For the three economic perspectives on the wealth, wellbeing and inequalities of nations, namely income, health and subjective wellbeing, I have developed a model for relating Christianity to each. In terms of subjective wellbeing it is clear that Christianity has been demonstrated by secular research to score better than other sources. The following introductory section illustrates this and how Christianity achieves it. I am pretty sure that the same could be done for its contribution to health but it is engaging the first perspective – income – where Christianity is weakest. Recent publications such as ‘Just Money’, published by Theos, and Peter Selby’s ‘An Idol Unmasked’ illustrate these inadequacies. The second part of this blog begins to set out an agenda for correcting these grave Christian limitations.
Although contemporary research on religions’ contributions to wellbeing (particularly subjective wellbeing) is of recent origin, ‘In survey after survey, actively religious people have reported markedly greater happiness and somewhat smaller life satisfaction than their irreligious counterparts’. That conclusion is confirmed by economists, for example by Layard who states, ‘one of the most robust findings of happiness research: that people who believe in God are happier’, and by Graham arguing that, ‘In most countries, respondents that express faith or religious affiliation – as well as those who practice their faith – are, on average, happier than others … In most of the rest of the world’; by psychologists like Seligman: ‘survey data consistently show religious people as being somewhat happier and more satisfied with life than nonreligious people’; and finally, by sociologists, for example Putnam: ‘As with good neighbourliness, the correlation between religiosity and life satisfaction is powerful and robust … Other things being equal, the difference in happiness between a non-churchgoer and a weekly churchgoer is slightly larger than the difference between someone who earns $10,000 a year and his demographic twin who earns $100,000 a year’.
Why is the relationship between Christianity and subjective wellbeing so positive? Answering that question will occupy the rest of this chapter. But that is not its principal objective. The task is rather to explore the relationship between Christianity and wellbeing, initially and principally through a focus on subjective wellbeing. That entry point will then be extended, at the end of this chapter, to engage health and income, so together embracing the three great perspectives on the wealth and wellbeing of nations that are at the centre of Chapter 2’s agenda. The subjective wellbeing perspective has been selected as the main entry point of this research at this stage because achievements in this field, in terms of the contributions of economics, psychology, sociology and religious studies, are most comprehensive, robust and consistent. And it is out of these relationships addressing this shared area of concern – subjective wellbeing – that there emerges a model for Christian engagement with both this perspective, and probably the other two; health and income. The model can therefore also be deployed to address the relationship between Christianity and economics. As the introductory Chapter 1 noted, one of the tools to be used in exploring this relationship is the deployment of models, reinforced by statistical evidence and located in historical contexts. So the following elaboration of the chosen model will also involve reflection on the nature and role of measurements in religious studies, and the following Part 2 and Chapters 4 and 5 will explore the historical contexts of such research.
The following material focuses particularly and initially on the task of mapping as a way into modelling in some detail those practices, ethics and beliefs of Christianity that resource its robust and positive contributions initially to subjective wellbeing. These are drawn and confirmed from both secular sources and Christian traditions, recognizing their correlative and causal relationships, with their principal features further elaborated with reference to the main Christian denominations, major world faiths and secular spiritualties. This section will conclude with a brief exploration of the model’s transmission processes, showing how Christianity influences the development of greater wellbeing in society. The following section will then examine the implications of such a mapping and modelling exercise by developing appropriate measurement tools for religious studies’ contribution to human wellbeing and for religious studies itself. The final brief section will then begin to explore the feasibility of deploying the model in relation to health and then income, the other perspectives on the wealth and wellbeing of nations.
Part 2 of the book moves onto examining Christianity’s contribution to greater wellbeing through the details of historical contexts…
Exploring the great escapes from poverty and premature death and the resulting great inequality divergences is a profoundly modern and contemporary story, as is the development of a Christian engagement with such a grand narrative. Yet it’s an account that needs enlarging and enriching but also qualifying and analysing. And that best requires locating it in historical contexts that are both long in extent (and I really mean long, going back to the end of the last Ice Age and before!) and more recent in intensity (since 1750 CE). That will also enable us to see the importance of religious contributions to social development in the more general context, for example through the radical operations of the axial age in the last millennium BCE, but then also in two nations in more recent history since 1700 CE, in the USA and UK.
