fbpx

How should we talk about poverty in the 2020s?

Ruth Lister's book challenges the UK’s approach to poverty, and highlights the work of several of Church Action on Poverty’s partners.

Baroness Ruth Lister is a member of the House of Lords, the honorary elected president of Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), and a Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University. Poverty links to academic research and anti-poverty campaigners’ views on the concept of poverty. The second edition uses updated research and puts a renewed emphasis on the importance of participatory research, involving ‘experts by experience’. Poverty attempts to widen public understanding of poverty and therefore will not be new to campaigners. Lister’s arguments link heavily with Church Action on Poverty’s strategy of Dignity, Agency, and Power.

In the 2020s, poverty is more salient an issue than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic looms large throughout Poverty. Lister argues that focused definitions of poverty affect political policies but asserts that poverty shouldn’t be “reduced to statistics”. She emphasises that poverty should not only be seen as insecurity but as a “corrosive social relation” that permeates the experiences of those experiencing it. Lister analyses the non-material aspects of poverty and argues passionately for:

  • The need to treat those living-in poverty with dignity and respect
  • The recognition of agency within the experience of poverty
  • The importance of reframing the dominant narrative of poverty in terms of power and citizenship.

Ultimately, Poverty calls for the recognition and respect of the viewpoints of those impacted by poverty and a rethink of the politics of poverty in order to redistribute resources more fairly.

Church Action on Poverty’s work is centred upon the ideas of dignity, agency and power, and the book reinforces the importance of all of these.

Dignity

Lister hypothesises that how poverty is seen and experienced is created by a power dynamic within a society where the majority ‘non-poor’ decides the attitudes towards ‘the poor’. ‘The poor’ are created as ‘the other’ through language and images that “label and stigmatise marginalised social groups, with fundamental implications.” The main one being that they are treated differently to the rest of society. The best example of this is the 2014 Channel 4 show Benefits Street, which was criticised for reinforcing negative stigmas of claiming benefits.

The stigma of poverty causes social shame and leads those in poverty to feel disrespected. Participatory research in the UK and internationally has concluded that those in poverty are fighting to maintain dignity and respect as the experience of poverty takes it from them.

Lister asserts that treating people experiencing poverty with dignity can “increase their self-confidence and sense of agency” arguing for the recognition and representation of those in poverty within wider society and the media. Lister argues later for the importance of participation of those with lived experience in making policy decisions to shift the narrative and allow dignity and respect.

Agency

One of Lister’s main arguments is the importance of recognising the agency of people experiencing poverty, emphasising that they make their own decisions to cope with their circumstances. She claims that the acknowledgment of the agency of people living-in poverty can be another sign of respect. But she emphasises that an important consequence of poverty is the constraints of agency, either through ‘othering’ or a lack of material resources. Lister categorises four different types of agency, from the everyday to the more strategic:

  1. ‘Getting by’ – the struggle to keep going in the face of adversity and insecurity, which is not acknowledged by wider society. Lister stresses how impactful insecurity can be, as it can impact mental and physical health.

2. ‘Getting (back) at’ – the feeling of being trapped in poverty and powerlessness can create anger that can be directed at the state (through benefit fraud) or families and neighbourhoods (through anti-social behaviour). But challenging the narrative doesn’t have to be negative. For example, ATD 4th World’s poetry written by ‘experts by experience’ contains assertions of dignity in the face of indifference/disrespect.

3. ‘Getting out’ – Individuals use their agency to negotiate their way through the structural routes out of poverty, usually employment or education. Lister argues the key to agency, in this case, is raising the aspirations of those who feel powerless.

4. ‘Getting organised’ – ‘othering’ processes can discourage those in poverty from activism, but Lister argues that action often takes place within communities in the form of mutual aid (which has increased during the pandemic). Lister also uses the example of APLE Collective (Addressing Poverty through Lived Experience) and Poverty2Solutions, who address the perceived lack of political action from people in poverty by creating a platform to speak out against political policies.

Lister argues government policies tackling poverty should address societal structures while also helping individuals use their agency to negotiate the pathways open to them. The emphasis of participation of ‘experts by experience’ in research and activism to challenge the ‘othering’ of people in poverty is key to the book.

Power

Lister emphasises the importance of the use of human rights, citizenship, voice, and power as a counter-narrative to characterising people in poverty as the ‘other’. Anti-poverty campaigners use this discourse to link political narratives on poverty to wider concerns about human rights, citizenship, and democracy. Lister argues this is a potentially transformative way of speaking about and mobilising against poverty.

Our understanding of poverty can be enlarged when we frame it in this way, and it supports a focus on dignity and agency. The idea that poverty is a denial of basic human rights implies a moral imperative to tackle it and shifts responsibility to structural causes. Lister argues it is important to promote the discourse of human rights through the political action of those with lived experience of poverty, to reinstate dignity, agency, and power to rearrange the societal structures in their favour.

Social divisions and different experiences of poverty

It is becoming increasingly acknowledged, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, that the impact of poverty and how it is experienced is affected by social divisions such as age, gender, race, disability, social class, religion, and geography. Lister reasons that poverty cannot be effectively tackled until inequality is reduced both locally and internationally. Throughout Poverty, the effects of the social constraints of poverty and the individual agency of those who experience poverty despite these constraints are emphasised.

Women, black and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, those living in deprived areas, children, and the elderly are more likely to experience poverty.

Lister maintains that “policies combating poverty need to address underlying intersecting inequalities and be embedded within broader gender, ‘race’ and disability equality and antidiscrimination strategies”. This view that anti-poverty strategies should tackle intersecting inequalities as a whole is not yet widely acknowledged but should be taken seriously. Here at Church Action on Poverty, we learnt valuable lessons through discussions on some of these themes during Challenge Poverty Week 2020.

Sign reading Look After Each Other

Overall, Poverty maintains the empowerment of people in poverty is needed for them to realise their visions of society that don’t include poverty, which would lead to new ways of thinking about poverty. Lister cites ongoing initiatives from ATD Fourth World and Poverty2Solutions. This book aims to widen the general understanding of poverty to galvanise us all to recognise the importance of including people in poverty. That’s something all of us in the anti-poverty movement recognise the importance of, as we work to ensure that dignity, agency and power are better understood in the context of tacking poverty.

