leeds Church Institute, is delighted to launch the latest series in our ground-breaking podcast Staying with the Trouble. The series will run for the next six weeks, starting 7th June, 2022.
Entitled Perspectives on Poverty and Exclusion in Leeds and produced by Rosie Dawson, the series is anchored by Bishop James Jones, Bishop Emeritus of Liverpool. Via six interviews with key actors across the city, Bishop Jones traces the impact of the current cost of living crisis on the lives of ordinary citizens, and the relationships and practices of solidarity, care, compassion and justice that emerge to provide resilience and hope to so many facing hardship and despair.
As Bishop Jones summarises, these relationships and networks reflect ‘an organic regeneration’ that cuts deeply across religious, secular, ideological, cultural and ethnic divides.
Director of Research for the Foundation, Professor Chris Baker reflects, ‘In this Platinum Jubilee Year, with its emphasis on theme of service as exemplified by Queen Elizabeth, this series really resonates as it shows how daily acts of service and sacrificial leadership build resilience and hope across our communities in the darkest of times.’
Dr Helen Reid, Director, Leeds Church Institute says, ‘I commend the podcast series to all who love Leeds and are troubled by inequality here. The podcasts combine personal experience and local perspectives with insight, hope and action for building a fairer city.’
David Ormrod is Professor of Economic and Cultural History at University of Kent
My suggestion from the floor of the conference (sparked in part by several papers attempting to define the scope of Temple’s thinking for our current social order) was that we should recall the thinking of the Christian Left in the 1930s and 40s beside which Temple’s social thought can be seen in clearer perspective. This is especially important today for those who deplore the inequalities created by the dismantling of the welfare state from the 1980s. Although some in the conference and elsewhere see this as creating new opportunities for religious engagement, the former must view this state of affairs with alarm.
Christianity and Social Order opens with the clearest possible affirmation of the Church’s claim to be heard in relation to economic and political issues. Its historical reference points come directly from Tawney, and Temple’s description of the nineteenth-century pioneers of the Christian social movement affirms their significance in recovering the Church’s moral authority and commitment to social justice, in retreat since the post-Restoration decades. Since the late eighteenth century, urbanisation and industrialisation created conditions demanding social reform, but until the 1840s, the primary concern of reformers was still for individuals (pp. 1-10).
From the 1880s to 1945, we can identify a developing Christian and socialist convergence, and Temple’s contribution is best understood in this context. In 1937, Clement Attlee wrote, ‘…probably the majority of those who have built up the socialist movement in this country have been adherents of the Christian religion – and not merely adherents, but enthusiastic members of some religious body. There are probably more texts from the Bible enunciated from socialist platforms than from those of all other parties.’ The Malvern conference of 1941 marked the high point of these convergent forces, and as they have dissipated, something of an ethical void has opened up in our society.
During the interwar years, more than a dozen Christian socialist societies and movements flourished in Britain, with the express purpose of exercising a prophetic and vanguardist role within the churches and in society at large. We can identify two main tendencies within and amongst them. The first, that of the majority, was represented by Temple and Tawney focusing on the idea of an ‘ethical state’. The second and more radical approach, emerging during the late 1930s, was most cogently expressed by John Macmurray, deriving from his humanist-inclined philosophy and his encounter with the Marxist-inclined Christian Left and its publications. Victor Gollancz, John Lewis, Richard Acland, Stafford Cripps and John Collins played prominent roles.
The thought of the Christian Left developed at some distance from progressive Anglican social thought and its claims on a sense of British national identity. The incarnational principle, in Temple’s case, led to a conservative view of the church: the visible church was seen as the preferred instrument for inaugurating the kingdom of God. Furthermore, the relationship between the established church and the state had a special significance since the nation state was also seen as a divinely established means of bringing forward the kingdom. Hence the duties of Christian citizenship formed an important theme. As John Kent has pointed out, this rested on an Aristotelian view of politics in which state and society were identical – the ‘oneness of the world within the city’s walls’, the polis. For Temple, British national identity required a bonding religion, Anglicanism. Tawney, however, was much less optimistic about the potentialities of the Church of England which, he felt, ‘remains a class institution, making respectful salaams to property and gentility, and with too little faith in its own creed to call a spade a spade in the vulgar manner of the New Testament.’
