William Temple @ 70

The last time I was at the People’s History Museum in Manchester was as an eager sixth-former on work experience, helping to catalogue the archives of the Communist Party of Great Britain. I still remember one item: an invitation to a champagne reception celebrating the anniversary of the revolution on some small island, issued apparently with no sense of irony. I remember it as a rather earnest institution, with displays of Trade Union banners, which equated ‘people’s history’ with the history of the labour movement. It’s now rather more slick, and it made a very appropriate venue for the William Temple Foundation’s Reclaiming the Public Space conference, commemorating seventy years since the Archbishop’s death. The official write-up can be found here

Unlike the ACF Festival I blogged about recently, this was definitely a conference. Although the attendees were almost universally Christian and mostly Anglican, there was no framework of prayer or worship. Many of those present were academics and students, as well as clergy, charity workers, and lay officers at parish and diocesan level. It was a reminder that this is where the rubber hits the road in terms of the practical application of theology.

The Foundation had managed to pull in some impressive big-name speakers, including Lord Plant; Prof Craig Calhoun, the director of LSE; Prof Linda Woodhead, who produces fascinating statistics on faith and attitudes in modern Britain; and Andrew Brown from the Guardian. I was slightly sad to learn that these connections had been facilitated by the Foundation’s move to London – though I was glad they still came back to my and Temple’s former diocese of Manchester for the conference.

I can’t say I’m very familiar with Temple’s thought, but many of his concerns would not have seemed out of place had I read them on the BBC website today: the ‘big society’, the moral dimension of taxation, the role of the Church in a post-Christian country. At the same time, we were reminded that Temple was of his age. His understanding of freedom and the role of the state was shaped by the wartime experience: the fight against fascism and the consequent growth of state control in Britain. In this regard, the venue seemed peculiarly appropriate: modern and trendy and yet celebrating a form of political engagement which is arguably already passing away.

There’s no space here to do justice to all the themes of the conference, which covered everything from roadside shrines to “discourse and praxis in postsecular rapprochement” (no, I don’t know either) and even asked the question “what would the economy look like if it were run by angels?” For the workshop sessions I chose to join Anna Ruddick on community empowerment. This is directly relevant to our agenda in my curacy parish, a town-centre church in a rather neglected corner of England. Ruddick challenged the term ‘empowerment’ from a Christian perspective, preferring to talk about human ‘significance’ and the courage to be vulnerable. She also coined the term ‘strange expressions’ – that new ways of ‘being church’ (as it is often described) should emphasise rather than downplay the ‘strangeness’ of incarnation.

There were two themes which for me seemed to arise out of the interaction between the different contributions. One was the role of ‘institutional religion’. On the one hand, evidence from Linda Woodhead and Eve Poole is that people increasingly prefer less mediated, more direct participation. This is not limited to the religious sphere; political activism through petition websites like change.org, 38degrees and Avaaz is booming just as voting and party membership is falling. Organised labour may be going the same way as organised religion. Yet, in the opinion of Andrew Brown from the Guardian, religious institutions may be more necessary in the current climate if religious voices are to be heard. He lamented the recent abolition of the religious sections both in his own and other papers, and pointed out that General Synod regularly enjoys mainstream coverage whilst growing but less centralised religious movements – such as black-led Pentecostalism – are almost absent. ‘Institutions talk to institutions’ – religious groups that have a clear structure and spokespeople are more likely to be heard, both by parliaments and by press organisations.

Another theme was witness, and there were some interesting (and perhaps troubling) findings for the ever-popular policy of preaching the Gospel ‘without words’. Chris Mould, head of the Trussell Trust food bank group, described how the organisation had come under attack from the British Humanist Association, in spite of providing its services on a totally non-discriminatory basis based on public sector referrals. Andrew Brown told of a conversation with Lord Falconer on assisted dying, in which the former Lord Chancellor accused him of making ‘moral’ arguments, as if morality was now an insult! The very fact of having a faith has become a reason to ignore and discount what we say and even the good we do. One question from the audience raised the point that only Christians’ opinions on sexuality and life issues are ascribed to them as Christians; arguments for social justice are presented without reference to the person’s faith, because they don’t fit the media conception of what ‘religious’ opinions look like. It reminded me of my own experience with a faith-based homelessness charity in Manchester: the charity was profiled very positively on TV in The Secret Millionaire, yet its all-pervasive Christian ethos somehow failed to make the final cut.

The conference ended with the launch of John Atherton’s (unhelpfully-titled) Challenging Religious Studies, which made the bold yet undeniable point that economic growth has massively improved quality of life. He questions Christian economic attitudes, which tend to see growth as inherently unsustainable and wealth-distribution as a zero-sum game (if one person gains another directly loses) and challenges us to be more positive about money and growth. I suspect ++Justin, with his new good money initiative ToYourCredit, might partly agree.

It was a fascinating conference which highlighted not only the challenges to Christian perspectives in the public sphere, but also how relevant they continue to be at the highest level of public policy and academia.