Such evidence will certainly confirm and elaborate the provisional conclusions emerging from Chapters 2 and 3 that life is getting better for more and more peoples and nations and that Christianity has a robust role to play in that improving of wellbeing. Yet it’s equally clearly getting better-ish, with the dramatic damaging increases in inequalities both between and within nations. And it’s in that order that hard evidence now locates them, as nations getting better, then that ‘better’ being qualified. Both these trends, positives and negatives, will also play a prominent part in the long history, with certainly as much emphasis being placed on the negatives through the repeated bumping against robust ceilings of increasing social development, and the regular violent eruptions of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
There are four brief stages in this introductory argument of locating the themes in historical contexts. They begin by first using contemporary multidisciplinary surveys of the very gradual progression of social development from the end of the last Ice Age, about 13,000 BCE, until the eighteenth century in modern times. The archaeologist and historian Morris’s work, including his deployment of a Social Development Index, is of particular value in tracing and illustrating the improvements in wellbeing over such a long period of time.
On Christianity, incomes and material wellbeing: Addressing the first perspective
At first sight this is the most difficult task of all. For so much of certainly Christian history, the concept of money dominated understandings of income and material wellbeing. And it has a terrible press, not least through the influence of the Christian Scriptures’ pronouncement that money is the root of all evil and Jesus’ call to the rich young man to sell all and follow him and his refusal to do so, because he had great wealth. The painting on the Markham Chantry Chapel from the early 1500s, used in my first blog, says it all, with the rich young man, with his hand on his purse, warned by Death that even the wealthy cannot buy him off. All these pressures led to the continuing theme regarding money as a god, including by some leading theologians today. This is confusing, unhelpful and inaccurate (I almost said plain stupid!). Historically, money’s place in resourcing human life was very limited until at least the eighteenth century. As we have seen, the vast majority of people had very little of it, because they were poor and lived very straitened lives. In such situations money often becomes a symbol of the reality of their marginalization and oppression. When the Industrial Revolution increased and improved the lives of more and more people, income understandably occupied a much bigger part of their lives and the lives of nations. Then it really does become a god for so many theologians and church leaders despite its liberating consequences for the majority poor. What this book tries to do is to correct such general moral confusions, and this is a particular point where that is absolutely essential. Any contemporary consideration of income must recognize its central contribution to contemporary wellbeing both in itself and as key facilitator and contributor to other foundations of wellbeing, from the provision of the basics of housing, food and clothing, to health care, education and governance.
And doing that effectively and adequately is what my model has to be able to engage. That is a particularly difficult task because it involves entering the engagement between Christianity and economics (and therefore recognizing and addressing the great gulf between them), and then also developing Christian practices, ethics and beliefs in relation to income and what and how income helps to resource other key foundations of wellbeing, and only then, and from such evidence, can the nature and extent of Christianity’s contribution to this first perspective be tested in terms of the viability, or otherwise, of my model.
In 1989 Hans Kung and David Tracy published Paradigm Change in Theology based on a symposium held at the University of Tubingen. Contributors included such high profile names as Moltmann, Schillebeeckx, Boff, Gilkey and Cobb. The subject areas covered included hermeneutics; scientific theory and theology; political dimensions of a new theological paradigm; feminist and liberation theologies and relationship with other faiths. Were they right to flag-up such fundamental changes, and, if so, where are we now?
Looking at theology within the Church of England twenty five years on, one might be forgiven for concluding that far from signaling a paradigm change, what we have seen is a regression to a pre-Enlightenment understanding that plays into the hands of a hierarchy nervous about its loss of authority, and a communitarianism which extols the virtues of practical action at the cost of any serious theological reflection. Like political culture the emphasis is upon presentation (or “spin”) rather than substance or critical engagement. Although forms of political engagement were driving forces behind the original book, nothing much has come of these since, and those who look for a more radical approach have been marginalized by both church and theological establishment. So it is time to revisit the notion of a paradigm change for theology in the light of recent philosophical and political developments.
In recent blogs and publications my colleagues at the William Temple Foundation have used and adopted the language of“blurred encounters” in relation to faith engagement with social action and the inevitable crossing of boundaries, cultural, geographical and intellectual, that accompanies such engagement. Whilst this is correct and in the spirit of the original book, Blurred Encounters: A Reasoned Practice of Faith, it does not refer to the subtitle of the book nor what I intended to be the more radical nature of the work. This was not supposed to be simply about pragmatic responses to challenging contexts that required a willingness to compromise and to be “eaten well”, but also an attempt to produce a post-foundational theology by challenging the strict demarcation between faith and reason that has characterized theology since the time of Kant. If that sounds too demanding and theoretical, then it probably explains why even my colleagues have shied away from that dimension of the book, and my aims of providing criteria by which one might assess the validity of the actual blurred encounters.
