Jon Kuhrt writes: Last week I was at Kings Cross station in London waiting for a train when a middle-aged man called Martin approached me begging for cash.
I explained that I did not give money but would be happy to buy him something to eat and drink. Martin accepted this offer and as we walked to a cafe and queued up he told me about his situation.
He explained that he was sleeping rough in Walthamstow after being evicted from his accommodation due to rent arrears. He had worked for many years for a delivery company contracted to a major supermarket and had always had steady work and a decent income.
Slide into homelessness
But he told me that over recent years he had faced more and more competition for work from men from Eastern Europe and his shifts became fewer. He said things particularly changed when someone from that background was given a management position and the shifts he was offered almost completely stopped.
Martin said all this in a matter of fact way without bitterness and no hint of any xenophobia or racism. He was just explaining what triggered his slide into homelessness. He said:
I’ve got nothing against them you know, most are good chaps and I would do the same if I was in their position. It just kinda stuffed me up.
I listened to more of his story and gave him advice about connecting with the local rough sleeping outreach team. But I had to get my train, so we shook hands and said goodbye.
Liberal antennae
But as I walked away, what Martin had said really struck me. Instinctively, my liberal antennae was discomforted by him saying he lost his job due to immigrants. Talking negatively about immigration can feel taboo because of how easy it is to be labelled as bigoted.
And this is understandable because racism and xenophobia are powerful and dangerous. We should never legitimize discrimination, scapegoating or hatred.
But what Martin said did not sound like any of those. And as I reflected I thought how important it is that we listen to people’s honest thoughts about factors that have affected their lives.
Validity of experience
For a middle class person like me, it is easy to be positive about economic migration because I am only positively affected by it. I get cheaper builders and quicker deliveries. But for many in working class jobs there is a real cost. And we need to listen to them and their experiences.
If we deny the validity of these concerns or dismiss their legitimacy we are suppressing the lived experience of fellow citizens. This suppression is dangerous because it fuels resentment and alienation.
Globalisation
The late Labour MP Frank Field warned about the impact of mass immigration on poor communities 20 years ago.
In 2004, Tony Blair’s government set no limits on the number of migrants who could enter the UK from the new EU member countries. They predicted 13,000 would come but actually 329,000 arrived in just the first 18 months. It was the largest ever migration into the UK and in 2006, Frank Field said:
This is the most massive transformation of our population. Do we just merely accept this as another form of globalisation? If we are not careful, we will be transformed into a global traffic station and that is not what most people mean by being part of a country.
This is what London has increasingly become: a playground for the global super-rich served by a market of low paid workers competing for zero hours contracts; a platform for economic activity that has no regard for community life.
Respect
Its important to understand that concerns about immigration is not the same as negativity or antipathy toward immigrants. This is what struck me about Martin’s views – he had only respect for the individual immigrants he knew but was concerned about the impact migration had (for more see this paper Hating Immigration, Loving immigrants).
And its important to refer to the problems faced by migrant workers too. EU migration has been a huge factor in my work with people who are homeless and rough sleeping. In the 2010s, I helped establish two church-based night shelters in London and in both 70-80% of the guests were EU migrants. I continue to see first hand the vulnerability they face and the tragic destitution they often become trapped in.
‘Scaremongering’
As this BBC article of 2006 shows, Frank was accused of ‘scaremongering’ and few on the left openly agreed with him. But our current situation shows that he is a voice that should have been listened to.
As Frank predicted, this failure of politicians on both the left and the right, to recognise the human consequences of globalisation, has led to a huge disconnect between the ordinary people and the governing class. This failure has fed the rise of right-leaning parties across the West. It is why politicians such as Nigel Farage and his Reform party have gained traction. It also accounts for the success of new media channels such as GB News, Unherd and the Joe Rogan podcast.
Too often all concerns about migration are dismissed as “far right” but these media platforms have gained large audiences because they have been willing to openly discuss these issues.
Underlying problem
An underlying problem for the left in the last 20 years is the way that social justice has increasingly been seen as a matter of identity politics rather than in terms of the political economy.
The essence of being ‘progressive’ has come to be defined through an identitarian lens – whether it is stances on feminism, racism, homophobia or transphobia – rather than through the concrete matters of health, housing, wages, working conditions and wealth distribution.