Macmurray and his circle envisaged a moral community which transcended the boundaries of the nation state and the churches. Christian consciousness, he realised, was deeply embedded in society, extending well beyond the visible church. Above all, it was expressed in personal relations: the nature and quality of personal relations was the touchstone of the ethical society. By 1944, Temple saw the purpose of God as ‘the development of persons in community’, a formula very close to the former’s thinking. Macmurray, in turn, moved closer to the earlier concerns of mainstream Christian socialism as he came to realise the full extent to which German fascism had succeeded in asserting a rational control of society as a whole. Wartime debates within the Christian Left reflected a loss of faith in social systems which rested principally on rational planning and took a more humanistic turn. By 1945, the moment had arrived to translate the consensus achieved at Malvern into a new kind of ethical state.
This is the second of two reflections on the 80th Anniversary Conference of Christianity and the Social Order
Victoria Turner, PhD Candidate, World Christianity, University of Edinburgh
This conference was jointly organized by the William Temple Foundation and the new Centre for Anglican History and Theology at the University of Kent, hosted in the grounds of Canterbury Cathedral. The conference sought to both historically contextualize and reflect on Temple’s most famous publication, Christianity and The Social Order and also question its and Temple’s relevance for our world today.
The first paper was delivered by Professor Kenneth Fincham from the University of Kent. Professor Fincham compared William Temple to William Laud who was Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633 and executed in 1645 with the falling of Charles I. The biggest similarity of both Archbishops was their conviction that the church should absolutely be involved in political affairs. Whereas this legacy has been avidly remembered for Temple, it has fallen away from the memory of Laud, receiving only a brief mention in his entry to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.[1]
I appreciated this paper, but questioned its applicability in this conference, especially at the start of the day. Fincham took for granted that the audience were already Temple “experts” and the concentration was on Laud. I was hungry and eager to begin learning about Temple at our 10am start, so although this scheduling made sense chronologically, conceptually, it was strange to begin a conference that celebrated Temple by not focusing on Temple, especially for a non-conformist already feeling a little out of place in a very Anglican setting.
The second paper was more what I imagined would be presented at the conference. My interest in Temple comes from his social justice work, especially its roots which was formed when he was studying in Oxford and volunteered with the University settlements and also his ecumenical work. Being a student of mission at the University of Edinburgh, the impact of the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference of 1910 where Temple was a young steward is continuously reflected on. Part of my PhD is exploring George MacLeod who started the Iona Community in Scotland in 1938, and MacLeod was inspired by the Toc H movement, founded by Tubby Clayton during World War 1, which also finds its roots in the University Settlement movement. I enjoyed Simon Lee’s careful recounting of how the mission of Tonybee Hall changed as the ‘leaders’ understood their working-class context better and how this incarnational theology and emphasis on listening to the poor continued in Temple as archbishop.
Elaine Graham blessed us with a superb paper that questioned how Temple would react to today’s questions surrounding gender and sexuality. Firstly Graham outlined the huge social shifts that have occurred since 1942 and warned of the dangers of too easily applying Temple’s ideas to our context. Yet by highlighting his incarnational theology, middle axioms idea and insistence on listening to the marginalized (for the elites to make the decision on their behalf) she explained how she believed Temple would be affirming of creating spaces for discourse, encouraging the theology of common grace and perhaps even following Susanna Cornwall’s idea of going back to virtue ethics and asking generally, what is it about a marriage that as Christians we value. Jeremy Carrette stayed in our context of today in the next paper but applied Temple to our climate crisis. Temple was clear in his stance that land was not a mere resource and should be used for personal profit, only for the common good. Carrette successfully argued Temple in 1942 pushed us to regain our reverence for the earth.
The third panel of the day was entitled ‘Church, Society and Race’ and for me were the least academically stimulating. Robin Gill had an interesting concept in posing Temple and Desmond Tutu as both ‘speaking truth to power’ in their own time but I felt the omission of an acknowledgement of their incredibly different lived experiences clouded the paper and made me question the applicability of the comparison. Whereas Tutu had to ‘speak truth to power’ to fight for his humanity to be recognized, Temple chose to spend time with those less fortunate than himself and learn how to alleviate their position (not without paternalistic undertones) without ever having the threat of losing his privilege. The truth cost Tutu a lot more, across a much larger distance. Sanjee Perera’s paper was given as more of a sermon, where her passion for her job in racial justice for the Church of England came across but it felt like Temple quotes were slotted in here and there rather than structuring her talk on how Temple relates to her work. The question that interrogated Temple’s relationship with Beveridge, who was a member of the Eugenics Society I thought was important, especially as it pushed another conference member to talk about Temple’s work with the Jewish Community during the war and eventually setting up today’s Council for Christians and Jews.