Jessica Waylen is Challenge Week Intern at Church Action on Poverty.

Cost of living scandal: 7 truly useful church responses

Stories that challenge: Alan & Ben

7 ways a Your Local Pantry could help YOUR community in 2024

Artist Don: How Leith Pantry has helped ease my depression

Are we set for a landmark legal change on inequality?

SPARK newsletter winter 2023-24

A posed group photo for the Neighbourhood Voices event at YMCA North Staffordshire in Stoke

Stoke voices: We want opportunity and hope

6 people holding cut-out numbers, reading 150,000

Merseyside Pantries reach big milestone

Transforming the Jericho Road

Food insecurity: now we have the data, it’s time to act

Now that we know the extent of food insecurity in the UK, the Government’s obligations are clear.

43% of Universal Credit claimants experienced food insecurity

For the first time, the Government has laid bare the true scale of household food insecurity in the UK.

The Government’s own research conclusively shows that, even prior to the pandemic, one in twelve of all households in the UK were experiencing low or very low levels of food security. 

The data was in the Family Resources Survey 2019/20, published by the Department for Work and Pensions on Thursday 25th March.

Most shockingly, it shows that more than four out of ten (43%) households in receipt of Universal Credit experience high or very high levels of household food insecurity.  This confirms what people who have to rely on Universal Credit to survive have known for a long time: the level of Universal Credit is simply too low. 

It’s worth noting that the survey asked only about people’s experiences in the 30 days before they were interviewed. If people had been asked about the full year, the number of food insecure households would have been far higher still.  

It is an indictment of successive Governments that benefit levels across the board have been allowed to drop to such low levels that we have reached this stage. 

Millions of families face worrying whether their food will run out before they get money to buy more; can’t afford balanced meals; skip meals or are forced to eat less than they should because there isn’t enough money for food.

The data will be invaluable in enabling the UK to better understand poverty and therefore to address it. That we have this new information is thanks to sustained pressure from End Hunger UK campaigners and others in recent years. Much analysis will come, but there are two conclusions that can immediately be drawn:

Firstly, the Government’s own research makes the case for retaining the £20 a week uplift to Universal Credit after September unanswerable. As this new report clearly demonstrates, to fail to do so would plunge countless families further into hunger.

Secondly, now that it is equipped with this data, it is time for Government to come up with a coherent plan for ending household food insecurity in the UK. That means making sure all incomes are adequate to ensure every family has enough food to eat, and that no parent or child needs to go to bed worrying where the next meal will come from.  

Notes from the data

  • Universal Credit is the single highest contributory factor by some considerable way – in driving levels of household food insecurity in the UK [See table 9.7].
  • Over 4 in 10 households in receipt of Universal Credit (43%) experience low or very low food security – over five times the national average of 8% across all households.
  • Over a quarter of households on Universal Credit (26%) are ranked as having ‘very low’ food security – more than six times the national average of 4% for all households.
  • Households in receipt of state benefits in general terms experience far higher levels of household food insecurity than the general population [See table 9.7]
  • One in four households on any income-related benefit experience low or very low levels of food security, including: Income Support (36%); Jobseekers Allowance (37%); Employment Support Allowance (31%).
  • One in four households in receipt of carers allowance and more than one in five households in receipt of personal independence payments are food insecure.
  • Specific groups experiencing particularly high levels of household food insecurity:
    • 31% of working age households living in social housing experience food insecurity compared to just 3% of owner occupiers [See table 9.8]
    • 29% of single parent households [See table 9.2]
    • 25% of households with one or more unemployed adults under state pension age
    • 19% of households with one or more disabled adults under state pension age.
    • 19% of black households, compared to 8% for the general population [See table 9.6]

Niall Cooper says the new data on household food insecurity shows the need to protect the Universal Credit uplift, and must lead to a coherent Government strategy to prevent poverty.

Author: Niall Cooper, director of Church Action on Poverty

26th March 2021

Fair fares in the North East, thanks to students!

Mary: tackling poverty via radio, art and a newfound resolve

Poems from the Iona Community 2022

SPARK newsletter summer 2023

Church Action on Poverty in Sheffield 2023 AGM

An introduction to Self-Reliant Groups for Churches

How the Pope’s words 10 years ago challenge & changed us

Budget 2023: Speaking Truth To Power reaction

Budget 2023: a precious chance to bridge the rich-poor divide

Books about poverty: some recommendations for World Book Day

Journey into Activism – new book from a Church Action on Poverty campaigner

A posed group photo for the Neighbourhood Voices event at YMCA North Staffordshire in Stoke

Stoke voices: We want opportunity and hope

6 people holding cut-out numbers, reading 150,000

Merseyside Pantries reach big milestone

Transforming the Jericho Road

Why did I write Second Class Citizens and what can we learn?

In Second Class Citizens, author Stef Benstead shows how the rights of disabled people have been systematically breached in the UK since 2010.

The videos on this page show Stef Benstead, author of Second Class Citizens.

What does it mean to speak truth to power? What messages need to be told, and who most needs to listen?

These questions are always integral to our thinking and priorities at Church Action on Poverty, and we stand alongside those who have been marginalised.

We work with many inspiring groups and individuals around the country, but one of those leading the way is one of our own trustees, Stef Benstead.

Stef Benstead with a copy her book, Second Class Citizens, which looks at the way the UK has breached disabled people's human rights
Stef Benstead with her book, Second Class Citizens

An important but under-told story

Stef is the author of Second Class Citizens, which is a devastating critique of the way the UK has treated disabled people in the past ten years.

In it, she charts the development of attitudes and care towards disabled people in the past few centuries. Next, she analyses and deconstructs the policies of the past decade.

The book also contains powerful true stories. In many cases, people have been swept deeper into poverty by a system that ought to be a lifeline.

In 2018, the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, delivered a scathing report on the UK’s approach over the past few years. Policies and practices he examined have left millions trapped in poverty by circumstances out of their control

The report generated much discussion, and yet two years earlier, a similar evidence-led report on the UK’s treatment of disabled people went largely unreported.

