Our Director of Research Chris Baker, reflects on the conference ‘Building a Politics of Hope’ held in central London on Tuesday 24 February, in partnership with Church Urban Fundand the Joint Public Issues Team.
The run-up to many of the recent UK elections has usually focused on who is competent enough to manage the economy. Since the late 1970s, the neo-liberal consensus has been that market economies provide not only the aspiration but the means by which we run a successful economy and therefore a successful society.
But with the financial crash of 2008, and the increasing poverty and inequality which has followed the introduction of systemic austerity programmes, there has been a huge crash in trust, in both the market and mainstream politics. This lack of trust has been reinforced by a perceived increase in political corruption which has seen the rise of so-called ‘antipolitics’. This means voting for single issue parties who promise apparently simple solutions to complex and intractable problems; for example, the idea that a nation state can take control of its borders and dictate the terms of engagement with and in the wider world. This sort of politics is usually based on appeals to unity and purity which involve the demonization of others – immigrants, welfare “scroungers”, other nations within the UK. A progressive politics (i.e. expansive and willing to engage with diversity and building trust) appears to be in short supply in an increasingly insecure and fearful environment, which even the present promise of economic growth no longer seems to quell.
This political landscape was the background for our recent conference entitled Building a Politics of Hope: Exploring the role and impact of faith-based leadership in local communities. Several key themes emerged from the discussions and reflection generated by the three case studies we explored.
The first case study [listen to the audio recording] was dubbed ‘an innovative experiment in community empowerment’ in the Hodge Hill area of Birmingham; an area of high deprivation and diversity which recently lost its church building when it was demolished. The vicar, Al Barrett pointed out that his parish was full of those ‘others’ so roundly condemned by certain sections of the media and establishment politicians: immigrants, Muslims, single parents and unemployed youth. It was a community used to being ‘done to’ – labelled as dysfunctional and in need of ‘expert’ intervention and surveillance.
The church community perceived the need to change the narrative of those living in the community as a first step to creating a new sense of hope and transformation. This it did conducting one to one conversations and ‘hearing into speech’ the issues and aspirations of the local community. This led to the production of a theatre and culture space and the opening of a new community hub called Open Door which operates according to the principle of the five Ps: place; people; presence; provision and participation.
This highly relational approach has not only shifted the cultural narrative, but also the political one. The initiative has reconfigured the relationship between the community and Local Authority as well as the institutional church who now understands the three key questions emerging from these new processes of co-production and the order in which they should be addressed.
What can we do with neighbourhood power
What do we need some external support with?
What do we need external agencies to do?
Up to now, external authorities would have addressed these questions in precisely the opposite order.
The second case study [listen to the audio recording], presented by Mohammed Mamdani, was a relatively new Muslim-run community foodbank and Kitchen in West London, called Sufra, a word which has strong connotations of hospitality and dining in many different languages. 90% of the people who access their services are non-Muslim The provision of food support is not viewed as an end in itself – indeed Mohammed was critical of the proliferation and politicisation of foodbanks as new expressions of institutionalised poverty. Rather Sufra see their project as an entry point to accessing other life opportunities, including a food academy offering accredited training for 16-25 year olds who are not in employment, education or training.
Sufra will also be a venue for pre-election hustings, reinforcing the idea that faith-based spaces of welfare are also becoming spaces of political debate and conscientisation. Mohammed thinks that Sufra represents a new space for third generation British Muslims whereby they volunteer more and become engaged politically and practically to meet the needs of the local community of which they are part, rather than the more traditional route of giving charity to global Muslim projects.
The third case study focussed on the launch by an Anglican priest, Chris Sunderland, of the Bristol Pound – a local currency initiative designed, in Chris’s words, ‘to give people a taste of a different form of money, that was embedded in the local economy and could produce a new values-led community of exchange’. The initiative, which had grown from several years of developing community allotments and environmental campaigns in Bristol, aimed at addressing climate change issues. The Bristol Pound was launched in 2012 and is currently used by several hundred business and individuals. It has been formally recognised as an official currency by the Bank of England.