Chris Baker explored how to build back society in our post-pandemic times and wondered how Temple’s elitist leanings and trust of institutions clash with our culture, especially among the young today. Finally, Stephen Spencer gave an excellent talk that explored the collaborative effort that made Temple’s ‘Christianity and the Social Order’, including it being peer-reviewed by Keynes, Tawney and other academics. He also argued that this book represents just one moment in an important wider context of consultative methodology that engaged theology, industrialization, economics and politics.
The conference speakers and topics were varied but the audience was not. It was overwhelmingly white and male despite the William Temple Foundation being overtly progressive and contextual and a number of the conference papers explicitly being contextualized for today. The audience were generally church historians or theologians interested in Temple, and although receptive to applying him for today, generally wanting to explore his theology and legacy. The attempt to merge a historical conference with a public theology conference, inviting both Temple experts and not, created in my opinion a confused atmosphere but still a hospitable and lovely one, especially felt in the visit to the archive. I quickly felt able to ask questions and by around lunch brave enough to talk to participants in break out spaces.
This blog is the third of three produced by Research Fellow Dr Matthew Barber-Rowell, as part of our Fellows Fund Programme. In this series, Dr Barber-Rowell sets out the potential role for intra-communities dialogue and local leadership for Curating Spaces of Hope in a post-pandemic society.
In this final blog, I set out local leadership based on characteristics drawn from stories and contributions from over 900 people who have shaped Spaces of Hope. My contention is that these characteristics can provide us with a map of our local leadership potential, which we can make real and concrete by ‘curating’ them, using five principles: freedom, relationship, service, affect, and authenticity.
My argument in this blog is that if we can map our different and creative potential, we can then use these principles as the compass to guide us through uncertainty, using the characteristics as way marks on the map. I will turn to this now and then conclude this series by issuing a call to action to sojourn and then journey on together.
Local Leadership:
Spaces of Hope has been coproduced by a wide variety of people from diverse backgrounds and with diverse experiences, ranging from refugees and homeless communities, to senior religious leaders, to differently abled volunteers, to chief executives, from community workers to academics, from local authority officers, to foodbank users. Examples of local leadership have emerged from anyone and anywhere. We all possess that potential.
Spaces of Hope research has found that local leadership can be characterised as:
incarnational; where the potential we have is made real by the things that we do.
negotiated in that we understand what can be done and develop this in conjunction with and with respect for others.
Including different roles and responsibilities. It might be that we are specialists in a given subject, or generalists in that we wear different hats. Both are needed. Both have value.
Both formal and informal. It might be that we are a local leader by profession; appointed within an organisation, or we might have been voted into office to represent the views of swaths of people. Or it might be that we are a local leader in a more informal sense bringing invaluable service through the things we do and the associations we have, whether we know it or not.
These characteristics of local leadership are best understood in relationship with things that offer context to that leadership. Relationships with the place we live and work, the service that we offer and the potential that relationships themselves bring for transformation to take place in our lives. What motivates us, the beliefs, values and worldviews that emerge from the context we are in, the foundations we build our lives upon, and the values that we form together. The things we do when we interface with others, the way we communicate with others, offer welcome and care, and how what we do relates to voluntary work and professional services and systems, alike.
Local leadership is also steeped in the prophetic and authentic stories which set out how we have dealt with things in our lives and how they might inform a vision for the future. Local leadership is also at its most effective when it finds the flow of what is happening in the world around us, working with others in networks and partnership to create movements that can both count the cost of change and embrace it, together.
These characteristics and relationships are both underpinning the way local leadership can be understood and are formational for the Spaces of Hope approach that I am offering here. The most pertinent of these for you will emerge from intra-communities dialogues, but they will all have their part to play in the urgent task of mobilising local leadership for post-pandemic society.