The opening lines of Second Class Citizens begin with that study. Stef writes:

“In 2016, the United Nations made an extraordinary announcement: that the United Kingdom, a rich and developed country, was violating basic human rights.”

Widely-contrasting views

The Government was dismissive of the UN report and said it was actually a world leader in the field.

Second Class Citizens is a forensic examination of the UN and UK’s opposing claims. Stef finds a catalogue of changes to policies, rules, administration, approach, and political rhetoric. Overwhelmingly, the changes contributed to a steady and steep erosion of disabled people’s rights, opportunities and incomes. In addition, they were all implemented with minimal consultation or discussion with those affected.

In the end, Stef finds the evidence overwhelmingly supports the UN position. By contrast, the Government’s claims and arguments do not stand up under cross examination.

Stef writes: “The post-2010 Governments have caused substantial harm to sick and disabled people’s health, living standards and social inclusion.

“It has done so without any moral or economic justification, and has signally failed to uphold one of governments’ most fundamental reasons to exist: to ensure and improve the access to basic rights of its most vulnerable citizens.

“Sick and disabled people in the UK today are treated as second-class citizens, and until this situation is rectified the UK Government will continue to be violating international law by its ongoing breach of disabled people’s rights.”

There is a better way

Our society should not be like this.

The goal of a modern society, Stef writes, should be that sick and disabled people have access as far as possible to the same choices as everyone else, in terms of where to live, work or study, and what to eat, wear and do.

However, that ideal has become a more distant hope for several reasons. Firstly, the narrowing of criteria for help has locked more people out of the support system. Secondly, the removal of some support systems completely has cut people adrift, and those with greatest needs have endured the greatest cuts. Thirdly, many attempts to improve the system have been flawed, often due to failure to properly consult and listen.

Stef has the genetic connective tissue disorder, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, and Postural Tahycardia Syndrome and fibromyalgia. This means she is always exhausted and in pain. She has a 1st from Cambridge but had to leave her PhD at the same university when she became ill. 

It was her own experience that led her into researching disability rights and treatment. Drawing on this experience and research, Second Class Citizens aims to provide a clear and lasting answer to many recurring questions. 

“Speaking truth to power is important when it means MPs listen to someone who they do not normally listen to and hear about issues they do not normally hear about,” says Stef.

“I would hope that would stimulate them to then look more into the issues and learn more about it from another perspective. We need to keep saying what is wrong and we need to have a story of how things can be better.”

Language matters

The book is compelling in its assessment of Government policies, and statutory systems:, and makes clear demonstrations of failure. For instance, people are hamstrung by infuriating errors and flawed systems. Public transport is often inaccessible. Support is frequently unreliable. The flawed benefits system punishes minor or non-existent errors. Letters from the DWP say large-print or Braille options are available… but fail to say so in large print or Braille,. As a result, blind people are often unable to read important correspondence.

Stef also examines the political rhetoric that has sustained many of the injustices and systemic problems. She scrutinises, dissects and finds wanting the narrative of a ‘dependency culture’ that has been adopted by many politicians in modern times.

She concludes:

“It is not simply that there is a lack of evidence, but that the evidence shows a strong commitment to work, even among people who are too ill to work or whose only experience of work is of low-paid, dead end jobs.”

Throughout the book, Stef introduces people with first-hand experience of systems and policies that have made life harder.

Adam, for instance, had a good relationship with his landlord, until Universal Credit swept him into rent arrears. Beth, who has autism and severe anxiety, was in seclusion in hospital not because of her own needs but because the hospital has lacked staff. She spends more than 23 hours a day in one room and has not been outside since early 2018.

Their stories are among dozens that hammer home the impact of the systems Stef examines.

Stef is part of the Spartacus network, a collective of disabled or ill researchers, and also works with the Chronic Illness Inclusion Project. She is also a trustee of Church Action on Poverty.

Cost of living scandal: 7 truly useful church responses

Stories that challenge: Alan & Ben

7 ways a Your Local Pantry could help YOUR community in 2024

Artist Don: How Leith Pantry has helped ease my depression

Are we set for a landmark legal change on inequality?

SPARK newsletter winter 2023-24

A posed group photo for the Neighbourhood Voices event at YMCA North Staffordshire in Stoke

Stoke voices: We want opportunity and hope

6 people holding cut-out numbers, reading 150,000

Merseyside Pantries reach big milestone

Transforming the Jericho Road

Look up child

Self-Reliant Groups facilitator Laura Walton focuses on the importance of mindfulness in the last few weeks of lockdown

Mindfulness is all about appreciating the moment and doing what it takes to stay in the moment. We learn to hold back our thoughts and train them to sit and wait while our minds settle and are still. No more thinking of all the things we need to do by this evening. Taking a break from those anxious what ifs about tomorrow or next week, those worries about our children and their children, relatives, neighbours, situations which we just can’t fix. It is about stopping and looking and listening, even smelling, tasting and touching.
 
Whilst walking in the park this week with a friend, I caused her to stop and instructed her to look and stop talking. She has been shielding and working from home very reluctantly. Instead of being swamped by children with their noise and clamouring for attention, she has gazed through her window, sat at a desk,in front of her computer and often in silence for most of the last year. Every week we would walk and she would talk, downloading the week indoors as we passed impromptu illegal gatherings of drummers, football matches with supposedly no spectators, the guy cutting hair under a tree over near the closed tennis courts. When I realised she was going to talk her way straight past a huge bank of early daffodils and late snowdrops I had to redirect her energy and attention to something beautiful, wild, resilient and resistent to the drammatic changes that we have all had to face this last year.She continued breathing but stopped still.
 
Despite the upheavals and U turns in our lives, all those sleeping bulbs needed was time at a certain temperature to activate growth and produce a fine display to capture and hold the frenetic activity of my friend’s mind mid download. And she was still and quiet and smiling.
 
