Faith, equalities and rights, and democracy

 

Here in the UK there will be a General Election on 04 July. Over the five Sundays in June, I intend to look at several key issues relating to how we vote, concluding, today, with equalities and rights, and democracy. My intention is not to tell you who you should or shouldn’t vote for—though I will touch on policies—but to ask how does Christian faith inform how we cast our vote?

Let’s begin with some principles. First, it is worth noting that Jesus did not live in a democracy, but under the rule of a colonial empire, the latest in a succession of colonising empires. The State we live in, and the state of that State, is a constantly changing accident of history, and not something to vest ultimate identity in. Nor did Jesus ever advocate exerting religious power for temporal gain. Whenever the Church is seduced into trying to do so, the vision of following Jesus is corrupted.

Second, Jesus emphasises the command ‘love your neighbour as yourself.’ Command, here, should be understood as divine decree: that it is the human vocation to love one another, in the same way that it is the vocation of the sun and the moon to light the day and the night. When we seek to withhold from others what we would not want withheld from ourselves—and not least when we seek to exercise control over others by declaring that we know what is best for their own good, better than they do—we violate that divine calling.

Third, while democracy, as a system of government, is traced back to ancient Greece, Jesus adopts and expands this model, taking the term ekklesia—a word used 114 times in the New Testament—to describe the church he will build. The ekklesia was the citizen’s assembly in Greek city-states, such as the Decapolis, a league of ten such cities local to Jesus, which enjoyed political autonomy from the Herodian Kingdom and its successors, the Herodian tetrarchy and the Roman province of Judea. The Athenian model was based on three institutions, the ekklesia, boule, and dikasteria. The ekklesia was the sovereign governing body, meeting weekly, writing laws, determining foreign policy, and appointing officials to serve one-year terms as head of state and organisers of festivals. The boule was a council of representatives, chosen by lot from each district (‘tribe’), meeting daily for a one-year term, responsible for the day-to-day running of the city, and setting the agenda for the ekklesia. The dikasteria were courts in which cases were brought before lottery-selected jurors.

In the early church we see citizenship—the criteria for participation in the ekklesia—broadened to include women, slaves, foreigners (the gentiles), and youths, all of whom were excluded from the Athenian ekklesia. We see representatives appointed to administrative roles by lottery, but also by refined terms (when the Hellenist widows complained that they were being overlooked in the distribution of food to widows, those chosen to administer the distribution fairly were only selected from among the Hellenist part of the church community). Settling disputes within the church rather than going to external courts was also encouraged—deliberative democracy, working alongside representative democracy.

So, we see that Jesus and his first followers take up and develop democracy. We see this today in our structures of church governance, including the congregation as local ekklesia, with its own parochial church council and elected officers, as well as elected representative synods and appointed bishops. It is also worth noting that Christianity has been a major influence in the evolving democracy of England.

Let us turn now to the readings set for this Sunday, asking what light they might shed.

Our Old Testament reading is Lamentations 3.22-33. The context is this: Jerusalem has been laid waste, Solomon’s temple burnt to the ground, the city walls pulled down, the royal court taken into exile, all at the end of a devastating siege. Everything is broken. Yet we are reminded that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end. And so, we are encouraged to hope, in place of despair; to look for evidence of the Lord’s compassion; and to bear the burden of rebuilding. Every party standing in the forthcoming General Election has appealed to our collective sense of brokenness—a creaking NHS, a cost-of-living crisis, anxiety about broken borders. We would do well to attend to the tone of their messages: do they emphasise hope? do they highlight compassion? do they make messianic claims as to their own (and theirs alone) ability to save us? are they honest about the challenges facing us, and the cost?

Our Gospel reading is Mark 5.21-43. We meet a desperate father, who wants the best for his daughter, and a desperate woman, who is excluded from full participation in society. This raises questions of what we might call equalities and rights. It is worth noting that the woman is trapped by a law intended to ensure menstrual health, and also that the World Health Organisation calls for us to recognise that menstrual health should be recognised, framed and addressed as a health and human rights issue, not a hygiene issue. It is worth noting that the woman chooses to ignore the law, in her determination for restoration, and despite her fear of the consequences. We might also note that Jesus uses power to empower others, as opposed to building his own empire. He focuses his attention—and ours—on the woman, not the crowd, and on the little girl, not the commotion around her.

Finally, let’s turn to policies set out in the various manifestos, relating to equalities and rights, and to democracy.