The next challenge is to get the Bristol Pound used more widely in poorer areas of the city as a spur to setting up new co-operatives, social enterprises and pop-up markets. Overall the aim of Chris and his fellow trustees (who come from all faith traditions and none) is to ‘… bring people in touch with local producers, and encourage the uptake of fresh food through using buying groups that will order food through a bespoke web tool’.
So what lessons can we draw from these creative and diverse examples of faith-based welfare and economic engagement and what do they tell us a new politics of hope?
First, these ‘spaces’ of engagement, often based on affinities and networks and beyond the reach and approval of institutions (such as political parties and religious institutions) are ‘cross-over spaces’ of engagement between all faiths and none. Old binary ways of looking at the world based on rigid demarcations of religion, ideology and ethnicity (such as in the multicultural politics of the 80s and 90s) seem remarkably outmoded and irrelevant to many citizens who simply long to reconnect economics and politics to things that really matter. Two urban critical geographers, Paul Cloke and Justin Beaumont, define the growing significance of these new spaces of engagement as ‘… a coming together of citizens who might previously have been divided by differences in theological, political or moral principles – a willingness to work together to address crucial social issues in the city, and in doing so put aside other frameworks of difference involving faith and secularism’.
Second, is the common narrative or political philosophy that lies at the heart of all these projects; namely a radical and relational hospitality by which these new affinities and networks of action and outrage can be nurtured into a new spaces and practices of hope. Key to this radical hospitality and openness is the idea of ‘hearing into voice’ those of our fellow citizens who have been marginalised but in ways that totally negates the ‘Why me?’ victim mentality on which much of the current anti-politics is based. Here, in these new spaces of political conscientisation and progressive citizenship the emphasis is on relational belonging and solidarity, not stigmatisation and technological fixing outside of a moral framework.
Third is the growing evidence of the ways on which these new practices of hope and ethical citizenship are feeding back up into the political and institutional chains of command, thus forcing institutions like local authorities and churches for example, to rethink their priorities and make them more responsive and effective for those on the ground.
One suspects that Westminster politics and the core of the banking systems will want to cling most stubbornly to outmode and disconnected ways of exercising power. But, as one respondent in our conference pointed out, faith-based welfare and social justice programmes not only articulate an alternative vison of society; they practically show what it can look like, and invite others to join them. There is ample evidence to suggest that this is in fact what more and more of our citizens are doing: looking for new local solutions to enduring problems in way that express a deep moral pragmatism.
Faith-based spaces and initiatives are becoming the location of choice where these hopes and aspirations can be expressed. This is what a politics of hope begins to look like. All of us have a role to play in ensuring that it flourishes in the hard challenges that lie ahead of us the other side of May 7th, whichever political party or parties are in power.
Much has been written in the past week about the unresolved relationship between religious and secular identities, as well as on freedom of speech in a pluralistic democratic state. There is huge uncertainty as to what the traumatic events of the last few days herald for the future direction of France as a nation (and indeed Europe as a whole). Will France become a nation that learns to be at ease with diversity, and especially the right for religious identities, practices and discourses to be visibly expressed in the public sphere? That seemed to be the overwhelming sentiment of the millions of French citizens from all backgrounds who gathered to reclaim the public space in the name of tolerance, inclusion and fraternity over the weekend.
In contrast, there is still the possibility for France to become a nation unable to address the complexities of past-colonial histories and rapid change, allowing the loud (but minority) voices of division and simplistic ‘them and us’ rhetoric to prevail? This latter voice holds little prospect of moving forward – it is a politics based on regressive (i.e. inward looking) fear, rather than progressive (i.e. outward looking) hope.
Although extremism is not its explicit focus, William Temple Foundation’s forthcoming conference on the theme of Politics of Hope: Exploring the role and impact of faith-based leadership in local communities goes right to the heart of the issues of the past week. Namely, how do we construct a local progressive politics of hope that works across ideological and cultural divides to produce outcomes that reflect the common aspirations of most citizens for a just, inclusive and flourishing state?
The first is to highlight the increasingly significant role of progressive (i.e. outward looking) local religious leadership for those in government and local authorities. Faith groups are generally one of the most effective and trusted catalysts for progressive social change, especially in communities facing the greatest deficits in public services as a result of austerity politics. The sort of questions we will be exploring are: Are faith groups now the catalysts for progressive alliances across faith and secular divides? How might the policy landscape change if this narrative was openly discussed as part of a debate on new forms of political engagement and activism?