I have addressed how we might map our uncertain terrain and the characteristics of local leadership. Now I turn to our compass to guide the way.
Principles for Local Leadership
Spaces of Hope has drawn on a wide variety of inspirations and influences since it emerged in 2016. These sources include: the leadership by experience of people in the north west of England; the work of public intellectuals e.g. William Temple, who offered guiding principles for people to participate in society; interdisciplinary scholarly work from theology to philosophy to sociology, to social policy to urban geography. With these in mind, the five principles that have emerged are:
Freedom: this is the potential we have within us and the ability we have to make that real and tangible. Put simply, taking responsibility within our circumstances and sharing the fullest possible expression of our personality.
Relationship: We are in relationship with everyone and everything around us, from the people we love to the places we live, to the rest of the world as we see it. The principle of relationship helps us to understand the freedom that we have positively, in terms of freedom for others, as opposed to freedom from others.
Service: the expression of freedom, in relationship with others is, service. Service is the incarnation of the potential that we each have and the expression of leadership in the multitude of different ways that this manifests itself.
Affect: Expressions of service can come in a wide variety of forms, each can be both subtle and significant and are simultaneously synonymous with hope. The principle of affect is a guide to be aware of and sensitive to everything around us. As the pandemic has taught us, the smallest of sources can bring hope.
Authenticity: Finally, we should consider if the freedom we are sharing through relationship with others and expressing through service that is affective and affected by what is around us, fits within our wider story. This is not an inward sense of authenticity that we decide upon for ourselves, but an outward question for others to answer about whether what we are doing is truly hopeful and hope filled.
Intra-communities dialogue, set out in blog two, helps us to map the characteristics and relationships that flow through the spaces we are in. Applying these principles to them offers us a compass for guiding local leadership. What I am proposing is that we now explore together. Journeying on to discover how we might better talk to one another about what has happened to us, identifying the things that we care about and taking them forward. I am proposing that we engage in intra-communities dialogue and curate the different and creative potential characteristics and relationships that make up the spaces we inhabit to form concrete and hope filled local leadership for post-pandemic society.
I am seeking spaces to explore this further. This process will leave you with the outcomes to take forward yourself and also feed into the understanding of what it means to Curate Spaces of Hope. This is an invitation to join a journey that can take us forward for years to come.
Biography: Dr Matthew Barber-Rowell has been working in activism and academia in the north west of England for the past 10 years during which time he developed Spaces of Hope. Matthew is a Research Fellow with the William Temple Foundation and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. During the pandemic Matthew supported local food provision; packing and delivering food parcels in his local community, acted as a trustee of his local church and was a team member delivering UK wide COVID research. Matthew has led work scoping responses to Net Zero in the north west, and is continuing this work through ecological change projects within churches in the north west. Matthew completed his PhD at Goldsmiths University of London, which discerned and defined Spaces of Hope, offering the basis for new work developing intra – communities dialogue and local leadership.
This blog is the second of three produced by Research Fellow Dr Matthew Barber-Rowell, as part of our Fellows Fund Programme. In this series, Dr Barber-Rowell sets out the potential role for intra-communities dialogue and local leadership for Curating Spaces of Hope in a post-pandemic society. This will be followed by blogs published on the 10th of May.
In my first blog, I set out the uncertain context we are living in, prompted by the pandemic, climate emergency, Brexit, the war in Ukraine and the cost of living crisis. I posed the question of how we might respond to this uncertainty. I introduced Curating Spaces of Hope and proposed that this is an overarching approach I believe offers potential for the development of intra-communities dialogue and local leadership, in a post-pandemic society.
Spaces of Hope Dialogues
In this blog, I turn to intra-communities dialogue (ICD) and its significance to this new proposed agenda. Dialogue has been formational for Spaces of Hope. In 2017 I was commissioned by a local authority in northwest England to develop networked gatherings across the borough. I used dialogue to support the faith, community and voluntary sector to respond to the impacts of austerity, divisions exposed by Brexit campaigning, unprecedented changes to public services and a growing epidemic in mental health largely caused by social isolation and loneliness. This commission followed on from Vanguard work exploring Health as a Social Movement, led by the Royal Society of Arts, of which Spaces of Hope played a small part. The issues faced struck right at the heart of civil society, impacting personal resilience and the community resources change to public services relied on.