On equalities and rights, Labour and the LibDems highlight equality for women in the workplace, Race Equality (Labour proposes an Act, the LibDems a Strategy), and workplace equality and ease of access to public life for disabled people, while the Conservative focus here is more on health and welfare reform. On gender identity, the Conservatives plan to implement the Cass Review recommendations, to ‘protect young people who are questioning their gender identity from ideologically-driven care,’ while Labour insists upon ‘freedom to explore sexual orientation and gender identity.’ Both statements uphold the importance of safe space, to question or explore. The LibDems go further, proposing reform of the gender recognition process in favour of respecting a person’s identity claim, and the Greens further still, simply affirming the right to self-identification for trans and non-binary people. This is clearly an example of a complex and contested issue—of crowds and commotion—where legislation matters, and compassion for real lives, including family members, matters even more.

The LibDems affirm the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Greens the Human Rights Act and ECHR, while Reform UK would leave the ECHR, remove the 2010 Equalities Act, introduce a Comprehensive Free Speech Bill expressly ‘to stop left-wing bias and politically correct ideology that threatens personal freedom and democracy’ (i.e. no freedom of speech unless you agree with us) and an Anti-Corruption Unit for Westminster (which could be weaponized against political opponents).

On democracy, Labour, the LibDems, and Greens all propose extending the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds (at 16 you can join the British army; Athenian democratic citizenship was from the age of military service) enabling them to participate in the democratic processes that impact every area of their lives. The Greens recognise the right to national self-determination for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the LibDems propose a federal UK with a Federal Constitution, including determining the structures of government in England. Labour would reform the House of Lords, the Greens replace it with a second elected chamber, and Reform UK replace it with a structure to be determined. Reform UK would also replace the Civil Service with political appointees that changed with every government.

Issues of equalities and rights, and of democracy, have a bearing on how we conduct ourselves, as the ekklesia Jesus is building. Who is included, as a citizen in the kingdom of heaven? Who is here, in this place, on equal standing? Who gets to have their voice heard, their perspective respected, their daily lived experience taken into consideration? Are those who have been here for fifty years entitled to more power than those who have been here for six months, simply by virtue of having been here ‘first’—or should the first be last, when it comes to exercising power in this kingdom? Are all included, equally, regardless of gender, age, socio-economic means, ethnicity, disability, abilities, sexuality, family status, education? If not, whose ekklesia are we?

These issues also have a bearing on how we vote. We live in a democracy. There are four political parties standing in Sunderland Central: the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, and Greens. Reform UK offers an alternative to democracy: namely, authoritarian populism. It is an alternative that many Christians in the USA have embraced, the ‘Christian nationalism’ that coopts Jesus in service of political power concentrated in the hands of wealthy, white, culturally ultra-conservative men to the exclusion and control of other groups. It is antithetical to the Way of Jesus, beloved, and to waiting quietly for the salvation of the Lord. I said that it is not my intention to tell you who you should or shouldn’t vote for, but to ask how does Christian faith inform how we cast our vote? This is my caveat: I would have significant issues with anyone who called themselves a follower of Jesus and who voted for an authoritarian populist movement.

As we place our cross in a box on the ballot paper, may we reach out to Jesus, and, grasping the hem of his outer garment, may we be rescued from whatever keeps us from loving service of our neighbour. And may we go out at peace and be made whole.

 

 

Faith, and the environment

 

Here in the UK there will be a General Election on 04 July. Over the five Sundays in June, I intend to look at several key issues relating to how we vote, continuing, today, with the environment. My intention is not to tell you who you should or shouldn’t vote for—though I will touch on policies—but to ask how does Christian faith inform how we cast our vote?

I think that I could make a case for the book of Job being the first treatise on the environment. It starts with God in conversation with an angelic being called the Accuser. God asks whether he has noticed how exemplary a human being Job is? The Accuser responds that this is self-serving on Job’s part, because God has planted a hedge around him, to shelter and protect him. God is not convinced and permits the Accuser to cut down the hedge and see what will happen. What transpires is a heady cocktail of attacks from neighbouring tribes competing for resources, and natural disasters, that between them strip away all Job’s flocks and herds and leave his servants and his children dead. When Job persists in his integrity of character, the Accuser asks to afflict his body with sores, but is prevented from taking his life.

When they hear of Job’s misfortune, his three closest friends come to him, and they do a beautiful thing. They sit with him, in silence, for seven days and seven nights. No trying to offer easy answers where there are none, to ease their own discomfort. And after that, Job speaks. A damn bursts, and words pour out of him. He wishes that he had died in the womb, that there had been no joy at his birth, that the stars had been blotted out by clouds. If you have lost a baby, that might be hard to hear, or understand; but Job is not alone in wishing that he had never been born, not alone in finding himself in such a dark place. He feels utterly hedged-in by God—which does not feel like shelter, but like torment—and his anguish pours out from him like water. God notes everything Job says but, for now, says nothing in return. Instead, Job’s friends speak up, and their advice to him is, to put it in environmental terms, a pile of steaming, well-rotted manure.