In engagement with the book, there have been no references to the notion of a post-foundational theology, nor any sense that others understand what this means. Others more critical of the work imagine that this is a matter of having a certain fascination for the writings of particular philosophers and thus not essential to the project. In the light of new publications I want to restate the argument that “Blurred Encounters” was pushing towards a paradigm shift in theology.
Ten years down the line and others have been able to pursue these ideas more effectively. Whitney A. Bauman, in the recently published Religion and Ecology: developing a planetary ethic, has taken further the concept of the crossing of boundaries and argues that religion and science, humanity and nature, sacred and secular, are always already intertwined, and that attempts to separate them have been the result of a particular metaphysics that itself leads to damaging consequences, notably those associated with globalization and its detrimental impact upon humans in less advantaged parts of the world, and indeed the planet as a whole. He also draws upon sources that I have since been able to pursue such as Deleuze and Guattari, Jane Bennett, Bruno Latour, Karen Barad and Catherine Keller. I will attempt a summary of his ideas.
Bauman describes what he calls Agrippa’s trilemma which lays out the three main possibilities for how we claim to justify our knowledge (pp18-21). The first two of these are representative of the domination exercised by globalization and are, foundationalism and circularity. “Foundationalism operates (most often) by digging down to what is perceived to be a base of reality: whether material (as in scientific materialism) or ideal (as in the creation of the world according to divine laws by a good God)”. Circularity is a particular version of the same form of argument. The third option and the one favoured by Bauman is that of infinite regress, where instead of trying to bring the process of truth discovery to an end, instead somewhat in the manner of Latour who sees that truth is a matter of keeping the references circulating, the acknowledgement that we are all contextual, perspectival, embodied and changing creatures, means that our knowledge claims are always on shifting grounds. A post-foundational theology would thus recognise that our knowledge is always provisional and contingent, and that it is when we try to stop the references circulating – which is always an arbitrary decision – that power dominates over truth, and both humans and non-humans find themselves on the wrong end of that power.
Following this alternative approach to its logical conclusion, Bauman suggests that we need to abandon a foundational metaphysics, to acknowledge that agency “goes all the way down” including therefore that which we see as non-human, that human exceptionalism is to be left behind, and that the boundaries between subject and object are always permeable. (p162). This applies also to our own sense of personal identity: “Our internality is nothing without the multiple others with which we are in constant interaction, and our bodies are made up of multiple biological, historical and cultural others. However one draws the boundaries around a concept or identity, that entity is always already multiple” (p163). This will lead to a different approach to environmental ethics and issues of political power. So the question for a new theological paradigm is whether it can cope with a post-foundationalism and acknowledge that its truth claims are subject to challenge and uncertainty.
There are now two main strands in such a developing approach, one associated with what is known as the New Materialism and the other related one we are calling Relational Christian Realism. The latter will be spelt out in detail in the book A Philosophy of Christian Materialism: Entangled Fidelities and the Public Good, (Baker, James and Reader, Ashgate: forthcoming). Both yield a theology more modest in its truth claims, and a conceptual discourse more appropriate for engagement with contemporary political and scientific issues and, we will argue, a paradigm change for the discipline as a whole. The difference between this and the global ethics advocated by Kung and colleagues is that: “the not-yet space of emergent newness is just as much a reality for the rest of the natural world as it is for humans” and the task facing us is to discern which particular emergent assemblages will lead to the flourishing of both human and non-human (Bauman, p153).
So whereas the original paradigm shift envisaged by Kung, Tracy and colleagues involved only the human, in this new context as described by Bauman, Crockett and ourselves, it is the whole human non-human nexus which emerges as the site for discussions of the ‘public good’ and for revised religious and political activity.
How should Christians relate to Muslims? Are they a problem, unwelcome, a threat? Recently there has been a lot of interest in, and disapproval of halal slaughter. We also learnt that the broadcast of the call to prayer in Channel 4’s Ramadan Seasonlast year received more complaints than anything else aired by the broadcaster. Meanwhile Britain First – a “patriotic political party and street defence organisation” – has been entering mosques with their shoes on, giving Bibles to worshippers, and a Presbyterian pastor has denounced Islam from the pulpit. Internationally, we have heard worse things of women being killed and another being sentenced to death.