The Spaces of Hope dialogues took place at different community hubs across the borough, engaging nearly 170 people across 9 gatherings from 70+ community organisations, who brought nearly 300 perspectives on what Spaces of Hope meant to them and their perceived barriers to realising those Spaces of Hope in their lives. A case study for the Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society in England summarised these dialogues as
“bringing together innovative mixes of civil society actors – from professional community practitioners through to individual community activists – to ‘meaning-make’ as a response to experiences of pointlessness and emptiness in personal, community and professional life.”
A Local Authority Officer said whilst reflecting on the dialogues
“In the past we have had a situation where the policy team has been the policy team … and [use] this kind of council speak … talking in the language of hope or hearts [feelings] over the last relatively short period of time [has exhibited] a shift.”
65% of respondents associated Spaces of Hope with personal vulnerability, personal freedom and social connection and 40% understood people’s suspicions and perceptions around different cultures and worldviews to be barriers to Spaces of Hope. This intervention opened up scope for values based dialogues within this locality. In terms of impact, a senior advisor within Public Health in Greater Manchester said
“[Spaces of Hope] delivers both added value in existing work and produces new projects and networks across neighbourhoods and localities.”
1/3 of respondents said that the Spaces of Hope dialogues had catalysed something new within their own work. Further, 90% of respondents said that they valued the Spaces of Hope dialogues and would participate in them in the future. Spaces of Hope gatherings continued. All told, 35 dialogues took place in 36 months from October 2016-2019.
The Spaces of Hope dialogues were not without interruptions. For example the Beast from the East cancelled one gathering at short notice. Inconvenient yes, but nothing compared to how we experience things now. The pandemic struck in March 2020 and lockdown ensued. UK wide research was conducted into the response, including the role of faith groups during the pandemic. This work found that whilst conditions of uncertainty have been accelerated, there was an affinity between local authorities and groups with different beliefs values and worldviews, who had stepped up during the pandemic. Local authorities wanted to capture and preserve this for the future. The report noted,
“Almost every local authority in the study endorses a commitment to build on this and to deepen relationships supporting long-term policy interventions and partnerships in ways that are different to the current practice and norms.”
This was followed up with parliamentary debate in Feb 2021, which suggests a need for networked and values based dialogues is only growing in response to the uncertainties we are facing.
Intra-communities Dialogue
The uncertainty of the last 2 years has forced us to reconsider where we find hope. Face masks have become a symbol of hope. Baking bread between Zoom calls brought hope to our work day, whilst we reconciled ourselves to the stress of the nowhere office. Our morning walk became both acts of obedience; adhering to laws prescribing one piece of exercise per day, and an act of defiance against the virus, glimpsing forgotten freedom, before returning to our COVID induced confines. New frontlines emerged through pop up hubs packing and delivering parcels of hope. Street level organising and WhatsApp groups nurtured new networked responses to the chaos of COVID and opened up spaces of connection within a changed and uncertain landscape, catalysing alliances and empowering local communities, making the case for a new modus operandi.
With this in mind, the question becomes, how are we going to do it? How do we hold together these diverse experiences and discern the leadership we need? Last year the Journal of Dialogue Studies published an article where I set out intra-communities dialogue as mapping and listening to shared matters of concern, of those with different beliefs values and worldviews, sharing and shaping public spaces together. I have given examples of how listening and mapping of this kind can take place. Intra-communities dialogues is a development and a deepening of the Spaces of Hope approach that succeeded pre-pandemic. I have shown how we might proceed, through networked gatherings and dialogues. With this in mind, I am proposing that we use intra-communities dialogues within new learning communities made up of those who responded to the pandemic in their local community, to reflect on and discern how we Curate Spaces of Hope within post-pandemic society.
In my final blog I will set out what I mean by ‘Curating’ and its implications for local leadership for post pandemic society.
Biography: Dr Matthew Barber-Rowell has been working in activism and academia in the north west of England for the past 10 years during which time he developed Spaces of Hope. Matthew is a Research Fellow with the William Temple Foundation and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. During the pandemic Matthew supported local food provision; packing and delivering food parcels in his local community, acted as a trustee of his local church and was a team member delivering UK wide COVID research. Matthew has led work scoping responses to Net Zero in the north west, and is continuing this work through ecological change projects within churches in the north west. Matthew completed his PhD at Goldsmiths University of London, which discerned and defined Spaces of Hope, offering the basis for new work developing intra – communities dialogue and local leadership.