Only when they have spent all their words does God speak, answering Job’s complaint from out of the storm (starting with our first reading today, Job 38:1-11). He takes up Job’s death-wish image-for-image with God’s own wish for life. Neither obliterated nor silenced, the morning stars sing for joy. The sea is born, full of vigorous life; and God uses the sea fret to make swaddling bands, to wrap the new-born sea tight—as Mary would wrap Jesus—so that it feels safe and secure. God literally plants a hedge around the sea—a boundary to shelter it—and brings the swell of outpoured waters to peace. In what follows, God reveals a divine fascination with and joy in learning about nature, in discovering how creation will participate in the gift of life. Christians believe that we are made in the image of this God: which is to say, we are made to discover and rejoice in the wider environment.

The divine calming of the swelling waves is taken up in our Gospel passage, Mark 4.35-41. A violent storm comes out of nowhere, threatening to overwhelm the boats in which Jesus and his disciples were caught on the lake. We read that Jesus rebuked the wind, but the Greek means to esteem or place due weight or honour on something. We might say, Jesus, as a frail human, paid due respect to the power of the wind—and that the wind, in return, paid due respect to Jesus. There is something here of human harnessing the wind for human good. There is also something noteworthy in the calm displayed by Jesus before calm is displayed by the waves. He models the contrast between excessive fear and having been persuaded of God’s trustworthiness.

The environment is a major issue, and more so for younger voters. For many younger people, climate change and environmental loss is an existential crisis, which galvanises some to action and paralyses others in despair. The four political parties standing in Sunderland Central—the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, and the Greens—agree that environmental policy must be tied to energy production and a commitment to reaching carbon net zero. All four promote significant investment in offshore wind, onshore wind, and solar energy production, including more localised storage and distribution, with both the Conservatives and Labour also supporting new nuclear power, to which the Green party is opposed. All four are aware that this will take strategic investment, targeted support for industries in transition, and various mechanisms for holding businesses to account. Holding water companies to account is prominent in the Conservative and Labour manifestos.

Reform UK is also standing in Sunderland Central. They are a registered business, rather than a political party (thus getting around certain restrictions on political parties, such as the need to be transparent about their funding). They take a very different approach, rejecting net zero ambitions, advocating that we adapt to a warmer climate, and calling for fast-tracking of licenses for North Sea gas and oil, shale gas extraction (fracking), small nuclear reactors, and incentivised mining for lithium and clean coal.

Christians believe that God created the world, and continues to sustain it; that God entrusted humanity with responsibility to guard the flourishing of all life on earth; and that the threat to life on earth for all species is at least in part tied to human abdication of that God-given responsibility, with hope for all living things also tied to God’s initiative—through the divine person of Jesus Christ—to restore humanity to their rightful position as environmental guardians. Indeed, ‘to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth’ is one of the five marks of Anglican mission, across the world (the others being: to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom; to teach, baptise and nurture new believers; to respond to human need by loving service; to seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation). While Labour, the LibDems and Greens all highlight the importance of international cooperation and targeted development funding, links across the Anglican Communion allow for actual connection and partnership between local communities. Durham diocese has a link with the kingdom of Lesotho, which could benefit from renewal post the hiatus of the global Coronavirus pandemic.

There are things we can do here, too. Some are large, and will require drawing on external funds, such as replacing our heating systems, in the church hall as a matter of priority and in the church as a matter of planning for the future. But there are other things we can do, to take responsibility in this regard. We can shape and adopt an environmental policy, adapting existing templates for churches to our context. These cover energy use, which banks we might use and which charities we might support, how we apply principles of reducing, re-using and recycling waste to the products we buy for church use, the food and dink we consume, the changes we make in our own homes, and the worship and teaching Sunday by Sunday.

Every church, church school and diocese in the Church of England is also encouraged to engage with the Eco Church scheme, which supports churches to become better stewards of God’s creation working progressively through bronze, silver, and gold awards. We are signed-up to this—and it wouldn’t take a lot of work to reach bronze accreditation—but really we need someone with a vision to serve as an Environmental Champion for the church and parish of St Nicholas, to take this on. Perhaps this is something that God might put on your heart—perhaps in response to a sense of discouragement, as God responded to Job and as Jesus responded to his disciples. Perhaps this is where your faith will grow?

And we can make use of resources from the wider Church to help us engage with care for God’s creation, resources such as those produced to support the annual Season of Creation, which runs from 1 September to 4 October each year. This year’s theme is the firstfruits of hope. Blackburn diocese have produced six sessions of material, including prayers, worship, play, activity and actions to take, designed to help primary aged children join in with creation care. They have generously made this resource available more widely.

