Politics, economics, welfare €“ the church should be engaged in it all

At a debate run by Theos in Westminster last Thursday, the question was posed: “Is the church addicted to the welfare state?’

The room was full of clergy, a random smattering of people involved in the political process and other interested folk. The panel was made up of think tank wonks, an MP and the Bishop of Leicester, moderated by the robust Ed Stourton from the BBC. All panellists were Christians, but Christians of a differing ilk. Here I don’t mean that some were Protestant and others Roman Catholic. Rather they represented different ways of looking at the world, politics and the church.

It was clear that the evening’s proceedings would not allow the question to be discussed in great detail. Yet what did emerge was a two-tiered discussion. One aspect was on the nature and responsibility of the Church, the other on the classic axis of left vs. right, or put in more robust terms, free market capitalism vs. socialism. Perhaps surprisingly, the Labour MP Gavin Shuker while defending both the church and the state’s role in welfare provision promoted a median way. Sadly to me, it was the free market capitalists who failed to engage substantively with what the Church is and what its role is in society.

Jill Kirby, formerly the director of the Centre for Policy Studies was not clear on whether the Church was addicted to the welfare state, or whether the country as a whole was. Her solution to either problem is personal individualistic generosity, not born out of enforced taxation. That would make us less selfish. The cure to radical individualism was to lower taxation so that people can give of their own accord. The Church as a whole, according to Kirby, is not an institution that should bother about justice or the needy. That is the role of individual, usually rich believers within the Church.

Philip Booth, of the Institute for Economic Affairs, a neo-liberal think tank that has close connections to the Roman Catholic tradition insisted that we need to draw back public spending on the welfare state. He just could not decide whether we should go “cold turkey”. His line was similar to Kirby’s. It is welfare through solidarity that we should pursue. He also said that clergy should not talk economics, but rather stick to what they are called to do, which according to him is to lead churches, pray and provide for what is obviously in his view a disembodied spiritual welfare. This was backed up by his insistence that Jesus only ever spoke about the political once or twice. Appropriately, the reaction of the audience was loud guffaws and shouts that he was talking nonsense.

While it may be that technically Jesus only mentioned “the state” (to put it in modern political terms) once or twice, to read the Gospels without thinking about “the Kingdom of God” (a political notion if there ever was one), is ridiculous. Sadly it is still how many people split the good news, making the evangel a matter of salvation from this world, rather than the salvation and thus the impetus to change this world in anticipation and preparation for a better one which is still to come.

Moreover Booth cited the Pope’s encyclicals in favour of his own position, yet did not cite those parts of the encyclical which undermined it. He failed to grasp the irony that he was using a document produced by a body of clergymen who live and run a “state” called the Vatican that has special observation status at the UN.

What both Kirby and Booth failed to engage with substantively is the nature of the Church as a living breathing organism made up of the people who participate in its community and broader society. What should this organism’s relationship to the state look like? Perhaps economists should learn their theology.