This blog is the first of three produced by Research Fellow Dr Matthew Barber-Rowell, as part of our Fellows Fund Programme. In this series, Dr Barber-Rowell sets out the potential role for intra-communities dialogue and local leadership for Curating Spaces of Hope in a post-pandemic society. This will be followed by blogs published on the 3rd and 10th May.
The COVID-19 Pandemic has impacted us in ways we could not have imagined two years ago. It is just one of an increasing number of global movements transforming our lives. We have experienced years of austerity following the global financial crash in 2008, we are facing the consequences of Brexit, a Climate Emergency, the COVID-19 Pandemic, the War in Ukraine, an energy crisis, and a new cost of living crisis in the UK. How might we live in these uncertain times?
In this series of blogs, I will set out a possible way for answering this question. The first blog will set out context for our experiences of uncertainty and an approach that has become known as ‘Curating Spaces of Hope’. I will set out what this is, how it emerged from contexts of uncertainty, and what it might offer us now. I will then introduce the tools that have been produced as part of Spaces of Hope, intra-communities dialogue, and an approach to local leadership, which I will discuss further in blogs two and three, exploring the possibilities they open up for post-pandemic society.
Living in uncertain times:
The pandemic precipitated paralysis in people’s lives. Social isolation was imposed upon us. Emergency legislation limited our ability to leave our homes, see our friends and family and go to work. If we were lucky that was as bad as it got. Financial and food poverty were exacerbated, and what had been described as a mental health crisis was accelerated. We faced a silent and pervasive foe to which we had no resistance and to which we are only now considering how to live with it. We lived hybrid lives.
Our digital lives offered both solace and a sad substitute for social connection. Loved ones died without anyone at their side. Weddings were cancelled. These experiences came hot on the heels of Brexit, which opened up and laid bare the divisions in the UK, across the nations in our union and locally where tribes of ‘brexiteers’ or a ‘remainers’ delineated differences about what and who we were for, and against.
Always on the horizon is the global Climate Emergency. The COP26 climate conference brought hope of a climate sea change amongst the pandemic storm. The target of Net Zero has sparked activism and galvanised individuals to hold industries and institutions to account. And now we see War in Europe. Whilst we do not have to face conflict directly ourselves, it is all too close. How we support those suffering is a live question. Ructions following sanctions on Russia, sets the stage for a cost of living crisis affecting our day to day lives.
As we emerge from lockdown, the ‘Living with COVID’ policy is hot off the press. Therein we are faced with three considerations. 1) life is uncertain and will not look like it did before. 2) legal limits are being lifted, but risks remain. 3) We are faced with adapting how we live in an uncertain world, becoming more resilient, beginning with taking personal responsibility. The time is now ripe to innovate and to determine for ourselves and collectively what life looks like in a post-pandemic society.
Curating Spaces of Hope
The response I am proposing is ‘Curating Spaces of Hope’. This has emerged from my own personal journey of suffering and sense making, catalysed by the 2008 global financial crash, austerity, unemployment, loneliness and isolation, abuse and discrimination. It was a journey traversing uncertain and complex issues, necessitating personal reflection and exploration of how the beliefs and values we hold relate to day to day life, work, social relationships, and our capacity to live and work in a healthy and hopeful way. From 2010-2020 this journey changed from a personal piece of reflection, to a social movement of over 900 people, all contributing, each from their own experiences, to the iterative development of a framework and way of working pertinent to producing fruit out of uncertain times.
Curating Spaces of Hope then is a response to the uncertain, uninvited and unexpected experiences that shape our lives. It is at once a personal response to the wide variety of difficulties that life presents us with and also a productive and pioneering paradigm that offers a means of mapping the content of our lives and coproducing nuanced and creative solutions to the shared problems we now face. What I am proposing, is to use Spaces of Hope to develop intra-communities dialogues, which will allow people to reflect on and map what has happened to them, and also to equip them to develop local leadership as a compass to guide us through the uncertainty in our lives. In the next blog I will set out what I mean by intra-communities dialogues and what it might mean for us in post-pandemic society.