The second aim is to inspire and create new thinking within faith groups themselves as to the possibility of playing more upfront roles as political leaders and facilitators. This, it is hoped, will enhance their confidence and creativity in the face of misunderstanding and occasional mistrust from some (but by no means all) secular agencies.
The conference will meet these aims by creating an interactive event in which three examples of faith-based welfare will be presented, followed by a facilitated reflection process that will allow the full impact of these projects to emerge: what has changed since 2008; who is volunteering within the spaces provided by faith-based welfare and social care; how should we define impacts; what can we learn about good practice?
The three case studies that will shape the thinking and refection of the conference are: an ecumenical community project pioneering innovative experiments in building local community in Hodge Hill, East Birmingham, presented by Rev. Al Barrett; Eat n Meet – a food programme for homeless and vulnerable people in Leicester run by the local Muslim community and presented by Salma Ravat; and an exploration of alternative economies focussed on justice/shalom and based on the establishment of a local currency called the Bristol Pound, presented by Chris Sunderland.
The conference concludes with a free public lecture by Steve Chalke MBE who is the founder of Oasis UK. His lecture, based on the title of the conference, will explore how faith groups are taking up the challenges and opportunities presented by the shift to an austerity-localism landscape and the tensions and pitfalls this involves: how to be both authentic and inclusive; how to model best practice for others; how to address structural inequality whilst caring for the individual; how do we understand the new covenant between the state, the market and civil society; what is the role of religion in all of this?
The main question that I will be bringing to the conference is this: Will the new forms of engagement and solidarity epitomised by these case studies help identify the path ahead for a progressive localism that seeks to create flourishing and resilient communities for all? Or will the goodwill, hard work and creativity of both the faith sector and wider community and voluntary sector be cynically co-opted by both the state and the market as a way of providing social care on the cheap, and which leaves fundamental structures of inequality unacknowledged and unchallenged?
Come alongand have your say. We would love to see you
Chris Baker is Director of Research at William Temple Foundation
Building a Politics of Hope will be held on Tuesday 24th February in central London. Click here to book tickets.
Government statistics published at the end of December show that the poorest 10% of the UK population may be at risk of malnutrition. Following what is traditionally a period of over-indulgence at Christmas, these figures are even more disturbing. Rising food prices are one possible cause, but it is also to do with the actual food that is being consumed and its poor nutritional value. Significant numbers of poor people are consuming fewer calories than they need to maintain their full body weight. Last year the poorest 10% of the population spent over 20% more on nutrition than in 2007, but received 7% less in return. Furthermore, there is a widening gap between the rich and the poor. Does this matter? Apart from obvious issues of justice and equality, such statistics bring to the surface one of the immediate effects of poverty and its impact upon the whole of people’s lives. Without appropriate diet and nutrition, none of us will be able to function effectively as we might, and other problems of health, wellbeing and economic and social activity will be set in train.
So whose fault is this? Although the churches and related charities have been drawing to the policy makers’ attentions the growing demand on foodbanks and the fact that it is people already in work who are becoming increasingly dependent upon them, there is a tendency in government to point the finger at the victims themselves. A Conservative peer, Baroness Jenkin of Kennington, asserted that poor people are going hungry because they do not know how to cook; basic cooking skills have been lost with the result that poor people are unable to produce nutritious meals from scratch. This is but one example of what has become an established mantra within both political and media circles — if there is a problem, look first (and even solely) at the individuals concerned, and ignore any structural or system failures resulting from government policies.
