Church of England: Holistic Missions

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate. I particularly enjoyed the two maiden speeches, with the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence, talking in particular about the role of churches in the inner city and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle talking about the role of churches in distant and sometimes very remote communities, around some of which I have walked with great pleasure over the years.

Perhaps I may start not by talking on behalf of the Government but by being a little personal. I grew up in the middle of the Church of England and part of my mixed response to this report comes from my personal experience. My mother was part of that great volunteer army of middle-class women who held civil society together. They had enormous energy, they were not allowed to have jobs and they threw themselves into working to support their locality.

The church that we went to when I was a boy had pews which, if I remember correctly, were allocated in a sort of hierarchical fashion. The bank manager’s pew—my father was the local bank manager in this small town—was third from the front on the right. I was slightly relieved when I went back into that church in north Northamptonshire with my sisters a few years ago and discovered that they had removed all the pews and put in a really good new floor. It is now very much a social and community centre. Once one got over the shock of seeing this medieval church with its very beautiful floor, one realised that it was real progress.

In the 1950s, the Church of England was a little too close to the idea that it was there to enforce morality and social order, and was not enough about the social message. It is a problem that the Roman Catholic Church has retained for a rather longer time than the Church of England. I partly escaped by becoming a chorister at Westminster Abbey where I therefore had to listen to two sermons every Sunday. Since one of our canons held very firmly to the view that the church had a clear social message, which is probably why he never became a bishop, I certainly picked up the idea that the church had a strong social mission. I married into a nonconformist family. Indeed, the Wyke Gospel Temperance Mission tea urn still has a place in our dining room. Like many other things in our cities, the mission was demolished 30 or 40 years ago, as most of the Wyke community was demolished. That is part of why our communities have been getting weaker. Much of the physical environment which held things together has gone, and great new estates have been put in place.

The role of Methodism in evangelising the working class and providing working class communities with a clear sense of where they belonged was enormously important. Part of the historical tragedy of the Church of England has been the split of Methodism, which I firmly hope will be resolved by reunification of the churches in the not too distant future. I live in the village of Saltaire. At one point it was suggested that it might be demolished because it had lots of old-fashioned terraced houses and was dominated by a Congregational church—one of only two churches in England that I know has a full peal of bells. The Congregationalist mill owner who built the entire village clearly had some tendencies towards respectability, which meant Anglicanism. The full peal of bells in the Congregational church was his gesture in that direction.

I am very conscious that everyone is talking about rebuilding communities—not just the Church of England by any means but a whole range of other faith networks. On occasion, they can create an enormous difference. I once spent a long morning in east London with a Baptist minister from Bradford who showed me what he had achieved, starting with a semi-derelict Baptist church. I am referring to the noble Lord, Lord Mawson. We have to work together in everything we do. I am also a Liberal. The Liberal Party, as a nonconformist party, has always been doubtful about established churches, particularly state churches. The long battle over who controlled the schools is part of what defined the Liberal Party against the Conservative Party all those years ago.

I remember the Church of England publishing Faith in the City as a major step forward. I also remember the very hesitant acceptance of Faith in the City by many of the rural parishes in the diocese of Bradford and elsewhere, because they were not quite sure that they wanted to be too concerned with the inner city. It was a hard battle in the church to get that through, but it was part of the turn towards social action.

All of us who have lived through the past 60 to 70 years are conscious that the decline of communities, above all in our cities, has followed from a range of other activities. It was partly due to the slum clearance and demolition of those old, tightly knit communities. As the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, remarked, market towns retain the built environment and the sense of tradition and community which in some of our big cities we sadly have entirely lost. The decline of communities was also due partly to cars, TV and middle-class housing developments—those dreadful suburban places without any centre—as well as children moving away to college, and the internet. Let us face it, the downside of the liberation of women has been the loss of that great volunteer army who used to hold local communities together. It has been partly replaced by the emergence of fit, retired people of both sexes who now do some of that job—but in some areas there is a bit of a gap.

The question really is: can faith communities help rebuild the sense of community? After all, churches and families build communities. People with children are most concerned about local schools and streets and how safe they are. Binding the young, and particularly teenagers, into their local communities is so important for us in rebuilding a strong society.