Social media has increased this tendency: the public discourse has become obsessed with identity politics but bored with concrete policy.
This is why so many within Labour heartlands have deserted the left. We need to re-evaluate the popular misunderstanding that liberalism is good for the poor.
Big business
The neo-liberal economics of globalization and its gig-economy has reduced human beings to units of labour which can be deployed in any way the employer sees fit with no regard for their welfare.
And big businesses have embraced identity politics because it provides them with a convenient means of parading their ‘social justice’ credentials without challenging their economic model.
Rather than focusing on the real issues about how much they pay their lowest wage earners and what rights they give to their employees, they can instead display a certain flag or kite-mark to show some theoretical solidarity with an identity cause.
This kind of ‘justice’ is just performative virtue signaling. Its why the term ‘social justice warrior’ has become a term of derision.
Reinvigorate democracy
Michael Sandel said this:
Disentangling the intolerant aspects of populist protest from its legitimate grievances is no easy matter but it is important to try. Understanding these grievances and creating a politics that can respond to them, is the most pressing political challenge of our time.
This ‘disentangling’ can start by reclaiming the concept of social justice from the toxic pit of identity politics. We need to re-focus instead on the concrete issues and the social and economic policies which affect our communities.
It will be through understanding the challenges facing people like Martin that we can reinvigorate trust in democracy, challenge the excesses of liberalism and recover a sense of the common good.
(Last July, I gave this lecture for Together for the Common Good in memory of Frank Field: Grace, Truth & the Common Good: the future of Christian Social Action)
Jon Kuhrt has worked with people affected by homelessness for 30 years. He is a former government adviser on how faith groups address rough sleeping and CEO of the West London Mission. He is now CEO of Hope into Action who work with local churches to house homeless people. He lives with his wife in Streatham, south London and they have 3 children. He likes football….but loves cricket. This article was first published on Jon’s blog here.
Excellent, insightful article. It’s what Trump exploits and where the Democrats seem to have come unstuck. It doesn’t have to happen here.
It seems to me that this article is about what is already happening here. But understanding what is going on (as set out very well in this article) is a first step to being able to address it. A wake up call to how we can all too easily accept ways of thinking unquestioningly, and the need for critical analysis . I hope and pray that voices of reason like this will find an ear in the public arena.
Excellent analysis.
Thanks for this great article, Jon. Two points I would add. First, George Orwell was, like Frank Field, willing to challenge the left orthodoxies of his day and see the economic realities of the exploitation of ordinary people for what they were. He didn’t get much gratitude for it on either the left or the right but at least his statue is outside BBC Broadcasting House. Secondly, we’re all complicit in this complex set of processes as we buy from the cheapest supplier and the refusal to pay realistic prices leads to cheap immigrant labour in the UK or massive imports. To name just two issues, the worsening housing crisis since the sell-off of council houses and the refusal to have an adult conversation about taxation policy has helped, since the 1980s, to create massive inequality which Wilkinson and Pickett have shown makes everybody less happy, including the very wealthy. Long ago Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell identified some of these problems and they were, at least to some extent, addressed in the C20th under the influence of William Temple and Beveridge, so there is hope that we can do something but it will need a very courageous leader to understand what’s needed and frame it for our day.
Council housing should have been left to the free market. I could name someone who got permanent right to occupy a council house who now runs a very profitable business from it (and a Jaguar). Others, far less well off, have to pay market rent or a mortgage. It’s a two-tier system and therefore unfair. Thatcher’s sell-off of council houses has caused the occupants of those properties to have pride in them and thereby caused sink estates to begin moving upmarket.
And it is not the refusal to pay realistic prices for plumbers etc that has created massive inquality. It is the fact that too many people who should be doing those plumbing etc jobs are on benefits instead – losing their self-respect and costing the taxpayer.
It is the Industrial Revolution and free-markets in manufactured goods that have reduced inequality from the horrific disparities between landworkers and the aristocracy that prevailed worldwide before industrialisation.
To me the real problem with London is the financial sector, which distorts the local economy by paying itself massive amounts and which is essentially parasitic. When people criticise ‘capitalism’ I like to break the criticism down into markets about goods, housing and money. I support free markets in goods and housing but not in money.
Anton, are you suggesting that Thatcher’s policy was a good one…??