Biography: Dr Matthew Barber-Rowell has been working in activism and academia in the north west of England for the past 10 years during which time he developed Spaces of Hope. Matthew is a Research Fellow with the William Temple Foundation and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. During the pandemic Matthew supported local food provision; packing and delivering food parcels in his local community, acted as a trustee of his local church and was a team member delivering UK wide COVID research. Matthew has led work scoping responses to Net Zero in the north west, and is continuing this work through ecological change projects within churches in the north west. Matthew completed his PhD at Goldsmiths University of London, which discerned and defined Spaces of Hope, offering the basis for new work developing intra – communities dialogue and local leadership.
In recent years, victims of church-related abuse have complained bitterly about their treatment by the church. What has gone so badly wrong, and how could the church do better? Falling Among Thieves seeks to outline a theological understanding of church-related abuse, and the church’s role in ‘re-dressing’ the victim—drawing insights from the story of the Good Samaritan. The text is preceded by a Foreword from Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York, who both applauds and responds to Graystone’s words.
Andrew Graystone comments:
“I’m haunted by the scores of people I have met whose lives have been wrecked by their encounters with Christian leaders. In almost every case, the way the church has responded has caused as much harm—and often far more—than the original abuse. Over the years that I have been walking this road, the leaders of the contemporary church have failed to deal with this reality.
Abuse happens in every hierarchical institution—but there is no excuse for the church responding to its victims in such damaging and destructive ways. I hope that Falling Among Thieves will go some way to helping the church think deeply about the damage it has done, and how it might begin to respond more appropriately.”
Chris Baker, Director of Research at the Foundation comments:
“The William Temple Foundation is honoured to publish this important piece of theology by Andrew Graystone that is both a call for justice and a call for reconciliation around the topic of church-based abuse. We hope it will make a positive and substantive contribution to this serious issue.”
You can also read John Root’s review of Israel’s book here.
The death of George Floyd in May 2020 happened at the beginning of a global pandemic. Whilst the issue of racial injustice has been with us for a while, the pandemic did help the global community to be more conscious of the suffering that many people of colour have been facing for decades.
Many of the questions people are asking today revolve around their humanity and their identity. There are questions around sexuality and identity, gender and identity, disability and identity, race and identity, and so on. It is the last of these questions, on race and identity, that I want to narrow down on in this conversation—because the murder of George Floyd has led to the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. Yet the Black Lives Matter movement, like any of the other issues highlighted above, has become politicised and potentially controversial. Some people view it as controversial because they think saying that black lives matter means saying other lives do not matter.
Let me start to unpack this by reflecting on the issue theologically. An anthropological view of scripture affirms that humanity, that is everyone, is created in God’s image (see Genesis 1:26; 2:7). We are all bearers of God’s image irrespective of colour, nationality, social status, ethnicity, religion or culture. This means that our humanity is rooted in God; in essence, our human identity is derived from God. We bear God’s image because we are the signature stamp of God’s creation—and therefore all lives matter. All lives matter to God and are valuable because we are God’s handiwork. Our humanity, bearing semblance to God, also reveals a collective human identity and therefore a shared human identity.
If we agree that all lives do indeed matter and we share this understanding that we have a shared humanity rooted in God, then it should concern us all when black lives are made cheap. Black lives are made cheap when they are not seen as human, when they are enslaved, colonised, indentured, raped, exploited, seen as inferior, marginalised, oppressed, lynched, segregated, disproportionately imprisoned, murdered, and neo-colonised. The best way for us as a church to understand the message of Black Lives Matter theologically is through Paul’s body metaphor: “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26, NRSV). Black Lives Matter is saying that people of African descent worldwide, as part of humanity, are suffering from various forms of injustices—and their pain matters. Will our collective humanity seek to understand this pain and respond, or will we neglect that part of the human family? For the church, this is an even more pressing issue, because if we fail to address the hurt in God’s family, that is the body of Christ, we are inadvertently neglecting ourselves.