The environment is one of those issues that cannot be left to ‘someone else’ to address: we all need to play our part, and as Christians, we do so from a faith perspective. It is also one of those issues where we don’t always know what to do—though there is also plenty of consensus over what we ought to do, but don’t want to do. Here, too, our faith engages us, with the promise that Jesus—the one through whom, and for whom, God created all things—is with us, guiding us where we do not know what we ought to do, and strengthening us where we do know the way forward—or at least the next steps—but do not want to follow, for fear of the cost. Where we are overwhelmed, by guilt or shame or anger or denial, he rises and speaks peace into being in our lives.

Faith, housing, transport, immigration and education

 

Here in the UK there will be a General Election on 04 July. Over the five Sundays in June, I intend to look at several key issues relating to how we vote, continuing, today, with housing, transport, immigration and education. My intention is not to tell you who you should or shouldn’t vote for—though I will touch on policies—but to ask how does Christian faith inform how we cast our vote?

In September 2023 the world-famous Sycamore Gap Tree was felled in an act of vandalism. The outpouring of grief made it very clear that many, many people across the northeast of England, and far beyond, felt a special connection with this one, iconic, tree, a deep bond that is hard to explain to someone who does not share it, but undeniable. There is a real sense of loss, but also hope, a desire that the tree might have a legacy: the stump, left in the ground, will hopefully sprout again; seedlings have been carefully gathered and stored to produce new trees, through grafting and other methods; and the felled trunk and branches have been preserved in hope that commissioned artists will create works to enhance a wide variety of contexts across the region.

Human connection to trees is nothing new. In the Bible, trees are often used as allegories for people, sometimes rulers and sometimes nations. Sometimes these trees are transplanted or cut down. For example, the prophet Ezekiel does this in chapter 17—from which our first reading this morning is an extract—and again in chapter 31. The cedar in chapter 17 is an allegory of the fortunes of Judah, while the cedar in chapter 31 is an allegory of the fortunes of Egypt.

Under king Saul, and then king David, a federation of tribes became a nation. The reign of David’s son, Solomon, was considered a Golden Age. Their neighbour to the immediate north was the island city of Tyre, jewel of the sea. Tyre controlled the great forests of Lebanon, that produced the finest cedars. They used this resource to build fine ships, becoming legendary merchants. But they had no land for growing cereal or farming animals. David and Solomon made alliances with king Hiram of Tyre, supplying food in exchange for cedarwood—and master craftsmen—to build David’s royal palace and Solomon’s temple: and so, the cedar became a symbol of the king in Jerusalem too.

But after Solomon’s death, the kingdom split in two, Israel in the north declaring independence from Judah in the south. The two nations coexisted for some time, until, in 597 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian empire—known as the Great—besieged and captured Jerusalem, carrying king Jehoiachin, the royal court and king’s own regiments, into exile in Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar put Jehoiachin’s uncle, Mattaniah, on the throne in his place; and Mattaniah take the name Zedekiah. But ten years later, in 587 BCE, Zedekiah rebelled against Babylonia, gambling on an alliance with Egypt. The gamble did not pay off: Jerusalem was besieged for a second time, its walls destroyed, Solomon’s temple burnt down, and the entirety of the remaining population carried off into exile in Babylon. There they would remain until Babylon in turn fell to the Persians under Cyrus the Great, when they would return, in three waves: led by Zerubbabel, who began rebuilding the temple; by Ezra, the reformer; and by Nehemiah, who oversaw the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem.

This is what is alluded to in Ezekiel’s allegory of the tree: in the earlier part of the chapter, an allegory of Nebuchadnezzar establishing Zedekiah in Jerusalem, and Zedekiah turning to Egypt to support his rebellion; but towards the end of the chapter, the Lord God promises that he will replant his people in their own land and restore their fortunes. They will become a shelter for all nations (birds) and through them all nations (trees, again) will come to know that the Lord is God.

Trees can be considered an ecosystem in their own right. Our two native species of oak—the English Oak, national tree of England; and the Sessile oak, national tree of both Wales and Ireland—support 2,300 wildlife species, providing food and shelter for insects, birds and mammals, as well as lichens, mosses, and fungi. Likewise, the Scots Pine—our only native pine, and the national tree of Scotland—is a keystone species, supporting many other, including rare, species. Trees are a complex, living infrastructure, which make them a good analogy for infrastructure issues such as housing, transport, immigration, and education.