How much more beautiful do the blossom trees look this year? Can we take time in these last few weeks before Boris sets us free again to walk and stop and look. Can we look up? Instead of leaving our footprints on the white blossom petals spilt on the pavement, let’s lift our eyes to those gloriously decorated branches. Our worlds have become so small over the last few months and our horizons merely as far as the nearest loaf of bread and bottle of milk. It’s definitely time to look up and be reminded of the vastness of the sky, the knowledge of who is in control and the opportunities that still lie out there for us

Cost of living scandal: 7 truly useful church responses

Stories that challenge: Alan & Ben

7 ways a Your Local Pantry could help YOUR community in 2024

Artist Don: How Leith Pantry has helped ease my depression

Are we set for a landmark legal change on inequality?

SPARK newsletter winter 2023-24

A posed group photo for the Neighbourhood Voices event at YMCA North Staffordshire in Stoke

Stoke voices: We want opportunity and hope

6 people holding cut-out numbers, reading 150,000

Merseyside Pantries reach big milestone

Transforming the Jericho Road

Right-wing and Left-wing Christian Approaches to Poverty

Nick Jowett, a member of Church on Action on Poverty in Sheffield, writes on differing Christian approaches to tackling poverty.

It would be right to assume that all Christians are equally concerned about issues of poverty and inequality in society.

The Bible is full of such concerns. The law of Jubilee in Leviticus 25 is intended to prevent anyone accumulating more and more wealth and property. The prophets inveigh against greed and luxury and the unfair treatment of the poor. Proverbs 14:31 says: ‘Whoever oppresses the poor insults his maker, but he who is generous to the needy honours him.’ In the New Testament Gospels one can quote very many passages in which Jesus shows his preferential concern for the poor and warnings against those who amass wealth. ‘The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil,’ says the writer of 1 Timothy (6:10). The church of Acts 4 held all things in common, so that there was no inequality.

So the Bible is very clear that injustice and poverty are a scandal and an offence to God. Those who promote inequality, those who pile up wealth for themselves, those who live in luxury while others suffer and fail to do anything, those who actively cheat the poor – these will have to face the harsh judgement of God. Those who help the poor and suffering people, those who give up their wealth and follow in Jesus’ way, those who sell their property and share it with the community – these will be blessed, because they have sought to bring God’s kingdom into reality

Throughout Christian history, the church has been involved in the promotion of charity towards the poor and vulnerable, following Jesus’ commands, e.g. in the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25) or that of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10). This has involved both the recommendation of a life of generosity and/or chosen poverty for individual Christians and the organisation of communal charitable activity to help the less fortunate. But the arrival of the modern state, with its economic power and its assumed responsibility for the well-being of its citizens, has opened up new questions which the Bible and Christian traditions may or may not be well equipped to answer.

In the United Kingdom and following upon the consequences of the industrial revolution, it was at the beginning of the 20th century that the state caught up with its responsibility for the nutrition, health, education, employment and housing of its citizens. This gradually removed from the church much of its charitable provision of the same things, pushing church and other charitable activities to a voluntary and more marginal sector. It is clear that charitable provision on its own had been unable to meet the needs of the population.

Following the economic crisis of 2008, Conservative governments have reduced tax-funded community facilities and individual welfare support to a considerable degree, with a renewed hope, not always fulfilled, that private and voluntary provision might fill the gaps.

Christians on the Left are very likely, in addition to Scripture and Christian tradition, to take their point of departure from William Temple’s ‘Christianity and Social Order’ and the creation of the welfare state in the post-war Labour government. By contrast, Conservative Christians may well consider themselves ‘less political’, relying on Bible and Christian tradition alone, but still accepting the necessity of the welfare state, while also being ‘children of Thatcher’ in preferring the freedoms and possibilities of personal/economic initiative in today’s society.

Left-wing Christians will speak a good deal about the kingdom of God, which has both come into being in the ministry of Christ and yet is still to be fulfilled by the end of the age, and they see an important role for humans, and especially Christians, in collaboration with God’s Spirit, in bringing to fruition a just and peaceful earth. But socialist Christians have to face a major challenge: the modern state, with its democratic accountability and economic strength – with power to affect the whole life of its citizens – is very different from the societies in which Christianity appeared and grew: how then can a set of ethical injunctions which grew up in a world where inequality and injustice were either unquestioned or matters for individual responsibility or, at most, for those with power over smaller social groupings, be applied to the modern corporate state?

Their answer would be twofold. Firstly, they would point to the effects of ‘structural sin’, that is the accumulated effect in society of millions of selfish decisions and actions which entrenches huge disparities of wealth and power, rewarding those who come out on top with ever more privileges and insulation from the less fortunate, and at the same time pushing down those whose forebears came from below or lost out in an earlier rat-race, so that they exist in a ghettoised underclass with low paid, boring jobs, poor quality housing and food, education which often does not encourage aspiration, and physical and mental health substantially worse (as measured, for example, by life expectancy) than for better-off echelons of society.

The accumulated genetic outcome of this process is little commented on, but, for those who have been poor for generations, and probably getting poorer, the quality of minds and bodies will almost certainly decline, often to the point at which all efforts to encourage educational progress and feelings of self-worth and initiative may be very difficult or even feel impossible. (I don’t believe they are impossible, but the resources required are well beyond what any political party has shown itself to have the will to provide.)

Our left-leaning Christians will point to the structural sin which has embedded deep chasms of inequality in our society and left a whole section of it almost cut adrift from the rest, people for whose multi-deprivations there are no quick-fix solutions. They will, however, point to the fact that Liberal and Labour governments in the 20th and 21st centuries did make deep inroads into this great divide, with major provisions, through tax and national insurance, of housing, education, the NHS etc, and that Conservative governments have actually accepted the necessity of these provisions. The Left will point out also that Conservative governments have tended to fall back into a ‘freer’ version of society, with many profit-seeking private firms now occupied in social provision, and have allowed processes of division and inequality to become re-embedded.

So state provision is seen by left-leaning Christians as simply a modern method, appropriate to the modern state, of fulfilling God’s command to care for the poor. It’s quite clear that personal or communal charity, valuable though it is, still leaves much of the inequalities and deep unfairness of society untouched, and so, if this is to change, it is only the state that can achieve the heavy lifting that is required. (Many would argue that charity actually confirms and deepens the ‘us and them’ of divided societies: the rich get a nice feeling for handing down just a little of their wealth, but still hold on to most of it; the poor feel humiliated but don’t ever get enough to change their position. Result: nothing changes.)

