Will faith communities keep faith?
by Peter Selby

It is very well known that the relationship between church and state is very different in England from what it is in the U.S. (and it is different again in Scotland). But some very similar issues are being thrown up on both sides of the Atlantic by contemporary debates on the role of faith communities in welfare provision, and a bit of our experience may be illuminating to Witness readers charting their way through these very difficult policy questions.

In the mid-1980s, when the Thatcher government was in full cry the Church of England published a report of which we remain justly proud, called Faith in the City. Government ministers sought to rubbish the report (first calling it Marxist and then saying it would have been better if it had been Marxist!) that represented a call to church and state to attend to the needs of marginalized urban communities. Later a similar, rather smaller-scale, report, Faith in the Countryside, made a similar call in relation to the rural economy, and the life of rural communities and churches.

Without any question Faith in the City reasserted the call of the poor at a time when government was withdrawing huge amounts of previous grant aid and local services from urban communities. Its words, and the actions it precipitated in the church, came as a real encouragement to those who had struggled for many years to get their voices heard, and who were particularly suffering under the economics of the right. A whole culture of inventiveness ensued and some very imaginative urban programs resulted. To some degree the same is happening in the aftermath of Faith in the Countryside.

One of the fruits of Faith in the City was the creation of the Church Urban Fund. Church people subscribed heavily to that and as a result pump-priming grants, and some sustaining ones too, were made to a whole new generation of community projects, evangelistic initiatives and efforts toward justice. In the process a culture of self-help developed and many individuals and communities discovered resources within themselves and possibilities of making a real difference that they had not reckoned with before.

But there are important paradoxes that are very relevant to the current debate. First, this brought comfort not just to the urban communities but also to the advocates of New Right policies. "We told you so," they said, "removing government grants and subsidies has liberated local communities from the heavy hand of the state." The fact that removing those grants had also precipitated huge quantities of misery only slightly alleviated by the new charitable money was something they conveniently overlooked.

Secondly, hard-worked community volunteers now have to spend a higher and higher proportion of their time finding ingenious ways of raising funds and negotiating their way through the private charity maze. And thirdly, we have in the process moved further and further away from the belief that it was the responsibility of the community as a whole to make basic welfare provision toward a world where tax cuts benefit the wealthy while the poor are reduced more and more to dependence on charity.

What has this history to say to faith communities today? Understandably those within them who are seeking to alleviate poverty are glad to have the prospect of some matching funding from public sources. Such funding produces not only a reduction in the effort needed to finance worthwhile projects, but also a sense of the affirmation of the role of faith communities in society at large. Looking from afar at the U.S. context there seems to be (ironically) a movement towards the "establishment" not of course of a particular religion, but of religious faith generally as the bond that holds society together and the means whereby much needed provision for poor people is achieved.

An individual congregation or faith group faced with the offer of assistance to do valuable work among the poor will feel that it is an offer it can hardly refuse. The need is there, and they have the means to meet it with public assistance, gaining credibility for themselves and their faith in the process. But within the same process lie the seeds of the destruction of the witness of faith communities – and particularly the Christian communities – to a God who is judge of our society and its provision for its most vulnerable. It is hard to remain prophetic while you make yourselves more and more dependent on those against whom you have a call to prophesy.

There are no easy solutions to these dilemmas. But faith communities need to be very circumspect – wise as serpents and innocent as doves – if they are not to find that they have gained a whole world of charitable opportunity and meanwhile lost their own soul. That faith communities have huge potential for doing good is not in question. The question to those who would do good in that way is, will your community of faith keep faith?

Peter Selby is Bishop of Worcester, England.