A recent book emerging from the growing body of literature known as behavioural economics brings such an interpretation into sharp relief. In Scarcity: The True Cost of Not Having Enough Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir present a series of concepts to suggest that any of us placed in a situation of poverty and scarcity would find ourselves facing the same problems and challenges. Their basic concepts are: tunneling/focus; myopia; bandwidth (capacity); slack in the system; shock; quick fixes; attending to the urgent but not to the important. Without going into the details of these, it is possible to see that this is, in some ways, an expanded version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In other words, one has to be able to operate at the more basic levels of human needs, food, warmth, shelter, and we could add nutrition and diet, before one can begin to function effectively, let alone think about the demands further up in one’s life. When the immediate concern is to buy enough food, and therefore have enough money, just to feed oneself (and one’s dependents) for the next week, one is less likely to be able to think beyond this and to engage in even medium-term, let alone long-term, planning or strategies to counter the deeper problems. When a person has only limited bandwidth (or what I would call capacity) to begin to think about and address a host of immediate issues, other concerns get put to one side. Those who rely on payday loans, for instance, live from short-term loan to short-term loan, often getting deeper and deeper into debt, in order simply to deal with the immediate shortage of money. To the extent that this is the case, the political culture of “blaming the victim” is a deliberate ploy to deflect attention from the underlying issues and their causes.
Another term that we might use to describe what becomes scarce in this context is energy. The problem with a deficit of nutrition is that one is left without the requisite energy to tackle or address the myriad problems that one is faced with. Anyone suffering from even a short-term illness will recognise that one becomes so focused on the immediate symptoms and their hoped-for relief that other concerns slip rapidly down one’s personal agenda. As horizons narrow (as they also tend to do for those in older age) and one tunnels into the immediate, the energy to deal with wider issues diminishes and dissipates. One could even extend this to current UK politics with its narrow focus upon austerity and deficit reduction: all the energy goes into these objectives at the cost of other concerns such as health, education and environment. The effect of this, as the churches have been only too ready to point out, is that overall levels of wellbeing then suffer and inequalities increase at the cost of the whole; even tax returns diminish!
So our energies need to be expanded and redirected. This impacts both upon our understandings of economics and how humans function in practice, rather than according to the theories; hence the potential value of some aspects of behavioural economics and the insights it gleans from research in psychology, and also upon Religious Studies which now moves towards a greater acknowledgement of the material nature of our existence. As my colleague John Atherton has pointed out in his recent book Challenging Religious Studies: The Wealth, Wellbeing and Inequalities of Nations, calorific or nutritional deficiencies are sources of deprivation, and there was a point in the early 19th century when 20% of Britain’s population was unable to work because of this problem. Further, in a forthcoming book, A Philosophy of Christian Materialism: Entangled Fidelities and the Common Good (Baker, James and Reader, Ashgate 2015), we argue that recent developments in philosophy can broaden our understanding of what it is to be human, taking into account the interrelationships or assemblages that constitute a realist approach, and the crucial challenge of seeing the human in relation to the non-human (which would include the food that we eat). The scarcities that we face relate both to food, income and welfare, but also to political and religious imagination, all of which are required to redirect our activities towards the greater good.
John Reader is an Associate Research Fellow of the William Temple Foundation.
Join the discussion on foodbanks and more at our pre-election conference, in partnership with Church Urban Fund and the Joint Public Issues Team.
The Feeding Britain reportcommissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and launched today, has laid bare the countless stories of human misery and suffering caused by hunger and poverty in the UK. The statistics reveal that nearly a million UK citizens have needed to cross the barrier of shame and ask for food from a food bank. This is not surprising when you consider that over 13 million people in the UK are considered to be in poverty. The main drivers for people having to use food banks is not unemployment, but depressed wages and disruptions in welfare provisions, caused by bureaucratic changes to the welfare system which can leave citizens arbitrarily without any income for weeks on end. These factors are exacerbated by the rise in housing and energy costs, leaving many of our citizens with the stark choice of going hungry in order to simply keep a roof over their heads. The cross-party report advocates a multi-levered approach to what it calls a hunger-free Britain, including bigger food banks to distribute more food, advice and benefits, a rise in the minimum wage, and the provision of free meals during the school holidays for poorer children.
There have been endless reports on poverty and food banks since the start of the austerity measures introduced by the Coalition government in 2010. Yet what is different this time is the widespread coverage the report has received and, in particular, the comments by the Archbishop of Canterburysuggesting that the hidden poverty in the UK is more shocking than overt poverty in African countries. Cutting across a full spectrum of media from right to left, the report has made the front pages of both the Mail on Sunday and the Guardian. This feels like a simmering issue which has finally come of age as Christmas approaches, and a general election looms. It is more than likely to be a defining issue that shapes the political debate for many years to come.