Secondly, even though modern society is so different from earlier societies, left-wing Christians can point to Biblical justification for state provision. When Jesus was challenged about the payment of tax, he is reported as saying, ‘Pay Caesar what belongs to Caesar’. In Romans 13 Paul also recommends that Christians should willingly pay their taxes. The reason Paul gives for this is that the Roman state provided a system of order and justice and security, and that overarching provision was what one’s taxes were helping to fund. The modern state, of course, provides much more than basic law and order, but the principle of taxation to provide a public good is the same, and therefore tax-funded state provision for the poor can be seen as in line with Christian values.

It might even be possible to argue that Jesus feeding five thousand people at one go is an argument for the state providing a Universal Basic Income for its people.

So what will right-wing Christians say in answer to this?

Of course they will accept the Biblical and later Christian teaching about the evils of mere wealth accumulation and the requirement of charity towards the poor and vulnerable. They will, however, place greater emphasis on personal, individual responsibility: those who are at the bottom of the pile need to be encouraged and stimulated to find a way of bettering themselves, without being featherbedded by state hand-outs which may destroy the motivation to improve their lives; those who are better off should be willing to help the less fortunate, both by generosity and by community and charitable involvement.

There are some issues the right-wing Christians need to face. It is possible that their nerve of effort may be somewhat weakened by making too much of Jesus’ dictum that ‘you will always have the poor among you’ (Matthew 26.11; Mark 14.7; John 12.8; and see Deuteronomy 15.11), even if that particular text is less a universal announcement, and more a defence of a woman’s extravagant generosity towards him (‘You complainers will have plenty more opportunities to help the poor, if that’s what you’re so bothered about!’). Another factor for evangelical Christians which may detract from energy directed towards the ending of poverty is their focus on individual salvation and on a final cosmic consummation, which will be entirely in the hands of God and allow much to fall to perdition; so their efforts are on conversion of individuals, rather than on an incremental collaboration with God to bring in the kingdom on earth. (Having said that, I must add that in the UK in the last twenty or thirty years evangelical Christians have often been in the forefront of imaginative projects with and for the poorer parts of society.)

But in relation to the poor, Conservative Christians are very likely to believe that decades of welfare provision by successive governments have created a culture of dependency, in which too many of the recipients, whether simply receiving what was due to them or positively gaming the system, have got stuck in a poor quality lifestyle, in which it isn’t really worth taking a job, and so you get generation after generation of people with low aspirations and a failure to contribute positively to society. Conservative Christians may well believe that welfare systems have weakened families by encouraging sexual activity and births outside secure relationships and allowing men to escape the responsibilities of fatherhood. So recent Conservative government approaches to poverty have used the need for national austerity as a reason for making welfare benefits and other social provision less generous (which might be caricatured as a ‘stick rather than carrot’ policy to get people out of poverty!), bringing in a Universal Credit system which theoretically makes it easier to move smoothly into work from benefits, trying to create more private sector/self-employed jobs as the route out of poverty, and encouraging ‘Big Society’ voluntary and charitable initiatives to transform deprived communities.

What would justify this approach for a Conservative Christian? It is, for many people, no longer politically correct to say that the poor have somehow deserved their situation, that they have failed to make the right choices and not shown the kind of motivation and energy which could have enabled them to aspire to something better, but I think there is little doubt that a good number of those on the Right believe this. As Christians, they might support this by saying that each of us has personal responsibility before God and that those who fail to work out their salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2.12) will inevitably fall by the wayside. Texts such as 1 Timothy 5.8 (‘And whoever does not provide for relatives, and especially for family members, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever’) or 2 Thessalonians 3.10-11 (‘Even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work’) may well be quoted at this point.

The belief that God will bring punishment and woe on those who do not live according to his laws can be justified from many Biblical examples, and the rationale for the Prosperity Gospel movement in the United States comes from the obverse of this. Nevertheless, Jesus, when challenged about the man born blind (John 10) or the victims of Herod and the fallen tower at Siloam (Luke 13) specifically denies that their suffering was a direct result of their sin.

The doctrine of personal responsibility is applied by the Right also to those who could potentially help the poor. Jesus challenges the rich man (Mark 10.21) to give up all his wealth and inveighs against those who hang on to their accumulated riches and then die before they can make use of them (Luke 12:16–21). Margaret Thatcher on one occasion, probably prompted by a clever speechwriter, reminded her audience that the Good Samaritan would not have been able to help the poor man who had been mugged on the road without the money that he had previously made. For both rich and poor, the parable of the Talents (Matthew 25) or Pounds (Luke 19) could, for right-wing Christians, provide a justification to encourage rich or poor to make something more from whatever they have been given.

In the end, it’s likely that there will always need to be a balance held between the Left’s desire for universal state provision and the Right’s recognition of personal responsibility in using the world’s resources.

John Milbank has written: ‘It is sometimes said that we can’t stop at charity, and that all Christian reformers have wanted to proceed to enshrining principles and practices in law. One can see the serious point of this and in certain respects such an advance is crucial, and yet there is a profound question mark over that whole tradition which William Temple exemplified. It is a … tradition that tends ultimately to surrender things to the state and risks eroding both the interpersonal and the sense that people are mutually responsible for each other at the immediate social level. Anglican social thought at least has always been divided between this approach and one which stresses less state intervention, and rather more a mixture of the political and the social in the role of intermediate associations where the citizenry act more spontaneously and more for themselves in a genuinely participatory fashion.’

I wonder if it would be fair to say that two CAPs represent the Left and the Right in Christian approaches to poverty. Church Action on Poverty places an emphasis on campaigns to press the government to create the conditions to end poverty. Christians Against Poverty use church members and debt advisers to help people find their way out of debt and start a better life, often as part of the church whose members supported them. It’s clear to me that both approaches – and much more of both approaches – are needed.

Long read: How do we build dignity, agency & power together?