Of course! Owners take a pride in their properties that renters and council tenants never do. Ask what reasons were given by those who took the opportunity.
‘Council tenants never do.’ Really? I think my aunt and uncle in Speke, Liverpool, took considerable pride in their council house. Whilst it is true that most home owners do take pride in their property plenty of renters do as well – as is shown by experience in countries where a far higher proportion of people rent than in the UK e.g. Germany. Those who bought their council house at a discounted price often did very well from the policy, but the total effect has been negative, as was the doctrinaire refusal to allow councils to use the sale proceeds to build new housing. (One small sideline, it was a privatisation of assets that the Government did not actually own, unlike steel, rail, electricity generation, water, etc. Selling what belongs to someone else against their will is clearly wrong.)
‘Owners take a pride in their properties that renters and council tenants never do.’
Goodness me! I thought I’d taken pride in my rented property over the years, as well as the council properties my family lived in.
How wrong we were.
My own parents benefitted from her policy. By buying their council house, they were able to have a half-decent retirement from low paid jobs because the mortgage was paid off. If theyd still been renting that would have reduced any income considerably.
However it is clear today that much more social housing is required to be built, at reasonable rents.
Anton, you need to see the evils of capitalism as well as its benefits.
Maybe acquaint yourself with the Christian politician Frank Fields who actually supported many of Margaret Thatcher’s views on council housing and welfare reform (he was a personal friend of hers).
He tried to persuade Harold Wilson’s government in the 1960s to sell council houses to transform the lives of some of the least affluent in society. He saw it as win-win as long as the total proceeds of social home sales were reinvested in replenishing the housing stock. Tenants would become homeowners, the building industry would gain a long-term building programme and unemployed building workers would get jobs.
Here’s what he said in back in 1998 after he resigned the Labour Party whip:
His position on welfare reform:
Field believed the state should play only a small direct role in the provision of welfare and he disliked means-testing and non-contributory entitlement to benefits, which he believed should only be received after claimants had joined continental-style social insurance schemes or mutual organisations such as friendly societies – not profit driven, stock-market speculative private insurance.
Field also supported Brexit, emphasising the need to control immigration due to it creating excessive demands on public services, roads and housing stock. He argued the EU model suited big businesses who wanted cheap labour, and supported agricultural interests creating high prices for food, rather than ordinary families.
Field stood for social justice, localist decision-making and was anti-globalist capitalism and pro-Brexit.
It was a key point of Field’s that the proceeds of council house sales should be re-invested in further housing, but the Government refused. There was also too big a discount given as though rent was equivalent to mortgage payments. We are paying the price now.
On Catholic social teaching, it really is just Christian social teaching and not a distinct tradition specific to one church. William Temple for example, had a virtually identical approach from with the Church of England and inspired by his catholic theology and his Oxford philosophy teachers.
Jack,
I respected Field and remember when his imaginative reforms were knocked back by the Blair/Brown administration. But your presumption in telling me I need to see “the evils of capitalism” suggests you didn’t read properly what I wrote (very negatively) about the City.
I picked up that, Anton, and agree with it. I’m making a different point. The competitive Darwinesque nature of capitalism itself leads to consumerism, corporative capitalism and global capitalism. For me the issue is how this can be checked; how a transition to smaller scale, more local businesses can be achieved politically and economically.
Jack,
You are looking only at the supply side and neglecting the demand side of economics. WE are mostly producers of one thing and consumers of many. We therefore tend to want protectionism for the industry in which we work and free markets in all others. Economics is not tension-free. If I come up with a better and cheaper widget that will put other manufacturers out of business, do you believe I should not be free to market it? That’s a simple Yes/No question.
EP Thompson did the same in his famous book The Making of the English Working Class about the early years of the Industrial Revolution. If he had his way we’d all still be spending 1/3 of our income on clothes for the sake of the northern artisan weavers.
Anton, the issue isn’t whether widget 1 should replace earlier methods of production. It’s a three-fold problem. How ought a society treat those deprived of a living income by the producer of widget 1? And, what should the inventor of widget 1 do with his excess profit? And, is that profit his alone or ought it to be used for the benefit of his workers and for the aid of those displaced by his invention?
If the owner of widget 1 accumulates his wealth and uses this to persuade an entire society they cannot do without widget 1, what then? If everyone turns to him and asks that they become indentured slaves or borrow money at absorbent interest to buy these widgets, what then?