The power of the report lies in its clear and objective statistical analysis of a hidden social problem; hidden because those most directly affected are by and large too exhausted and marginalised to get their experiences acknowledged by the mainstream. In other words, this report shines a critical but impassioned light on a social blight that not only affects millions of fellow citizens but also directly calls into the question the sort of society we have sleepwalked in to. It raises the acutely awkward moral and political questions of how we have managed to create a social and economic order where so many people struggle to acquire the basic goods for a flourishing and meaningful human life (i.e. food, shelter, water, warm clothing) in a society that has more than enough resources to go round.
In its clarity, tone and media coverage the report feels like a touchstone statement, one whose analysis and voice connects with the public sphere and will ensure that people will not be satisfied until the issues it raises are being seen to be addressed. It follows in a long tradition of significant faith-based reports, and I hope it can be as powerful as those which came before it. First of all, I am thinking of William Booth’s report In Darkest England and The Way Out. Written in the 1890s it exposed the hidden poverty and squalor of late Victorian industrial cities, and proposed a number of key welfare reforms around banking, housing and training centres.
William Temple is cited in the introduction to today’s report, reminding us of the legacy of Church-based interventions which seeking better ways when faced with inequality. Temple looked at the ravages of inequality, despair and bankruptcy in the 1930s and its contribution to the rise of totalitarian states in the run-up to the WWII. When he wrote Christianity and Social Order in 1942, he articulated the basis of a just and fair social order and human flourishing that included access to free education, free healthcare, decent housing and rights of representation to work. Temple died in 1944 but his vison was implemented by Beveridge and the first Labour majority government in 1945, in what became the universal and comprehensive welfare state.
More recently, the Faith in the City report of the 1980s exposed the plight of those de-industrialised urban communities struggling to exist as other parts of Britain enjoyed the new market-led and re-regulated boom in globalised technology and financial services. Branded as Marxist by the Thatcher government, it again reminded wider British society of its obligations as a civilised and progressive society to provide the means of human flourishing for all our citizens, not just the privileged few. The report galvanised the Major government (with the energetic support of Michael Heseltine) and New Labour (under the influence of Lord Rogers) to make the regeneration of inner urban areas and city centres a top political priority.
There are of course major reservations about what this latest report is trying to do and the context from which it emerges. Not least, in the enshrining of food banks as somehow normative features of our policy landscape which will perpetuate moral distinctions between deserving and underserving poor, and will deflect the will for political change. As Prof Elizabeth Dowler commented in the Guardian’s coverage of the report, the exponential rise in poverty and inequality we have seen since 2008 can ‘only be properly dealt with by the state tacking the fundamental structural causes’.
However, this should not detract from the fact that this report has the potential to be the latest in a long-line of influential faith-based reports into social conditions that galvanise real political change. At the heart of all these reports is a social, political and moral imaginary that says quite simply ‘All human beings matter’, irrespective of their social or ethnic background, and it is only in relationship and solidarity with one another that our true humanity is fulfilled.
Chris Baker is Director of Research at William Temple Foundation.
Explore the power and impacts of faith-based leadership at our forthcoming conference Building a Politics of Hope, in partnership with Church Urban Fund and the Joint Public Issues Team.
At the William Temple Foundation Chris Baker and I have made much of the importance of religious and spiritual capital in the context of faith based local involvement and partnership work. The definitions we have used so far go like this:
Religious capital is, ‘the practical contribution to local and national life made by faith groups’. Spiritual capital meanwhile, ‘energises religious capital by providing a theological identity and worshipping tradition, but also a value system, moral vision and a basis of faith’. Religious capital is the ‘what’: i.e., the concrete actions and resources that faith communities contribute. The ‘why’ is spiritual capital: i.e., the motivating basis of faith, belief and values that shapes these concrete actions.
In our discussions and ponderings we have mused about the nature of this spiritual capital: is it reducible to psychological terms within the heads and hearts of believers, or is there some reality of the idea of God at work or immanent in these processes? In Christian terms this would be linked to the work of the Holy Spirit, indwelling in believers, and equipping them with spiritual gifts to do the work of God. But maybe also the Spirit is at work in the world beyond the church – as in the Genesis account, “brooding over the surface of the waters”. John Taylor explored this idea several decades ago in his classic book The Go Between God.