There is a need for a new vision for housing in the UK, including, crucially affordable housing. The average house value has risen by an average 10% every year for the past fifty years, leaving our housing stock beyond the reach of younger first-time buyers. The Conservative and Labour party manifestos share a commitment to build 1.6 & 1.5 million homes over the course of the next parliament. Labour and the Liberal Democrats both propose a new generation of new towns or garden cities, while the Greens favour smaller scale development. The left-of-centre parties want developers to provide supporting infrastructure, while the right-of-centre parties want to remove this constraint. Some focus more than others on upgrading existing housing to be more energy efficient. Regarding the relationship between landlords and tenants, those on the right want to strengthen the rights of landlords, while those on the left want to strengthen the rights of tenants. The imagery of a tree that supports a rich variety of life in different ways, including nests on branches or hollowed out of dead wood, and sets and burrows within the roots, speaks to a diversity of innovative solutions.

A reliable and fit-for-purpose transport infrastructure is essential if communities are to flourish. Our rail network is key, and all parties are calling for its reform. Labour, the LibDems, and the Green party all call for public ownership; while Reform UK proposes that 50% of our infrastructure be publicly owned and 50% held by a UK pensions fund. Buses are key to connecting local communities, raising questions about fit-for-purpose services are best planned, paid for. The LibDems vison extends to light rail and trams, moving to zero-emissions, shifting more freight from roads to rail, and—in common with the Greens—banning short domestic flights and a moratorium on new airports. Cycleways and footpaths should be integral to urban planning.

Immigration is a thorny issue. Claiming that asylum seekers are illegal migrants is a deflection. An illegal migrant is someone who came into the country on a travel, work or study visa and who remained in this country after their visa expired. Illegal migrants should be sent home. Safe routes to sanctuary must be reestablished for those fleeing persecution. There is both compassion and economic sense in processing claims quickly, allowing those who are granted asylum time to establish themselves (currently they are made homeless within two weeks; the LibDems propose a 60-day transition), and permitting people to work while their application is being processed (Greens). The bigger issue is addressing legal migration: and whether this is best done by a salary threshold (Conservative, currently £38,700 for a family visa) or a strategic workforce strategy identifying specific needs and how to address them through balancing the training of our own population and targeted immigration (Labour, LibDem).

Ezekiel’s vision of the tree included the promise that, in a renewed society, the surrounding nations would come to know that the Lord was God. This raises the question, what is the purpose of education? What is it that we want our children to know? For what are we shaping them? The world is changing, with new technologies advancing rapidly. A primary role of our education system has long been producing a workforce. The Conservative vision is built on rewarding STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects, fostering competition, replacing the exam structure (yet again) with the Advanced British Standard, with pupils spending more time in the classroom, studying more subjects, including English and Maths to 18 years old. They also promise 100,000 more apprenticeships. Labour look to fund investment in state schools through ending VAT exemption for private schools. They aim to recruit 6,500 new teachers with a focus on areas that present the greatest recruitment and retainment challenges; and address systemic challenges through breakfast clubs and placing dedicated mental health professionals in every school. The LibDems highlight professional development for teachers, a richer curriculum for pupils, and the need to understand and remove underlying barriers to attendance. The Greens would advocate for restoring university grants and abolishing tuition fees; while Reform UK focus on banning the teaching of ideologies they disapprove of in schools, while cutting funding to universities that undermine free speech.

Having an imagination shaped by the Hebrew Bible, as well as the land and its people, Jesus employed crops and trees in his parables, including today’s Gospel passage, Mark 4.26-34. He notes that while the sower scatters seed, the earth produces of itself, which the sower harvests. Infrastructure issues are like this: we invest in certain ways; what grows will grow; and later, we reap the fruit, the good and bad consequences. With a General Election, a government inherits the consequences of whatever someone else has sown. No party has a monopoly on the best ideas, nor control over the soil in which they are sown. No party can take too much credit for the success that follows their actions—the earth produces of itself. Whoever forms our next government, they will face significant challenges and address them as they see best, with mixed results. We must trust that God is at work, through us, and ask how we might both love and bless our neighbour, however small we may feel our agency to be, paying special attention to the most vulnerable. Rather than saying, ‘What difference can one person make?’, attend to the tiny mustard seed and the prolific tree that grows from it.

 

Faith, health, welfare and pensions

 

Here in the UK there will be a General Election on 04 July. Over the five Sundays in June, I intend to look at several key issues relating to how we vote, continuing, today, with health, welfare and pensions. My intention is not to tell you who you should or shouldn’t vote for—though I will touch on policies—but to ask how does Christian faith inform how we cast our vote?

Our first reading today, Genesis 3.8-15, is part of the mythic story with which the Bible opens. By myth, I mean a story that transcends the context in which it was first told, and that takes on new layers of meaning in subsequent contexts. We have such myths in our national history—stories of King Arthur, or Robin Hood, for example, retold, reimagined, and repurposed to speak to distant descendants facing crises of their own.