Then he sees an opportunity abroad where labour is cheaper and imports said widget 1 into his home market displacing his workers there, what then? He and other inventors of widgets 1, 2 and 3, combine and use their wealth to persuade both nations they need their widgets to move freely between nations and persuade them their leaders need to cooperate if they want these widgets that are essential to their lives, what then?
The “machine” grows and dominates every aspect of life. The levers of influence create demand. As the need grows for more labour, the family becomes a barrier to production. Replace it with a state that weakens familial bonds with loyalty transferred to the state that becomes an instrument of widgets owners. The widget owners create further demand to further the production of wants in other areas. Debt grows and people become ‘consumers’ and ‘units of production.’
So it goes on ….. worldwide. we worship the “golden calf”.
Jack, all you grumbled about was the ‘darwinesque’ aspects of capitalism. Re money markets we agree about that. Re markets in goods I explained merely that a better widget made at lower cost is good for purchasers – potentially everybody – and for its producers. Let the manufacturers of inferior costlier widgets go out of production. That is what I call the free market and you call darwinesque. The State apparatus needed to prevent it is dreadfully totalitarian.
You now ask a series of further questions: what about the workers in the factories that made costlier and inferior widgets? What should the victorious widget-maker do with his profits? What if he relocates his factory overseas where labour is cheaper?
The workers are liberated to use their wealth-creating muscle in factories making other gadgets that people decide improve their way of life. The victorious widget-maker can spend his money building a larger house and thereby employing plenty of builders etc, and decking it out with fine goods made in other fctories which are thereby fed. If he puts it in the bank, the bank may lend to entrepreneurs with good schemes. If he relocates his factory abroad, widgets gt cheaper fra ll who want hem and labour at home is liberated to work in industries making other goods.
You talk about this manufacturer ‘persuading’ people that they need his widgets. Don’t you trust people to decide what items they wish to enhance their lives for themselves?
These are, I agree, complex issues. But the key point of free markets is tgat although we don’t know who will make a better product, we can be sure that someone will. Live with that uncertainty, because the alternative is the soviet-style planned economy in goods. How did that work out?
As a direct rsult of the industrial reolution, even the poor in Britain today have a higher material standard of living thn mediaeval kings – they have cars, TVs, mobile phones, hot and cold running water on demand, sewerage,, etc. And the gap betwweeen rich and poor is much smaller than in pre-industrial agrarian society where the poor toiled the land and the rich – the ‘landowners’ gouged them for produce. The idea that a man can own land would be absurd were it not tragic. It is like owning the sea or the sky. What they actually owned was the right to dictate what happened on that land.
Amen, Amen, Amen and Amen.
Catholic social teaching is the area of Catholic doctrine that has been developing since the late 19th century and is concerned with human dignity and promoting the common good of all in society. It is rooted in the social teachings of the New and Old Testament.
It has three themes: human dignity, solidarity and subsidiarity. It is critical of modern social and political ideologies of the left and of the right and aims to strike a balance between respect for human liberty (including the right to private property and decisions being made at the lowest possible level), with concern for all in society, including the weakest and poorest. It is explicitly against unregulated, free market global capitalism – the “international imperialism of money” – and unfettered, individual, human liberty.
It sees the primary responsibility for social justice lying with government, being within the political arena, and with the laity. The Church’s role is to inform and guide the debate. The Church’s main social activity should be directed towards charity (agape). Charity workers should have a deep prayer life and not be influenced by particular political parties or ideologies. There should be cooperation between churches, the state, and with Christian charitable organisations.
In “Evangelium vitae” (‘The Gospel of Life’), 1995, Pope John Paul II exposed that in the midst of a culture that self-congratulates itself on being enlightened and progressive on matters of human rights, the reality was we were giving birth a “culture of death.” The modern debates on abortion and euthanasia were a symptom and leading edge of a more profound, insidious view of the world. One that leads us, in fact, to forsake human dignity and equality and revert to “a state of barbarism,” This barbarity was emerging and being misrepresented positively as a “new world order.”
30 years later, this prophetic vision of John Paul II is now more evident.
William Temple got there first!
