AN ELECTION year that also marks the 30th anniversary of the
publication of Faith in the City is an opportune time to
reflect on the Church's changing relationship with politics since
the Thatcher years, particularly as the Church seems to be
rediscovering its political voice.
In the 1980s, when the Labour Party endured a period of
self-inflicted paralysis, the Church of England stepped up to fill
the centrist vacuum, and found itself labelled as the unofficial
opposition to the Conservative government. Confronted with Margaret
Thatcher's ideological onslaught on Britain's social democracy, the
Church reasserted the case (which many believed had been fought and
won four decades previously) that a redistributive state was closer
to Christian principles than any Thatcherite, neo-Victorian appeal
to charity, philanthropy, and self-help. The Church saw its task as
not so much "to take over the Samaritan role from statutory agents
as to question a system which puts so many people into the
ditch".
These were the days when the loose-tongued Bishop Jenkins of
Durham condemned government policies as "wicked", and Bishop
Sheppard of Liverpool asked publicly whether it was possible to be
both a Christian and a Conservative. For Sheppard, the battleground
was not Parliament, but "comfortable Britain"; his aim was to
counter Thatcherite appeals to self-interest, and reawaken a sense
of altruism among the middle classes, who "too easily seem to blame
those who have been left behind".
All too often, however, this conscience-rousing activity
resulted, in the words of one Yorkshire vicar, in
"Guardian readers preaching to Telegraph
readers". In seeking to heal the wounds of a divided society,
church leaders often achieved little more than aggravating the
wounds of a divided Church. This became particularly apparent at
election time. During the 1987 campaign, the BBC was so fearful
that its religious output might compromise the Corporation's
impartiality that its Head of Religious Broadcasting was warned by
executives not to allow "some lefty bishop" to rant on Radio 4's
Thought for the Day, and each sermon was scrutinised and
restricted to purely religious subjects. The British Council of
Churches organised hustings, although Conservative Central Office
advised prospective candidates to stay away from what, it
predicted, would be hostile occasions.
That the Conservative party still seeks to avoid a run-in with
the Church of England is unsurprising, given that the majority of
Anglican worshippers are still Tory voters; but the Church now
exercises equal caution - especially the Archbishop of Canterbury,
who takes a pragmatic approach to political engagement rather than
the emotive one favoured by his predecessors.
When the report on foodbanks Feeding Britain was
published last December, many casually compared it to Faith in
the City, but it differed in important ways. Faith in the
City combined forensic social observation with moral outrage.
Thatcherite economics was denounced, not merely as wrong or
unworkable, but as unchristian. Feeding Britain contained
no systematic or critical analysis of either the government or the
economic system; moderation and pragmatism set the overriding
tone.
Where Faith in the City fell back on well-worn statist
solutions to urban poverty (which many considered out of date, even
in 1985), Feeding Britain wholeheartedly advocated a mixed
economy of welfare, and a tripartite relationship between the
private, public, and voluntary sectors.
The Church has certainly nudged itself out of the collectivised
haze that stunted the development of Anglican social thought for
much of the post-war period. Faith in the City was
famously described by one cabinet minister as "pure Marxist
theology"; no such charge can be made against Feeding
Britain, not least because there was no reference to theology
in the report at all.
So what distinguishes Anglican social thought from its secular
counterpart? The Church seems content to present itself as merely
an informed voice, whose expertise stems from experience rather
than theological insight.
In the 1980s, it was commonplace for church leaders to speak
meaningfully of "a Christian Britain", and confidently of the
Church as the "conscience of the nation". There was an assumption
that the socio-democratic values that they espoused were basically
in line with what most of the public believed. This was
questionable even then; it is impossible to imagine a bishop
arguing that today. The Church is supremely (some would say,
overly) sensitive to the secular plural society in which it now
operates.
Faith in the City may not have provided a viable
blueprint for action, but it did, in the words of Frank Field,
"force the ruling class to consider that, even if there was not an
alternative, attempts should be made to find one". It is unlikely
that Anglican statements or reports would ever provoke the same
outrage now, especially when think tanks daily publish social
investigations and commentary.
In the 1980s, church leaders positioned themselves as promoters
of national unity and reconciliation, functioning, in the words of
the then Archbishop of York, John Habgood, as pivotal "struts and
beams", holding society together at a time of intense social and
political division.
The mediating part that Christian leaders played during the
Rates Crisis in Liverpool and the Miners' Strike, for example,
reflected the prime position that the Church was still accorded in
British public life. Paradoxically, politics in the 1980s was the
sphere of dogmatism and polarisation, whereas faith was synonymous
with dialogue and compromise. But bishops have been usurped by
celebrities as the moral figureheads of causes and campaigns,
capable of arousing public sympathy, unity and action; and even the
Church is now apparently prepared to embrace what might be called
"the Jolie effect".
Whereas in the 1980s the religious correspondent of The
Times was the de facto correspondent of the Church of
England, nowadays none of the broadsheets has a correspondent
reporting exclusively on religious affairs, and the Church finds
itself battling for attention in a media world that is increasingly
diversified and uninterested. With public disaffection with the
political class at an unparalleled high, there is undoubtedly a
vacuum for a non-partisan voice, just as there was in the 1980s.
Currently, however, that space seems to be filled by the erratic
ramblings of "Rousseau" Brand.
The fact that Archbishop Welby's speech on "The Good Economy"
was more or less ignored by the mainstream media was particularly
unfortunate, given that the Archbishop has more experience in
business than the leaders of all three main political parties put
together.
The fact is, however, that in this post-Christian,
post-welfarist, post-ideological age, the Established Church is
going to have to learn to shout a little louder, and a little more
clearly, if it wants to be heard.
Dr Eliza Filby is the author of God and Mrs Thatcher: The
battle for Britain's soul (to be published by Biteback on 26
February).