What happened when Manchester sat down to talk about poverty…

Sheffield Pilgrimage: pandemic boosts community spirit, but leaves physical and mental scars

How grassroots films change views of poverty

13th Sheffield Pilgrimage, 2021

Listen up to level up: why we must rebuild together

Growing crops & community amid the pandemic

“All it needs is people willing to listen”

1,000+ church leaders say: Don’t cut Universal Credit

SPARK newsletter autumn 2021

Lent course for 2022: Life on the Breadline

Our Cookery Book

Keep the Lifeline – sign our open letter to the Prime Minister

Seeking food justice in York

Jayne and Shaun’s story: creativity, self-reliance and truth

Sign the Anti-Poverty Charter!

The story of a Cornish food and community revolution

“You are worthy. Don’t ever give up.”

How can policy-makers and churches work together to tackle UK poverty?

How have Christians responded to poverty during austerity?

Reset The Debt in Parliament

A posed group photo for the Neighbourhood Voices event at YMCA North Staffordshire in Stoke

Stoke voices: We want opportunity and hope

6 people holding cut-out numbers, reading 150,000

Merseyside Pantries reach big milestone

Transforming the Jericho Road

Speaking of poverty, differently

The UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Olivier De Schutter's video outlines his new mandate on ways of tackling poverty.

The UN Special Rapporteur’s mandate argues that poverty has often been pictured as attributable to the individual, but we should see it instead as a failure of society. To combat poverty, we should not shame or penalise people in poverty.

We should instead create a truly inclusive economy, in which each person is not considered a passive recipient of support, but an actor, co-constructing solutions. They emphasise that “building back better” does not mean returning to the status quo, but instead taking public action toward the sustainable eradication of poverty. 

This vision is in line with our own, putting people with lived experience of poverty at the forefront to create sustainable solutions to poverty. Our strategy focuses on how we can build a movement that ensures everyone can access dignity, agency, and power. 

Watch the video below and read more about the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

Transcript:

Poverty has often been pictured as attributable to the individual.

Who made the wrong choices in life, who is not fit for the world of work, who failed to see the opportunities, who does not deserve help.

As if society were a fact of nature, a given that we cannot change. this has a number of perverse consequences.

It leads to individuals in poverty feeling shame and becoming invisible in society. It legitimises discrimination and institutional abuse against those who experience poverty.

It gives the wrong impression that only a tiny share of the population is at risk of poverty and it reserves support to the deserving poor while others are denied help.

But poverty is really not a failure of the individual we should see it instead as a failure of society.

A society that fails to recognise the competence of people in poverty a society that relies on a fetishised conception of merit.

A society that does not ensure inclusion but instead creates exclusion.

A society in short that imposes uniformity rather than recognising the value of diversity to combat poverty.

We should not shame or penalise people in poverty.

We should instead create an economy that is truly inclusive: recognising the potential of each individual, building on the inventiveness of people in poverty and their multiple skills on the social innovations that they imagine on the solidarity networks they develop.

This is an economy in which each person is not considered a passive recipient of support but an actor co-constructing solutions.

If I can imagine this society so can you.

Cost of living scandal: 7 truly useful church responses

Stories that challenge: Alan & Ben

7 ways a Your Local Pantry could help YOUR community in 2024

Artist Don: How Leith Pantry has helped ease my depression

Are we set for a landmark legal change on inequality?

SPARK newsletter winter 2023-24

A posed group photo for the Neighbourhood Voices event at YMCA North Staffordshire in Stoke

Stoke voices: We want opportunity and hope

6 people holding cut-out numbers, reading 150,000

Merseyside Pantries reach big milestone

Transforming the Jericho Road

Dignity, agency and power: a conversation

At the National Poverty Consultation in January 2021, Church Action on Poverty introduced three key values that will drive our work in the coming years: dignity, agency and power.

Church Action on Poverty’s Liam Purcell talked about how these values are rooted in our faith tradition, and invited theologian Philomena Cullen to reflect on them from her own perspective. Here’s an outline of their conversation.

Liam Purcell:

Human dignity is central because all human beings are created in the image and likeness of God – or as Quakers would say, ‘there is that of God in everyone’.  

We’re inspired by traditions like liberation theology and the lead that Pope Francis has taken. In encyclicals like Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti, he has placed human dignity and the human rights of all at the centre of his ministry.

The United Nations agrees that poverty is not only deprivation of economic or material resources but a violation of human dignity too. 

The concept of human dignity is based on a particular pattern of perception: of perceiving humans as beings rather than things. The thing about dignity, and the reason it is a transformational concept, is that it knows no social, economic, gender or ethnic barriers. 

Dignity is not something that can be given, but it is very definitely something that can be taken away. People talked earlier about the importance of being treated with respect, and the impact if you’re not.

This is not just a question for the way the state interacts with its citizens, for employers, the media or society at large, but it is also a question we have to address to ourselves as churches. 

So we’ve been asking in our work over the past couple of years – How can our own actions as churches better affirm the dignity of people at the margins?  

Philomena Cullen:

Firstly, my sincere thanks to Church Action on Poverty for inviting me to share a few thoughts about my own personal reflections to their new strategic words of dignity, agency and power. Like everyone else, I am receiving these words ‘cold’ – I haven’t been part of Church Action on Poverty’s decision making to focus on these terms – although, like Church Action on Poverty, I’m generally, instinctively hopeful of their potential to help Church Action on Poverty move from “a moment, to a movement”, of change. 

I’m also genuinely impressed by the bravery of Church Action on Poverty to use a conference, like this, as a method of meaning discernment – my definition of a conference is usually the confusion of one speaker multiplied by the number of people present!  Anyway, fingers crossed for less conceptual uncertainty by the end of our conversations today…

As a Catholic theologian, I’m aware of the richness of my tradition which affirms the full personhood, dignity, and equality of all human beings in the eyes of God. Pope John Paul II summarizes what this means when he writes that:

For believers, dignity and the rights that stem from it are solidly grounded in the truth of the human being’s creation in the image and likeness of God.” 

So, my starting point in understanding human dignity is essentially the same as Church Action on Poverty’s – namely, the extraordinarily significant belief that each and every human being, created ‘in the image of God’, has intrinsic and incalculable worth, and must live and be treated by others accordingly – i.e. must act responsibly and have a wide range of human rights respected. 