The wider issue raised in the ResPublica report about the relationship between state, society and the market is one that we all have to address. None of our parties has the complete answer at the present time. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, remarked on our learning bitterly that the welfare state cannot provide everything. We are now up against rising life expectancy, rising spending on health and pensions, and the need to spend more on education and training, with a population that nevertheless wants tax cuts—or certainly does not want to have a much higher rate of tax imposed.

So the model of public provision and services by the state is under deep challenge. The model of provision of public services entirely by paid professionals to passive recipients—the model of the 1990s and early 2000s—is neither affordable nor desirable. We have seen the dangers of producer capture in too many of these public services—whether from doctors, bus drivers or others.

We have also lost, in the reorganisation of local government, the sense of really local democracy. In our big cities, we have wards with 10,000 to 15,000 voters where it is almost impossible for even a good local councillor to know most of the people in most of the communities. That is a real problem. I therefore strongly believe, as does my party, in recreating what we have to call urban parish councils, because the parish is the sense of the local. That is very much part of the way that we will reinvolve people in communities.

Going round some of the large housing estates in Bradford and Leeds, I am struck by the extent to which many people there feel totally alienated from public institutions, and regard the local authority as part of the public institutions from which they are alienated. They do not vote. They want to take their benefits, but they certainly do not think that it is part of their job actively to contribute to them. Incidentally, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, that that is part of what the big society initiative is trying to resolve.

So what is the role of the church in this? I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, that the church should not be too close to the state. The church should be in healthy and dynamic tension with the state. We have an established church. It is not a state church. It is a church that I am happy to say now works very closely with other churches and across faiths. It has, as the Church of England rightly says, physical bases in the sense of churches within most of our local communities, from which one can provide public services—be they food banks, the basis for credit unions or all sorts of other community initiatives.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence, and others talked about the role of some of the newer churches, particularly the black churches, in the inner cities, in galvanising people to recognise what we can all do for others. Going around a large housing association in Bradford in the early summer, I was struck by the importance of the faith of two or three of the senior executives in making sure that they were committed to regenerating a very troubled city.

I am happy that the Church of England has transformed itself from the rather exclusive church that I remember as a choirboy. At the Coronation in 1953, the only ordained priest who took part in the service who was not from the Church of England was the Moderator of the Church of Scotland. I attended the 50th anniversary service for the Coronation, when the Cardinal Archbishop read the first lesson, with officers of the Salvation Army visible behind him as he spoke. Down in the lantern were representatives of Britain’s other faiths—Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Zoroastrian, Baha’i, and probably one or two others—demonstrating that we are part of a national church that stands for all of Britain's national faiths in all sorts of ways.

We obviously have to answer the question raised by the report: what contribution should the state make and how can the state develop alongside society to help to strengthen it? I say to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, that I am one of the greatest enthusiasts in the Government for the big society. Those of us who work in the Cabinet Office and therefore go out to see what is happening on the ground can see how much difference some of the Government’s initiatives are making.

A number of graduates came to talk to the Cabinet this week about what difference going through the National Citizen Service scheme had made to them. I started out as a great sceptic of the scheme until I went to see one of them in Bradford and was made to work with the teenagers. In my instance, I was teaching them how to make a public speech. I saw how teenagers who did not think that they could do anything were slowly learning what they were capable of and what they could do within their communities. That was an extremely invigorating experience. Community organisers, also within the big society programme, are trained precisely to work within big estates in big cities and to help people understand how they can help themselves and work within their communities—where, often, there are no churches or chapels to provide such leadership.

The big society programme, although now a little out of the public eye, continues and, I think, makes considerable progress. Through the social action fund, we have supported church-based initiatives such as the Cathedral Archer project, and have given more than £1 million to Tearfund’s Cinnamon network to deliver social action projects.