Well, maybe some of his theology and political theory was informed Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical, “Rerum novarum” in May 1891, as well as socialist writers . I’d say a key difference is the emphasis placed by Catholic social teaching on the primacy of the family as the moral, educative and economic cell in a society against the emphasis placed on an ‘ethical state’ state building citizenship by more humanist Christian socialists.
‘It will be through understanding the challenges facing people like Martin that we can reinvigorate trust in democracy, challenge the excesses of liberalism and recover a sense of the common good.’
There’s nothing wrong with this point but I think it’s also important to do our homework on the atheistic, anti-human, global fascism which is what currently drives the move to subvert national borders and national identity – not least through uncontrolled mass migration. ‘Fascism’ is simply an accurate description of what happens when the forces of state and private corporations (including huge financial interests) work together to control populations at the national and global level. Fascist instincts in people are easy enough to spot from ‘neighbourhood watch’ level right up to (and including) waging international wars – I guess it’s something to do with the urge to control other people. But we Christians must surely recognise the folly and arrogance of people who believe it’s their role in life to pontificate on and then do what God would have done if he had existed.
Of course a major part of how these people think and what is planned may be kept from the public gaze but confidence in their current and future success is revealed in the ever more open rhetoric and actions of such groups as the EU commission, the WEF, the WHO and globe trotting individuals such as Bill Gates, Tony Blair, and our own pro globalist Prime Minister who openly stated in an interview (with Emily Maitlis) that he preferred being at Davos rather than Westminster: “Westminster is too constrained…” To be fair, democracy is so stitched up here in the UK that it must be pretty irritating to have to bother turning up at PMQs and trot out the same fatuous verbiage as has been done for the past few decades.
The point is that we should recognise the real life results of what these self appointed global groups and puffed up individuals do when it shows up in the human misery to which, sooner or later, none of us will be able to close our eyes (or be immune), whether at the local park bench, food bank, or beamed to our screens from Ukraine. While we should of course act at our own local level, I think we have a duty also to gen up and speak out on the national and international forces which most certainly are driving a great proportion of the misery. That is an unavoidable duty of living in a democracy if we want to continue doing so. And we cannot afford unthinkingly to accept prescribed narratives. We may naturally engage as individuals in different areas – cause or effect – of how evil is working in our world; we cannot all be doing everything all the time. But, as God’s children globally, we can close our eyes to neither.
This is an interesting essay on the subject:
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/american-strong-gods
Thanks Anton, that was certainly worth reading. Looking at things from here in the UK in this present dark hour, it would appear to display a premature optimism even for those experiencing the new rays of sunlight under Donald Trump in the USA. However, even if the dark forces manage to take him out at their third attempt, his new team is way better than his 2016 team, and JD Vance is already very impressive: they could very possibly survive and continue to carry on the job without him.
Meanwhile the future of Europe and the UK could hardly look any bleaker right now. In political terms the real battle is for the minds of voters: it’s a revolution of understanding – a huge awakening – that’s needed, and that requires public figures who genuinely understand the situation themselves but also have the ability to explain it simply. Very sadly I have to say that today’s C of E is utterly unfit to play any part in that reawakening task. And that’s a dreadful judgement on the church because, as we Christians must surely realise, at the heart of this nightmare is the very same spiritual battle that has raged in human hearts ever since God placed Eden out of bounds.
What governments and institutions in the West promote the common good and the best interests of all its people?
Trump, and others emerging in western politics arise from a right-wing “populist” antagonism against the current “settlement.” He and those who seek to emulate him, are a symptom of the rot of our politics. It’s the same spirit that drove the Reformation in Europe, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and National Socialism.
The supreme irony in this is that in America a billionaire has risen as the leader of anti-system sentiment. This demonstrates the new dividing line is not wealth, but one’s relationship to institutions; a divide between those who benefit from the institutions and those who do not; those who feel listened to and those who feel ignored.
Trump has pledged to “clean the swamp” of an elite who see the country through its own left-wing paradigm of privilege. An elite in the military, civil service, churches, law, medicine, and big business, imposing its ideology on everybody. An elite than shuns and dismisses its Christian heritage and aggressively marginalises those who still hold onto their faith. A military-industrial complex promoting wars in the name of “liberal democracy” that have little to do with it. An elite unable to control its borders. An elite who have proven themselves incapable of caring for their own, the primary duty of any government, whilst spending billions overseas to promote and impose these very same ideologies on other nations.