In a multi-faith setting a publicly accessible theology of spiritual capital becomes even more complex, and some Christians would undoubtedly want to argue that there is something unique about the Holy Spirit at work in and through individual Christians and in the church. But spiritual capital also resonates with a religious culture in which spirituality is popular and religion is not. Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead explore this in The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion Is Giving Way to Spirituality. Inevitably in our individualistic consumer oriented society “spiritual capital” will tend to be read as associated with the spirtual life of the individual. Here I want to argue that this is a mistake and that we will do better to look at spiritual capital as a collective property. Indeed a careful reading of spiritual capital, such as in Chris Baker’s article on moral freighting and civic engagement, makes it clear that we think of spirtual capital as grounded in social relationships in communities of faith.
Putnam and Campbell in American Grace seek to trace the dynamics of believer’s pro-social involvements in casual good neighbouring and in more purposeful associational life for the benefit of the community. Working with the well known theory of social capital – as developed by Putnam – they pose the question of the role paid by believing and belonging in driving good citizenship. The evidence comes down in favour of belonging, the strongest correlations seem to be with church attendance or religious participation and civic engagement, more or less regardless of what a person believes. Putnam and Campbell
………. suggest it is down to something they call “moral freighting” whereby individually based propensities for altruism, already shown to exist more in religious people, become connected to other religious/spiritual individuals of similar propensity. This connective process “tends to evoke peer pressure for you to do good deeds as well” (i.e., to “freight” or carry over your moral codes into actions undertaken in the public sphere), (Baker 2013).
To any practitioner in faith based community work this is hardly a surprise. Volunteers or social action projects linked to a church most readily come from church congregations, where people who know each other well through their weekly worship and fellowship, either initiate, or are recruited – often as a group – to work together in an activity that serves the “needy” they have recognized in the locality of the church. It is much harder to recruit outsiders to join such projects, or to persuade faithful church members to offer voluntary service through an existing organisation outside the home church. In the absence of strong research evidence or personal experience of involvement in other faith communities it is impossible to determine if these dynamics apply universally.
However, a recent survey by the Evangelical Alliance on the theme “who is my neighbour?” offers at least tangential evidence that this is the case among evangelical Christians. Some 59% of the respondents said they were actively involved in at least one church social action or community outreach project. The most common types of projects were food banks, work with elderly people or families, youth outreach work and homelessness ministries. However only 21% were actively involved in a secular project or activity, among which work with people with disabilities or learning difficulties or hospices was the most common; significantly those fields in which professional – and secular – medical input could be valuable.
However it is in some of the comments reflecting the ethos of such work that we see much deeper into the evangelical brand of spiritual capital. We have only space for one example, though many other respondents expressed similar ideas.
There are many very close inter-church projects in the community. Debt advice, prayer, Street Pastors, healing rooms, extensive schools work, on street prayer, food bank and other projects being prayed over.
The striking things here are the juxtaposition of prayer and anti poverty work, and the strength of the inter-church partnerships. Indeed most of the churches where the survey respondents attend partner with other churches on social action or mission projects, both locally (82%) and overseas (75%). While partnerships with Christian organisations are also frequent (59%), only about a third go to a church which partners with secular charities or the local council, and less than one in ten where there is an in interfaith partnership.
The clarification of our notion of spiritual capital means that for some Christians at least it is more of a shared corporate ethos than an individual motivational force. It is based on shared values and plausibility structures, and definition of religious boundaries. It is expressed in a shared commitment to mission, which is strengthened by a shared commitment to prayer and the regular rehearsal of these values by collective worship, preaching and shared reflection on the scriptures. Perhaps it is for this very reason that some Christians (especially Evangelicals) find it so hard to take their spiritual capital out of the cocoon of the Christian sub culture, and to express their faith explicitly in the secular world. Perhaps this too is why partnership with secular bodies is so challenging and why secular actors find it so hard to comprehend and fully engage with the efforts of churches and other faith communities, unless on a purely instrumental and contractual basis.