I also love the related idea in CST that the value of the person is not just by number – a person has value – but rather, value is given in that person’s specific and particular personhood: our ‘unique unrepeatable human reality, which keeps intact the image and likeness of God” to quote CST. Human dignity then, doesn’t mean that we are all rendered the same – we each have to fulfill our own created identity as a child of God, knowing that ultimately the dignity of the human person is inherently oriented towards God – our ‘full destiny’.

So far so good. But where I’d want to part company from Church Action on Poverty’s current understanding is in the idea that our human dignity can ever be ‘taken away’.  The seemingly benign idea that human rights are needed for a life of dignity, is actually very worrying, because implicitly it suggests that those who are deprived of all human rights are not truly human. 

Instead, I’m with theologians like Tina Beattie and others, who have argued that precisely because the Christian understanding of human dignity is ontological – an essential, intrinsic part of our being – that means that although our associated human rights may be violated, nonetheless our God given dignity is always intact, however diminished or humiliated, certain bad treatment of us may make us feel. No person or institution like the state has the power to grant or withhold my human dignity. So I’d caution Church Action on Poverty to rethink a bit here.  A Christian understanding of human dignity actually surpasses that of any secular theory of human rights or dignity, because it is not dependent on either citizenship or rights. That why various theologians have suggested that dignity is a better basis of a fruitful dialogue between the Church and the secular world , because it offers a better starting point for discussions of justice than the idea of the rights-bearing human. 

Liam Purcell:

To be truly human means not only being invested with dignity, but also with agency. 

Agency is about people’s ability to act individually or collectively to further their own interests.  Agency is tricky.

People on the right seek to blame people for their own poverty, without understanding the wider forces which come into play on peoples lives to restrict their agency to act.  People on the left can focus so much on structural forces that create poverty and inequality, they risk denying people any agency to change anything.

In our experience, people who struggle against poverty on a daily basis have far greater insight not just into the challenges they face, but a really deep understanding of what needs to change, and some of the best ideas for doing so. But as we heard from people earlier, fear and shame and other barriers prevent people exercising agency.

Coming back to the Church, who decides what the Church has got to do and say about these issues? Who interprets what the gospel has to say to people on the margins? 

Even when churches offer solutions to poverty, they often do it in a way that ignores or denies the agency of people in poverty. We’ve been pleased to see church leaders like Rachel Lampard in the Methodist Church challenging churches to see people in poverty as more than just passive recipients of our charity. 

Our big challenge to the churches is – What would it look like if our reading of the gospel and our mission strategies firstly prioritised poor communities – and even better if they were actually in the hands of those on the margins?

For inspiration we could look to the base communities in Latin America that interpreted and retold the Gospels in their own contexts.

Phil Cullen:

I’d absolutely agree with Liam that the idea of agency is ‘tricky’. In fact, I’d go as far as to suggest it is so problematic, that strategically, its use might be best avoided by Church Action on Poverty. 

Human agency entails the claim that humans do in fact make decisions and enact them on the world, that we are, as CST encourages, the ‘artisans of our own destiny’. But structures (by which a mean a range of practices, behaviours, institutions, social norms etc..) also exist, and have determinant force. So how far the human person has the capacity to act in any given environment remains an unresolved and enduring debate that rages particularly in the worlds of philosophy, law, psychology, sociology and ethics.

Just how far do poor people in the UK, for instance, feel they are in control of their lives? And how far does individual belief or aspiration shape a person’s actual future possibilities or choices? 

In his book on the history of Christian spirituality, The Wound of Knowledge, Rowan Williams describes Augustine’s understanding of human agency. He writes: “Augustine is less concerned than almost any of the Greek Fathers with freedom…. The human subject is indeed a mystery…[Augustine] confronts…the unpalatable truth that… the human subject is a point in a vast structure of forces whose operation is tantalisingly obscure to the reason. Human reality is acted upon at least as much as acting”.

In everyday life, we usually sidestep the many important debates entailed in the idea of human agency, by just assuming some sort of ill-defined, constant interaction between agency and environment – agency determines structure which determines the possibilities for the expression of agency and so on, ad infinitum. We operate by basically accepting the Enlightenment idea that human agency exists within tight constraints but is free within those constraints – or ‘the bounded circle of agency’ as some thinkers term this. It’s an assumption that governs most of our social institutions; so, for example, our criminal law system assumes absolute individual responsibility for actions once constraints of circumstance and environment are imprecisely, and partially, considered.  But having spent enough time in our prisons, this huge over assumption of human agency leaves me feeling very uncomfortable, precisely because of its potential for widespread injustice. 

Furthermore, aside from the problem of the sheer mind-blowing complexity of the term, I’m also concerned that excessive claims to human agency risk losing sight of the more fundamental theological claim, that we are ‘persons-in-relation’. That it is our relationality and human connectedness, rather than our individual autonomy, that would be better emphasised by CAP. So I’d personally prefer the current assertion of agency to be replaced with ‘participation’ or ‘solidarity’ or ‘co-creation’, or any other number of terms that highlight that our lives are lived fundamentally in relation to each other. And the awareness that we first and foremost need always to be orientated back to the centrality of our responsibilities and duties to others and to our planet. 

Liam Purcell:

Folk in the churches often have a problem with the idea of power.  It makes us uneasy.  But I’m reliably told that there are more references to power in the Bible than to prayer.  

When we were involved in community organising, we learned to see power, in Martin Luther King’s words, as  “The ability to achieve a purpose…  It is the strength required to bring about social, political, and economic change.”  

We like to focus more on loving our neighbours, than on wanting to claim or challenge power.  But again, Martin Luther King challenges us to think differently: “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anaemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

Transforming unjust structures is core to the mission of the church, as one of the five marks of mission that both the Council for World Mission and the Anglican Communion have adopted. But churches don’t always pay as much attention to this mark of mission as they might. And if we are serious about transforming the unjust structures then we have to be willing not just to speak truth to power, but to enable people to do so for themselves.

So, in what ways are we prepared to enable people on the margins to realise and claim their own collective ability to speak truth to power? That’s been central to our work for a long time – how can the churches do it better too?