If the UK church in its breadth of diversity is going to be relevant today and be able to speak into issues of racial inequality, we must seek to engage intelligently. The church cannot afford to keep Black Lives Matter at arm’s length. It is important for the church to engage as Black Lives Matter raises questions around the issues of race and identity for many, particularly young people. If the church is going to make the gospel relevant to millennials and Generation Z, then we must engage some of the concerns of Black Lives Matter. During the Windrush period (1940s-1960s), the UK church lost a generation of African Caribbean youth because they saw how the church had mistreated their parents, and many of them turned away. If the UK church does not engage the concerns of Black Lives Matter, we will not only loose black youth, but also other young people, because Black Lives Matter is a multicultural international movement.
One of the impacts of the pandemic is that people are asking more questions about their humanity and their identity. This is because the Black Lives Matter movement has raised critical questions around what it means to be black in a western context. Whilst I am aware that Black Lives Matter is controversial for some, I believe that the UK church must find ways to engage some of the questions being posed because they are theological questions that require missional engagement.
On Wednesday 18th March we were delighted to welcome the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu as the presenter of the inaugural William Temple Foundation Annual Lecture. Addressing a 130-strong audience, in the magnificent setting of the Council Chamber at Leeds Civic Hall, the Archbishop’s resounding message was on the need to reimagine the political landscape, placing the dignity of every person as our shared priority. Channelling Temple, Archbishop Sentamu reminded the audience that the state exists for the citizen, and not the citizen for the state. Therefore, there is no false distinction between mission and politics.
The lecture began with a video clip of Archbishop William Temple addressing a packed Albert Hall in London, in 1942.
For Archbishop Sentamu, politics is about recognising and bringing into being the innate dignity of every citizen as a child of God. Central to his argument is Temple’s three social principles based on freedom, fellowship and service. Freedom is not an individualistic freedom from something (away from others and responsibility) but a freedom to do something – i.e. take responsibility for the way we live our lives and policies and decisions. In Christian terms this means having the freedom to eradicate the major social ills and fighting against social injustice. A freedom to love our neighbours as ourselves. The state has a role in promoting this freedom, to help others by providing the basic structures that liberate us to do this: i.e. enforcing laws around basic liberties, providing opportunities to earn a decent living, and providing key infrastructure like healthcare, education, and well-being support.
The church since the 1985 Faith in the City report has lost its way and voice in the public sphere by becoming obsessed with internal issues to do with sexuality and gender. But now the way is clear for a full-blooded engagement and shaping of the public sphere.
The Archbishop spoke on ideas of fellowship – the recognition that we are all mutually dependent on each other and a rejection of the consumerism and materialism that has dominated Britain for the past 30 years. And so, as in the opening video clip (above), both the state and the church have a role in making sure that fellowship is fostered.
Freedom and fellowship work best when we seek not our own wellbeing but the general well-being of all – it is through service to family and community that society as a whole benefits. Our wider loyalties can be used to check our narrower one. For Archbishop Sentamu (like Temple), the road to moral and economic recovery is a path not to riches but to service. The Archbishop offered some practical case studies of how this could be done – e.g. credit unions, the Living Wage campaign (which he has been directly involved in as Chair of the Living Wage Commission). The Living Wage campaign is of particular importance, according to the Archbishop, because as a society we simply cannot afford to pay people less than they can afford to live on. He suggested challenges at both ends of the generational spectrum, stating that a society with such high youth unemployment is storing up problems for the future, whilst also suggesting that it is a difficult time to be growing old.
Archbishop Sentamu spent some time focusing on the role of business in the creation of a fair and equitable society, with the notion of a common profit. He spoke of inspiring examples from the ‘Chocolate Trinity’, Quaker businessmen Cadbury, Rowntree and Fry, and how profit was not the solitary important factor in their business models. The Leeds audience was perhaps unsurprised to hear mention of the fact that for every 14 jobs created in the south of England in the last year, only 1 was created in the north. This north/south divide appears to be of particular concern for the Archbishop of York. As such, he made it clear that the economic recovery should not be understood as an end in itself, rather it is a means to restoring human dignity.
Finally Archbishop Sentamu offered a challenge to the audience, stating that this event should be a catalyst for all of us to play our part in creating a more flourishing and deeper form of political engagement. The transformation is up to us!
We would like to thank the Archbishop of York for delivering such an engaging and thought-provoking lecture. Thank you to Leeds Civic Hall and the Leader’s office at Leeds City Council. And thank you to all who attended, asked questions and enjoyed the reception afterwards.
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