History shows us that revolutions against corrupt ancien régimes often produce worse evils. Deliberately orchestrating division – a ‘sin’ of both the ‘right’ and the ‘left’ – to accentuate grievance and spark radicalisation is a rocky path fraught with danger. A healthy democracy acknowledges that governing is complex, it needs balance and perspective, and realises that the cacophony of maniacs – on the ‘right’ and ‘left’ – should not be mistaken for proof that they are the majority.
Maybe … perhaps I’m being too moderate!
Well said HJ.
The Beast is bored with the Woman on its back. It will eat it and set up another on its back, different but similar to all the other iterations.
Do read that essay I gave the link to, Jack. It is relevant and I have friends both Left and Right who are impresssed by it.
I did, Anton. It’s a part of a wider and complex discussion going on amongst conservative ‘post-liberals’ and neo-integralism.
Here’s one view:
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/national-conservatism-a-statement-of-principles/
And here’s another:
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/an-open-letter-to-natcon/
Ooop … that should have been:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/national-conservatism-a-statement-of-principles/
America and Europe conservatives see these issues rather differently.
Those links are just about setting the clock back in away that I agree is good. The essay I linked is needed in order to explain to people what is going on and why – information that they should have.
Martin’s experience also shows how badly single people are often treated in this country. Not only do they not have family to fall back on, the state puts them at the end of the queue for basic help such as somewhere to live.
His story also shows racism isnt just about white against black or other ethnicities. It works the other way round too.
You are right. I volunteer at a Foodbank, and the vast majority of those who come for help are single men, usually in their 20’s or 50’s, quite possibly like Martin.
I think a huge problem that has really changed between my parents generation and my kids generation is that a good full time job no longer pays enough to afford a basic standard of living. This makes it dangerously easy to become unhoused.
A challenge of brexit is that it didn’t decrease immigration into the UK, but did stop many British people finding work outside the UK.
It’s really tough being an immigrant- you work hard, pay taxes and still get the blame for there being no money for public services and no jobs. Maybe we should be blaming the politicians for poor economic policy?
EU immigration fell after Brexit and the end of free movement but Boris increased non EU immigration and only Rishi’s tightening of visa rules has started to cut that too. Labour is now promising to build 1.5 million new homes over the next 5 years for the unhoused and to make homes more affordable, we will see if they deliver. The C of E has also promised to allow some more affordable homes and flats to be built on its land
Alas, this all so none sensical.
A different (? Better) politics is maybe an answer
but not a solution.
Jon with his “liberal antenna” did at least recognize
the “excesses of liberalism” which have had a devastating
impact on our culture.
Many of us, at around the time of France Field, realized that a right wing backlash was inevitable.
The problem is not about ideologies.
It is about the prophetic words of Jesus and the Gospel of the Kingdom concerning the nature of evil especially in these “last days”.
“Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, He gave them up to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent new forms of evil; they disobey their parents. 31They are senseless, faithless, heartless, merciless. (Romans1 v 28 ff)
“But understand this: In the last days terrible times will come. 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, without love of good, 4 traitorous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Turn away from such as these!” (2 TIM.3 V 1 ff)
The church will never be the saviour of the world, we cry Hosanna Lord.
Shalom.
You are talking as if Labour have been in power for the last decade.
I get that there are plenty of people who think that the Conservatives had the right policies, just didn’t implement them in the right way, but at what stage can we legitimately say that anti immigrant, isolationist policies are objectively bad for the UK?
Helpful article related to this thread by Rowan Williams in today’s Guardian at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/08/growth-politics-public-good-society-rowan-williams
He asks some fundamental questions about our society, though it remains at a general level rather than providing specific policy ideas.
Thank you, Tim, for the link to R.W.
We all understand some aspects of “the problem”,
it is the solutions that are problematic.
To have a theologian discuss political fiscal morality
without reference to scripture, which seeks “common sense”
solutions instead is sad.
As Jesus said “My kingdom is not of this world…..”
Though we don’t have to quote Scripture directly or self-consciously to be offering Christian insights.
Which regime did Jesus live within, if not under? Democracy? Secular?
Did he embody radical solutions, or rebellion within or outwith the system or a combination.
And Saul/ now Paul.
Neither the embrace of wealth as a motive nor end, nor the development of Marx as a secular universal programme.