I admit to being particularly attuned to it, but Muslims are rarely out of the media. Sometimes I am asked, ‘How should Christians relate to Muslims?’ Many have already made up their minds. In some ways the question is new, but it is also very old. We don’t have far to look to find a ‘Saracen’s Head’ pub (Saracen = Muslim) or organisations called ‘Crusaders’. Historical tension and animosity between Christians and Muslims is woven into our culture. In the present, we encounter many negative stories and impressions of Muslims in the media, whether it is, so called, ‘Islamist terrorists’ or a Muslim ‘Trojan Horse’ takeover of schools.
Many people have a negative perception of Muslims because of media coverage, so that if you ask them who Al-Qaeda or Boko Haram are they say Muslim, rather than terrorist. Channel 4 sought to challenge the negativity with its Ramadan Season but was then accused of “imposing Islam”, or not giving an honest picture.
For the Christian perhaps, there are more important theological or religious questions about Islam: how can we relate positively to a faith which explicitly denies the central tenets of Christianity? How do we navigate these difficult questions, especially where minds are already made up?
There are clues in our past, both Christian and Islamic. One ancient story is that of St Francis of Assisi who, in the middle of war, when a city was being seized, went out to the Caliph’s camp and engaged in dialogue with the leader of the Muslim army (this was in the days when both Christianity – Christendom – and Islam were geopolitical entities). Francis entered, held deep discussions and left in peace. He did not persuade his dialogue partners, but there was mutual respect and listening (just as Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman that no one else would have spoken to).
At another time of great difficulty, when believers were being persecuted for their faith, they were sent to another country, where a fair-minded religious ruler would keep them safe. This is the story of Muhammad sending his followers from Mecca to the Christian kingdom of Abyssinia. Another example of dialogue is when a Christian delegation came to meet with Muhammad and discuss their divisive differences in beliefs about Jesus. When it was time for the Christians to say their prayers they prepared to leave, but Muhammad encouraged them to pray in his mosque.
Peaceful encounters between our two faiths go back to the earliest days of Islam, there is no reason why they should not continue today. But such opportunities can be derailed by our difficult history. There is much talk of ‘truth’ when interaction between people of different faiths is being contemplated. Should ‘truth’ be a barrier for us, keeping others out so that we cannot even be the witnesses that Jesus asked us to be, or to adopt an attitude of searching? – as the Puritan John Robinson said, ‘the Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from His Word’.
As people of truth we should not be swayed by perceptions but seek to discover the reality, just as the Apostle Paul sought to be ‘all things to all people’ (1 Cor. 9.22) in order to communicate with his society. In my own experience many people, including Christians, take issue with the idea of ‘all things to all people’ as mealy-mouthed, ‘political-correctness gone mad’. Perhaps because the words have drifted loose from their context of passionate, robust, honest and committed engagement. In fact, we may not realise, Paul is actually role-modelling how the Christian should ‘do’ inter faith encounter and dialogue.
Inevitably, in my own work I am often speaking up for Islam, bringing to bear what I have learnt, or more often, and more likely, what I have experienced. Some would say that this is the point at which inter faith work has gone too far, and I might agree if that was all that happened (yet without forgetting Jesus’ simple but challenging words, ‘Do unto others …’). Because the reality is that Muslims are also speaking up for Christians, supporting, for example, David Cameron’s comments about Britain being a Christian country, or speaking up on behalf of Christians suffering at the hands of mobs and unjust rulers in Muslim-majority countries. Or on hearing a Muslim colleague (who was educated by Scottish Presbyterian missionaries in India) quote those important and well known words from Micah 6.8, ‘this is what the Lord requires of you: only to act justly, to love loyalty, to walk humbly with your God’. Again the prophetic wisdom, speaking to someone in another tradition, gives a blueprint for inter faith (or any other) encounter – being balanced, developing committed and trusting relationships and not being too proud in this world, as if we have nothing to learn from anyone else.
But perhaps, ultimately, our principles – dogma and theology – will get in the way and make it clear that inter faith does not fit with the Gospel. Yet, one of my colleagues Dr Andrew Smith, formerly of Scripture Union, now the Bishop of Birmingham’s inter faith advisor, found that as a school worker in Birmingham the only way to talk about Christianity was in a dialogical way. The way of dialogue involves listening as much as (or more than) talking, taking account of where the other is and giving them space for their own witness. These principles became local guidelines for sharing faith, and eventually developed into the Christian Muslim Forum’s Ethical Witness Guidelines.
All of this does mean that for some of us, it is our calling to follow the way of Francis and Paul, to take the bold step of encountering the other deeply; just as Jesus did, when others were turning away and saying, ‘No, that’s too far for me’. It is only in the deep encounter that we can begin to have some insight into the other’s beliefs, values and to walk with God.