In this myth, God creates the human being—male and female—in God’s image. The world of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, was a world of expanding empires. When an army besieged and defeated a city at distance from their own capital, they would erect a statue, an image of their king, to say though this king is not here in person, they are king here now. These representations expressed the ideal image of the time, to which others aspired. Look at statues of Roman emperors (a timeline that stretches beyond the New Testament) and you will see that the first thirteen, from Augustus to Trajan, are all clean-shaven. This changes in 117 CE with Hadrian: the next eight emperors all follow hirsute suit, sporting magnificently sculpted beards. But the Genesis myth presents us with something different: it is not a statue that represents the king in his absence, but living creatures, sculpted from clay, yes, but breathed into life.

God places the humans in a garden paradise, from which they are to go forth and multiply and fill the earth. But for now, there are boundaries: the limit of the garden walls, and a restriction on what they can eat—the fruit of any tree, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The purpose is not to keep them contained or ignorant, but in fact the very opposite: as we experience adolescence, as we navigate the transition from childhood to adulthood, we need space to explore, to take risks, to make mistakes and together with peers learn from them and decide on a way forward, to learn how to mend small ruptures in relationships, to take on progressively more responsibility, to spend longer periods away from our parents while having a secure base to return to and go out from.

In the garden, the serpent engages the woman in conversation. The humans, remember, are still learning, are facing the challenges that will help them grow. As the woman—with childlike impulse—attempts to help a fellow child grow in understanding, we discover that, whereas God has told them not to eat of the fruit of one tree, they are not yet brave enough even to touch that tree. But the serpent—whose motive is not childlike—claims that to eat its fruit will be good for them, making them like God. Children are predisposed to want to be like their parent—copying them, before we learn to obey, or disobey—and, together, the woman and the man eat. And in this moment, something changes. They see themselves with a heightened self-consciousness. And then, they hear the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hide.

When God calls to them, ‘Where are you?’ the man replies, I heard you, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid. Fear is a double-edged (s)word: it refers both to an elevated reverence for someone else, and to an elevated sense of threat to oneself. One biblical tradition asserts that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge or wisdom (Psalm 111.10, Proverbs 1.7 and 9.10). This, then, is the birthplace of wisdom, of learning how to approach God and of learning how to bear God’s likeness. [This reminds me of the conversation in C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where Susan asks whether the lion Aslan is “quite safe” and Mr Beaver replies, “Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”] But here we also see the birth of comparison: the humans compare their naked selves against the Lord God and feel threatened. They also see one another as a threat, to be pre-empted.

What has this to do with health, welfare and pensions? I would suggest, a great deal.

First, across the English-speaking Western world in particular, we have witnessed a spectacular breakdown in the mental health of our young adults. In his book The Anxious Generation, psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the impact of the virtual world on girls and boys. As backstory, Haidt notes the loss of play-based childhood from the 1990s onward, as adults became overly protective of children within physical space, denying them the freedom to explore. Drawing on many research studies, he charts the impact of the growth of the internet, and the advent of the smart phone from around 2010. This trend has been bad for boys and disastrous for girls. We all experience motivation to agency—to growing competence and assertiveness—and motivation to communion with others—to cooperation and empathy. But in general terms, boys are encouraged more towards agency, and girls more towards communion. Business understands this, and so, in the virtual world, boys have been targeted by video games (increasingly massive multiplayer platforms) and pornography (increasingly hardcore) and girls have been targeted by social media platforms. Boys have withdrawn more and more from the physical world, losing confidence and competence there, while girls have experienced the devastating impact of manipulated visual social comparison, relational aggression, and wanting to fit in by copying influencers. Girls have elevated impossible and unreal expectations of beauty and, unable to live up to them, have hidden themselves deeper into the forest of anxiety. Boys are being taught to blame women for their woes, exacerbated by a shift from male-heavy industrial communities to service-based economies where women are better-equipped to excel.

All of this is almost entirely unchecked by society, which still tends to overfocus on physical safety. But the physical safety of our children has increased for several generations (in part, perhaps, due to a withdrawal from the physical world). In the UK we have seen a significant rise in knife-enabled crime over the past decade, though injuries and homicides have fallen. Where children are carrying knives, mostly for defence, it is because they perceive the world outside to be more dangerous than it actually is, arguably because it has become a more alien environment to them. Addressing this may involve putting more police officers on the ground (Con 20,000; Lab 13,000), adult-organised youth hubs with mental health provision (Lab), or a dedicated mental health professional in every school (LibDem); but we also need to address the loss of public space where children can play unsupervised (including hostile attitudes towards groups of young people) as well as holding online platform developers to a far greater level of accountability. Where parties want to extend fast broadband, so no community is left behind (Green, LibDem), what measures do they propose to protect our children online? We should pay close attention to the proposals of the different parties in addressing this mental health crisis—a crisis of adult making, but falling on children, who are not a problem to be solved. They are certainly not to be demonised. Which brings us nicely to Jesus’ observation, in the context of being misunderstood and demonised, that ‘if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand’ (Mark 3.20-35).