Just who is my neighbour in the modern world for the activation of the ‘golden rule’?
Where are the boundaries, lines, to be drawn and treaties to be made and refused?
And greed, and covetness and pride, and self-interest, individually, politically, tribally, nationally, globally, universal as they all are.
Where are the checks and balances, and who is to exercise them. World without end?
On what or in whom do we invest?
Where is and what do we treasure? Depend and rely on, trust?
Geoff
To all intents and purposes the Roman Empire was a military dictatorship (with some democracy). At the time of Jesus it was Pagan, but later became Christian.
Pertinently almost none of the people who Jesus preached to had any say in government. Most people in the UK can elect and badger their MPs which is a big difference to the world in which Jesus lived.
IF we are contemplating “fighting” for justice or peace or equality”:
References to social justice scientists ( “falsely so called” anyone?);all depends on their political leanings.
People do tend to lean on their estimations and conclusions.
There is a tremendous amount of materiel in the Bible on
equity (not to be confused with equality) and Justice.
The Bible does not mention equality apart from Satan and Christ
And that true equality is only to be found in those that are “in Christ Jesus.”
For a biblical research on the questions troubling or deluding folks there is a very good primer to launch from into “the deep things “of God and the avoidance of “the deep things of Satan”.
@/christoverall.com/article/longform/thinking-biblically-and-theologically-about-justice/
Jon Kuhrt writes: “We need to re-focus instead on the concrete issues and the social and economic policies which affect our communities.
It will be through understanding the challenges facing people like Martin that we can reinvigorate trust in democracy, challenge the excesses of liberalism and recover a sense of the common good.”
And the author is correct, up to a point.
The excesses of liberalism and oversight of the common good have a deeper root in the abandonment of a theological grounding for Western societies; an abandonment of faith. Street homelessness is not just a material problem – and money will not solve it. “Martin’s” lived experience is not the experience of all on the streets; these are multivariate. Many of us suffer from a “soul sickness” – not only those living on the street. It’s just that those not on the streets have the material resources, to a greater or lesser extent, to mask it behind a variety of distractions. Folk on the street have fewer options; principally drugs and alcohol.
“Concluding Reflection
“As I noted above, it’s vital that we distinguish between a biblical view of “justice” from our current secular-postmodern understanding of it. Biblically, to act justly toward one another is always according to an objective standard—God’s authoritative, inerrant, and unchanging Word.
However, for our society, “justice” and “social justice” are concepts that are unhinged from an objective standard, which is now leading to the rise of the abuse of power and a redefinition of what is truly “just,” “good,” and “right.”
For this reason, our current cultural voices who cry for “justice” and then embrace abortion, deny a biblical view of sexuality and the family, who argue that logical thinking is “racist,” who endorse the destruction of private property, and embrace the unlimited power of the State, are not acting “justly” but in a lawless, ungodly, and destructive manner. In such a context, the church must clearly define what justice is according to Scripture, and distinguish true justice from current forms of “social justice.”
Today, there is probably no greater worldview clash than between a biblical view of justice and the so-called “social justice” of our secular-postmodern society. What is needed is for the church is speak to this issue with clarity, to live out what true justice is, to proclaim the truth of the gospel as our only hope for this fallen world, and courageously to take a stand against the growing tyranny of our age” – Stephen Wellum
@/christoverall.com/article/longform/thinking-biblically-and-theologically-about-justice/ Op sit.
I was born in 1950. Austerity was part of my early childhood. My father had spent 6 years in Egypt in the Second World War. Fortunately he was a Co-op butcher and food was good. My mother sewed waistcoats at home, which were delivered in pieces then picked up when sewn together. My older sister did not meet my father until she was six. But Mum and Dad had bought a house on mortgage which was probably around £600.
Foreigners were an unknown in the 1950 and 60’s. Apart from an influx of Jews from Europe around the Leeds area. Our neighbour shouted at planes from the garden as she had been in a concentration camp and was affected mentally.
This open borders policy embraced by so many countries has changed this country beyond recognition. The group which concerns me the most is the Muslims. They remain a cohesive group. My daughter and I were in a cafe in Nottingham about 8 years ago and there was a table of women all wearing the full garb. They had a baby with them and my daughter tried to engage them with admiring the baby. They all turned away and cover the baby from our sight. It dies not bode well.