A Victorian Gothic barn of a church, with most of the pews still anchored in place, on a cold wet Saturday afternoon in February. The parish in a multicultural inner city in the North of England has struggled to survive, but remains committed to evangelical mission and community engagement. Twice a term now we put on a Messy Church session, advertised mainly through the majority Asian Church primary school that stands next door. The vicar’s wife, a retired teacher does most of the work of planning and preparation. The vicar himself does most of the platform presentation, and the team of a dozen or so volunteer helpers are predominantly aged over 60, white and English.
From 3pm the church fills with parents and children, mostly families who attend the school, and maybe two or three who regularly come to worship on Sunday mornings. It’s mostly women and children, though there are a handful of dads. There is a group of white working-class mums, some of them lone parents, who obviously know each other and spend a lot of time chatting and letting the kids get on with the activities. But as the number of people in the building rises to 90 we realise this is the most popular Messy Church since we started 18 months ago – and that over half of those attending are Muslims. One of the women is dressed in a black abaya, worn with a niqab – though she does remove the face covering when she has become comfortable with the social setting inside the church. Several other women and girls are wearing hijab (headscarf) and are in modest Asian dress.
One of the Muslim women who had encouraged friends to come is a single parent who first came along to a Messy Church a few months ago. We got to know her better through the midweek job club in the church hall. She had been unemployed, and destitute because she had been sanctioned for some trivial breach of benefit conditions by the job centre. We had helped her with food parcels, friendship and eventually to find a job in child care, and though she does not say she is a follower of Jesus or attend Sunday worship, she clearly feels herself to be part of the church family.
As usual Messy Church is a mixture of games, child-friendly Jesus songs, craft activities, a story and eating together. The vicar tells the story of Joseph, bringing out the importance of family and forgiveness. The crafts features coats of many colours, camels and silver cups. People are invited to write their prayers for forgiveness on coloured paper cut in the shape and size of their hands and to stick these to a board at the front of the church. We then share in food which church people have brought along – sandwiches, cakes, biscuits and some fruit (up North this is known as a Jacob’s join). Probably we should have thought more clearly about making sure there were halal options, but vegetarian items mean everyone found something they were happy to eat. By five o’ clock the helpers were anxious to start clearing up but several people just wanted to stop and chat, so it took a long time before we could all go home, tired but encouraged.
How do we reflect on what was happening here? The situation has all the characteristics of what William Temple Foundation’s Chris Baker and John Reader have labelled a “blurred encounter”. There were a wide range of expectations and motives in the room. Christians were there with the hope of sharing the gospel. Children from a variety of backgrounds were just happy to be together and to have fun. Parents of various faith backgrounds and none were pleased to have something for the family to do on a cold February afternoon, that didn’t cost anything, and had some free food thrown in.
Sociologically speaking it seems that the parish church, though its close involvement with the school next door, is able to offer a safe social space for the banal everyday encounters on which social cohesion can be built. The school and the relaxed informality of Messy Church, linked with other community involvements such as the job club offer a milieu for building bridging social capital, crossing boundaries of communities which some commentators suggest are trapped in parallel lives. Religion is not in itself a barrier, but rather seems to offer common ground where trust can be built. It is significant too that Messy Church is an environment where women and children go first – perhaps typical male approaches to faith would be more dogmatic and divisive. There can be everyday good neighbourliness, friendship and trust across faith communities at this level. However it is also the case that in the local community there are examples of barriers and racisms directed against Muslims, while we also know of painful and hostile experiences when someone from a Muslim background “comes out” publicly as a follower of Jesus Christ.
Theologically one can also ask what is going on in this situation and how is God at work? A classic evangelical answer would be that to some degree at least, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is being preached, if only implicitly, or at least proclaimed by deeds and attitudes. A more liberal approach would be to stress that the values of acceptance, friendship, trust, love and forgiveness are signs of the Kingdom of God, and of the Holy Spirit at work. Whether or not anyone discerns or names the name of Christ in this situation, God alone knows what is happening in people’s hearts, and He alone is the final judge of us all.
It might be worthwhile to reflect on NT Wright’s recent perspectives on Pauline theologywhere the emphasis is placed not so much on individual justification before God as on incorporation into the multicultural community of those who are “in the Messiah”. However, this raises many questions about how in such blurred encounters and ambiguous social and religious spaces, people may or may not find “salvation” — amidst all the competing definitions of that term one may come across in our theologically diverse environment.