Health, welfare and pensions are major issues in the forthcoming General Election. They are issues that have an impact on all our lives, and they are issues that play deeply to any insecurity in our sense of identity, and to the sense of fear that springs from comparing ourselves to others—or, for those whose circumstances change, comparing ourselves as we see ourselves today against how we saw ourselves in the past.

Taken as a whole, the income and wealth of pensioners has increased over the past 30 years but is subject to widening inequality. 33% of Asian older people and 30% of Black older people live below the poverty line, compared to 16% of White older people; while17% of pensioners are in the top fifth of all household income. This has significant impact on health, on life-expectancy and quality of life. It has a bearing on hospital-based care, and on social care to support independent living; on how we fund the NHS and how that funding is shared. The Green Party’s proposal for modest tax rises for the wealthiest, and Reform UK’s proposal to remove the ‘free at the point of use’ principle for those who can afford to pay are two very different approaches on offer.

And how do we go about addressing the overwhelming levels of need, including waiting lists, in ways that honour those who work in health and social care, who, despite our claiming that the NHS is a national treasure, are often treated—badly—as our household servants? In Genesis 3, the Lord God moves to remove shame and restore dignity. In Mark 3, Jesus redefines our understanding of family, beyond self-interest, and aligned with God’s desire for a caring society. No one party has a monopoly on the best way forward; these issues deserve cross-party collaboration, not the trading of apportioning blame and deflecting responsibility we have seen so far in this Election campaign.

It is easy to write-off politicians for such human behaviour—as if we are any different. But while there are things best delivered nationally, or regionally, repairing a caring society cannot be left to government alone or to market forces. It requires of us all that we act as those who bear the image of God, and that we recognise our neighbour as bearing that same image. Weigh the party manifestos and exercise your vote. But also ask, how might we as a local community address some of these issues, whether by creating space for young people or through the Parish Nursing movement, by identifying need and working with others to meet it in sustainable ways.

 

Faith, work and the economy

 

It won’t have escaped your notice that here in the UK there will be a General Election on 04 July. Over the five Sundays in June, I intend to look at several key issues relating to how we vote, beginning, today, with work and the economy. My intention is not to tell you who you should or shouldn’t vote for—though I will touch on policies—but to ask how does Christian faith inform how we cast our vote?

Work impacts all our lives, including the lives of children and pensioners. And work is a good thing, where it enables us to express something of ourselves, in ways that make a meaningful contribution to society, and in exchange to receive back what we need to meet our needs. It is also a sphere of life where humans exploit other humans, and people experience injustice. The UK has a very high level of income inequality [pay, bonuses, shares, pensions] compared to other developed nations, and an even higher level of wealth inequality [land and property ownership].

One of the foundational events in the Bible is the exodus of the descendants of Jacob from Egypt, where they had initially been welcomed as economic refugees but were later heavily exploited amid rising fear that their population had grown too large to live peaceably alongside their hosts. Soon after Moses leads their escape, God presents them with Ten Words—we know them as the Ten Commandments. These were fundamental for society to flourish but needed fleshing-out in practical case law. One of the Words concerned work, and, specifically, the key importance of regular rest from labour or exertion, grounded in the rhythms of nature itself. When, forty years later, Moses restated the Ten Words to the generation who had left Egypt as children, or who had been born after that experience, he reframed the Word explicitly as protection against exploitation:

‘Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.’ (Deuteronomy 5.12-15)

Sabbath means to cease exertion, to rest. And the Word concerning work flows out rest. That is to say, it places restriction on work. In a sense, it seeks to save work from itself. By putting a limit on work, it prevents a good thing from becoming an idol, an all-consuming thing that exploits us. It provides clear margins around work for rest, for celebration, for other expressions of community. And of course, this pattern presupposes that the labour of six days provides for seven. You cannot rest if you are worrying about how you are expected to choose between eating and keeping warm. So, we might want to ask, of each party’s manifesto, what is your understanding of work? And do you value people as more than economic units?

This Word is expansive: it starts with you and extends to others. The primary focus is on those with the most means. The Word places a limit on the pursuit of profit and insists on a duty of care towards others. These are not others who are ‘less fortunate than ourselves’—a phrase I dislike intensely, a phrase that shields the rich from addressing systemic unfairness. No, this Word is concerned with justice for all. The Labour Party’s policy of making the minimum wage a real living wage, and the Green Party’s policy of introducing a Universal Basic Income, giving everyone the agency to take time away from work to care for family, learn new skills, volunteer, or pursue other interests, would be ways of fleshing this out.