The Community Organisers programme has helped organisations such as Southwater Community Methodist Church to act as hosts for the organisers, as they seek to make changes in their local community. The Community First programme has examples where government, the church and local communities have worked together. In Swindon, for example, the Gorse Hill and Pinehurst Community First panel funded the Pinehurst initiative forum for a project to support local residents in piloting a set of activities to engage children and young people in creating music. Few local children have access to musical instruments at home and the school provision was poor. This project got in-kind match-funding from the Church of England in the form of staffing support, which was invaluable to its success. We continue to support faith-based organisations through new funds that we have made available, such as the Centre for Social Action Innovation Fund, which will work with the Youth Social Action Fund—so a range of activities are well under way.

To answer the questions of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester at the end of his speech, Big Society Capital was launched in April 2012 with up to £600 million to build the social investment market. In its first year, it committed a total of £56 million across 20 investments. In 2013, it intends to commit another £75 million to £100 million of investment. It works with all sorts of organisations at a lower than market rate.

The right reverend Prelate asked about advice to commissioners on how to commission the church in faith-based action. We launched the academy to train public service commissioners, local and central, in development and best emerging practice. We work with all others outside, not just faith-based organisations.

This has been an excellent debate. Speaking on behalf of the Government, we welcome all churches as partners in building a stronger society in Britain and in rebuilding our weakened communities. We see the Church of England as an important partner, but not as a privileged partner. We see it as a major element in rebuilding a strong society and as a necessary balance to a limited state and an open but regulated market.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

Before the Minister sits down, he has not addressed a number of points noble Lords made—nor the points in the report to which I drew his attention. Do I take it that he will be writing to me and other noble Lords and will place a copy in the Library?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I have read the report and I noted the noble Lord’s questions about how we will respond to its recommendations. I think it is much better that I write on that since they are, as he well knows, rather complex recommendations, and rattling off my answers in two minutes would probably be less valuable than the letter that I promise to send to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate.

[The Lord Bishop of Leicester]

My Lords, yesterday at a question and answer session in the Jubilee Room, the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury made the bold claim that there was probably more faith-based social action going on in this country than at any time since the Second World War. Whether or not it is possible to measure the accuracy of that claim, it is very clear from this debate that there is a high level of interest in this subject and a high level of support for faith-based social action—the social action of the churches in general and of the Church of England in particular.

I am very grateful to all noble Lords who contributed to this discussion. I shall not rehearse the points made by noble Lords, but will take firmly to heart a point that many made: the Church of England is but one player on this field. We heard so powerfully about the Methodist tradition of Lord Soper and John Wesley. It is impossible to be the Bishop of Leicester without being only too aware of the enormous variety of faiths and the enormous proportion of the population of the city who on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday are in places of worship and who are giving expression to their beliefs and their motives during the rest of the week in a variety of ways—without which, quite frankly, our common life in the city would be quite impossible.

As other noble Lords have done, I will pay particular tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence, for her moving and telling speech and for the way in which her life is indeed a speech in itself about the need for constant attention to justice. She knows she has friends, support and enormous respect on all sides of this House. I want to pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle for opening our eyes to what is now possible in Rose Castle. Some of us looked with envy on successive Bishops of Carlisle for living there, but those days are now over and the Church of England is putting not only that building but so many of its buildings to new uses in practical ways for the contemporary needs of our contemporary society. That is why the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will be pleased to know that there is much more support from here for the removal of the pews than he might suspect. I invite the churches in my diocese to invite me to pew-burning parties on a regular basis.

I think we have had a really useful debate. I am sure that the Minister will take note of what has been raised—as, indeed, will colleagues in ResPublica and elsewhere, who will continue to stimulate and challenge us on these matters. It is now some 43 years, I think, since I was a civil servant in Whitehall, working as a Second Secretary in the Foreign Office. I used to walk up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square and St Martin in the Fields. The experience of seeing one church attending to the needs of the homeless and destitute while also ministering to the occupants of Buckingham Palace, engaging in the campaign for the ending of apartheid in South Africa and involving itself heavily in the Covent Garden community projects and a whole range of other things inspired me to think that this was a way of life that really could transform life at the heart of one of the world’s great cities, and set me on the path to ordination. That vision has shaped so much of my work and is why I care passionately about the matters we have raised today. I am very grateful to all those who have contributed to this debate, and I commend this report to the further attention of the House.