Many years back I was very taken by the words of O. Hobart Mowrer who, speaking of the rise in the practice of psychiatry and the resultant diminishing of pastoral ministry within a Church setting said that. "The Church has sold its pastoral birthright for a mess of psychological potage!"
well, here in the UK the Church has, over the years, handed over its pastoral birthright for a mess of social state potage.
Where once the Church was found in the area of health care provision it has permitted itself to be handed a diminishing role. Gone are the days when an Almoner would collate the names of those within their hospital walls and contact the relevant ministers to tell them which members of their flock were residing within or, as retold by an ageing cleric, communion would be taken from ward to ward in procession of student nurse, Matron and Vicar.
Where once clergy, in consort with the local GP, were the primary care source for all ills, mental, marital, familial and beyond, now we have overworked social workers with heavy caseloads, targets, performance indicators and a terminal fear of being found wanting. The privilege of 'A Parson in every parish' meant that the god-collar knew the people in their patch and provided a system of care based on knowledge and the history of both sufferer and their families.
These are but two of the many symptoms that defines a Church which, having entered into a terminal illness, has been content to see surrogates come and perform the necessary tasks around them. It marks the passage of a time when being a dog-collar was all about being in and around the parish, visiting and drinking tea, riding a bicycle around your patch and doing little paperwork. Halcyon days indeed when targets, quotas, parish share and the like were nowhere to be seen and the only gauge of performance was the esteem and well-being present in those who inhabited your patch.
Money is tight and budgets are increasing being cut, or even removed completely, and the many organisations and charities that once lived through the generosity of the collecting tin have found that the selling out of their original (Christian) aims and going for project funding is perhaps going to be the very thing that signals their demise. Of course, the fact is that they are now secular organisations and there is no way back into their Christian origins either organisationally or in the members of staff that they employ.
This week a radio new item featured a man who had told the project workers on the various social projects that they were funded to provide that they were not having their project-funding renewed. Not only were they going, but the tasks that they have been employed to do were going to be dropped as there was no money to buy-in and no staff to transfer into the work.
A course I did last year, alongside a number of project workers from one of the charities, led to me realising that the organisation went from project to project as the funding was available. There was no consistency and to be honest the degree of cynicism and the extent to which money was wasted left me saddened and frustrated. From laudable Christian origins I saw an organisation which was about continuing to receive funding and keep staff in work rather than the original ideals. Now, the money has gone and I see the organisation effectively prostituting itself, doing anything to keep the organisation going, regardless of the role or the morality!
It is time to re-motivate the Church. To bring about another Evangelical revival and get Church fully active in the social, welfare and health arenas.
Come on guys, there's a world to be won and saved out there, come and join us and be Christ to our nation!
5 comments:
These were also the days when the church was supported financially not only by the historic endowments which have now been largely spent in those dioceses that had them, but by a system of tithes collected often against great resentment by the rector of each parish. They were the days when clergy had parishes with a settled population of several hundred, a number which the parson could reasonably be expected to know personally; they were the days when there were great social divisions that meant clergy were set apart and deferred to by all except the gentry and the aristocracy, and when people like you (possibly) and certainly me would have had no chance of pursuing our calling. They belong to a class system that, thankfully, has been mostly dismantled.
They were also the days when the church acted paternalistically, assuming that everyone should be grateful for their (sometimes grudging) favours, and when it acted triumphalistically, assuming an easy right to be involved in everything. Yes, the church should be involved in health care and in education, but I'm afraid I don't share the rose-tinted view of the past that some seem to have. The church squandered its opportunities because it spent too much effort cosying up to those in power at the time and has still not properly adjusted to our late/post-modern times. I for one am thankful for the welfare state.
..and do we want to return to the attitudes of Father/Parson knows best?
I think that we would be deluding ourselves to think that the church could become what it once was in places like the East End in the last century. Where the only social worker was the Parson.
Today, people are much better educated (I think) and certainly know their rights and entitlements, (but not necessarily responsibilities) no matter who is paying for them.
The reality that I see is the rich getting richer, while deprivation is a fact of life for many people.
I was for many years a supporter of Tory principles. I have completely revised my views and principles to see things in a completely different light. Returning to Christianity has had a lot to do with that.
The welfare state came about from altruistic motives, and was hard fought for, mainly by working men and women, who saw what was needed and, once in government, put the mechanisms in place to build it. Perhaps it has gone to far in some instances, but it remains a need, and it likely to be needed for long term.
I can see a role for the church in local leadership, in partnership with other agencies and charities, but we struggle to look after our own communities now, and pastoral care is had necessarily been delegated to a great extent to volunteers within churches.
In an ideal world, the church would do what it traditionally did, but I suspect that as Rev Simmy points out, that the Paternalistic approach of the past would not be acceptable or appropriate these days.
In these days of less stipendiary ministers and falling incomes, I don't see the church doing that much more than it is managing now. I would love to see it differently, but I sense that I would have to a wild optimist to believe that this situation will improve in the short or medium term.
We can only trust in God that we will be given the tools and resources to meet the challenges already here and that will undoubtedly increase in the future.
If, today, a clergy ... person tried to do the roles now appropriated by health workers, social workers, psychiatrists, etc., he or she would be hauled up before the courts and fined and suchlike PDQ, the militant secularists and thought police would see to it, without a delay.
Post a Comment