The Word turns to addressing young adults. What does liveable work and rest mean for them? Zero-hour contracts might sound attractive when the worker can easily step outside work commitments for a time and take up other employment fairly easily; but where a diversity of opportunity is missing, such terms are exploitative. I don’t know what you think of the Conservative policy that every 18-year-old should do National Service? Perhaps you think it is just what they need. Perhaps you think that many young people are already volunteering in the community, and perhaps it should be compulsory for all ages. Perhaps you think it isn’t a bad idea, but it needs more thought: who is going to supervise these young people, and monitor the value of the experience? But ‘[requiring] another person to perform forced or compulsory labour’ is an offence under the Modern Slavery Act 2015; and perhaps we should rather ask how do we protect the margin of free time around young adults? Related to this, we might ask, why is the minimum wage for those under 21 less than that for those who are 21 and over? Someone might respond that young people have fewer commitments; but that isn’t the basis on which we pay for labour. Why should they not have the opportunity to build up savings, rather than the idea that, in the long run, it is good for people to experience getting into debt? [It isn’t.]

Next, gender is addressed. Do not discriminate. In this country, it is illegal to pay a woman less than a man for doing the same work. But it happens all the time. It happens in hidden ways, such as men being given larger bonuses, and also because women have too often assumed that the law is being observed. Women face discrimination, for example because maternity leave costs an employer in ways that have no immediate benefit to the employer: if profit is your bottom line, rather than a duty of care, women make poor employees, and all employees—regardless of gender—are disposable. What do the various party manifestos have to say about workers’ rights, and about the balance of care between the employer, the state, and the individual?

The Word addresses beasts of burden, which, in our context, might be expanded to include machinery and tools. There is something here about technology, about obsolescence, about the relentless exploitation of the natural world; and about commitment to a greater contentment and appreciation of what we have. Again, there is something here that resists reducing everything to short-term profit, and that asks whether we might reimagine what has been termed a ‘greening’ of the economy.

And the Word addresses our attitude towards the resident alien in our towns. This is, of course, highly contentious in our society: but it is not an issue that will be addressed by ignoring it. Since the lifting of Covid restrictions, and the ending of the EU transitional arrangements, we have seen a very marked rise in long term immigration among non-EU nationals, with those on ‘skilled worker – health and care’ visas having overtaken those on study visas, and dependents of those with ‘skilled worker – health and care’ visas having overtaken primary applicants. We have experienced the impact of this on our own congregation, with healthcare workers from Nigeria and Ghana and India and their families worshipping with us. So, we might ask, if we are content for immigrants to perform care work, for which they are often both overqualified and poorly paid, what might we owe them, as a society? And if we do want to reduce immigration, how might we go about that well? Reform UK propose a higher rate of National Insurance to be paid by businesses that employ non-British nationals, though, tellingly, their proposal would exempt the health and care sector.

Moses ends with a reminder that we do this in part because of an appreciation of our own history of exploitation experienced by previous generations. That we are not to lightly throw away rights won. In this nation, this would include the right to vote, the right to Union representation, rights in the workplace, maternity provision, protection in times of sickness, benefits of the welfare state. Rights that are constantly resisted and pushed back on by vested interests who would exploit others for personal gain. There are many stories of resistance and demand for change in our shared history. Some have been championed by the Church, some ignored, some actively resisted. But stories, and how we tell them, matter.

Let’s turn to our Gospel passage, Mark 2.23-3.6. I’m not going to read it out, you can look it up for yourself later. Here, I simply want to offer some thoughts on how we should conduct ourselves over the coming weeks. The Gospel passage records two clashes between Jesus and a group who saw him as a threat to their vested interests, to their privileged position in society. Who saw Jesus as their enemy, to be destroyed. First, they use a very harsh interpretation of the law to discredit Jesus’ disciples; then they pretend that engaging with Jesus’ questions is beneath their dignity.

In contrast, Jesus reminds them of a story from their history that they have chosen to bury, a story that raises compassion above control. Every party, every candidate standing in this General Election will remind us of certain stories about our shared history, that emphasise particular characteristics. The point is not to seek balance, but to ask ourselves, are the stories told—the characteristics highlighted—ones we would choose to celebrate, or lament in penitence? And how do we respond to the stories we would distance ourselves from? Do we accuse the storyteller of being unpatriotic, or the enemy within; or do we recognise that our shared story is not reductive to the Right or the Left?

And, finally, Jesus ‘was grieved at their hardness of heart.’ He moves to restore a withered hand—to restore the man’s opportunity to contribute to society—while his opponents move to destroy him above all else. May we resist the hardening of our hearts against those with whom we disagree. May we love, and pray for, those we count as enemies.