Philomena Cullen:

I completely agree with Liam’s sense of the reticence, and even sometimes, downright ‘squeamishness’ that often exists in Church circles in terms of acknowledging the centrality of power. Our operating norms around politeness are generally effective at obscuring the ‘power play’ that is always at work in our shared life together. 

So while we usually have a really complex relationship with the term “power”, not to mention our actual experiences of power, I nonetheless think we should start with a basically neutral definition of power. Power as ‘the ability to influence the behaviour, thoughts, emotions and attitudes of other people”, is not inherently good or bad in nature. Rather, it is how it is used that sometimes makes it destructive and dangerous.

So Church Action on Poverty is absolutely right in my opinion to emphasise power as one of its strategic words. In our unjust economic and social systems, power is most usually exercised, as a negative ‘power over’. We get things done by exerting our power as authority, might, control, force and domination against ‘the other’. People who use ‘power over’, work from the premise that power is finite, and so, it has to be hoarded and protected. And the primary tool used to protect power, is fear. 

By contrast, marginalised groups within the Church, have been active in envisioning very different forms of power. Many feminist theologians for example, have retrieved an understanding of power as ‘power with’, ‘power to’, and ‘power within’. In feminist thought, power is “limitless, infinite, and has nothing to do with competition or control over another”. When power is shared, it actually regenerates and expands. Hence the call for women to bind together to share their power collectively, as the collective helps break us free from powerlessness and subordination. And even God is understood as the eternally creative source of these forms of relational power – Jesus teaches us a new concept of power as service, mutuality and reciprocity in an inclusive community of love. 

So I’m grateful that in choosing to highlight, ‘power’, Church Action on Poverty is in effect calling us all to become more adept at recognising how power is used for good and ill in our church and wider communities. Church Action on Poverty is right that we need to do need to become more ‘power-conscious’ – more alert to the possibility of power manifestations and conflicts which are rarely overt and obvious in our church communities, but which we know do untold harm and damage. So yes, let’s be braver in resisting all our own, and others, exercises of exploitative, manipulative and competitive power. Let’s reach instead for a relational sharing of power, especially with those who are different to ourselves, and know that this is the only way we are ever going to change and redeem our world. 

Watch the Food Power story

How we can use poetry to accelerate social change

Activism, struggle and superpowers

Why does digital exclusion matter?

62% want action on income inequality. So, what do we do?

SPARK newsletter, summer 2021

Building Dignity, Agency and Power Together

Penny: What I’ve learnt as an anti-poverty activist

Sheffield Church Action on Poverty Update, May 2021

Listening…

How should we talk about poverty in the 2020s?

What’s the best way to reduce the stigma of food poverty?

Food insecurity: now we have the data, it’s time to act

Hold the moment

Why did I write Second Class Citizens and what can we learn?

David Goodbourn Lecture 2021 – register now

A week that changed everything….

‘Life on the Breadline’ announces their End of Project Conference, 24-25th June 2021

Look up child

The Final Push

Sheffield Church Action on Poverty Update, March 2021

International Women’s Day – Sheroes

How do you build dignity & power with people new to the UK?

Right-wing and Left-wing Christian Approaches to Poverty

A posed group photo for the Neighbourhood Voices event at YMCA North Staffordshire in Stoke

Stoke voices: We want opportunity and hope

6 people holding cut-out numbers, reading 150,000

Merseyside Pantries reach big milestone

Transforming the Jericho Road

People in poverty must be heeded, not just heard

A creative project in the North East has been capturing people's hometown stories. Now, organisers want to ensure the stories also have an impact.

Thrive Teesside had recently completed an exciting new project, when the pandemic began.

So, undeterred, they went back and did it all again.

Thriving Teesside, published in December 2019, had brought together stories, artwork, poetry and photography by local people, reflecting on their town and lives. But when the first coronavirus lockdown began in spring 2020, they realised there were many new stories and perspectives to be told.

The team went back to the people they had worked with and gathered more contributions, and a few weeks ago they relaunched a special edition of the book.

In the latest episode of The Cast To End Poverty, Tracey Herrington and Dylan Eastwood from Thrive talk about where the idea had come from, how they brought it to fruition, and what they hope the book will achieve. It’s not enough just to be heard, Tracey says – the messages from people in poverty must be acted upon.

Cost of living scandal: 7 truly useful church responses

Stories that challenge: Alan & Ben

7 ways a Your Local Pantry could help YOUR community in 2024

Artist Don: How Leith Pantry has helped ease my depression

Are we set for a landmark legal change on inequality?

SPARK newsletter winter 2023-24

A creative project in the North East has been capturing people's hometown stories. Now, organisers want to ensure the stories have an impact.

A posed group photo for the Neighbourhood Voices event at YMCA North Staffordshire in Stoke

Stoke voices: We want opportunity and hope

6 people holding cut-out numbers, reading 150,000

Merseyside Pantries reach big milestone

Transforming the Jericho Road

Being Interrupted: doorstep encounters

In this guest blog, Al Barrett and Ruth Harley talk about their new book 'Being Interrupted', which explores what we would call a theology of 'church on the margins'.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, we have been rediscovering the gift of the doorstep as a place of connection. Food parcels have given an excuse to knock on a door, and a simple “how are you?” has sometimes opened up profound conversations about grief, anxiety, hope, community, and lots more besides. Those conversations, repeated over weeks and months, have in turn created and strengthened relationship which have allowed neighbours to come to together – even while remaining physically apart – in ways which have been transformative.

Where many might see ‘need’ or ‘deprivation’ we have found a wealth of compassion, connection and creativity

Here in Hodge Hill, we have been heavily influenced by the principles of Asset-Based Community Development, and have long been committed to seeking out and engaging with the gifts of our neighbourhood – the people, the connections, the spaces, the often under-appreciated talents and passions. It is here among our neighbours, as we have tried to approach with open hands and open hearts, that we have discovered abundance. Where many might see ‘need’ or ‘deprivation’ we have found a wealth of compassion, connection and creativity. During lockdown, this has expressed itself in new ways – in neighbours coming together to transform a shared garden, long neglected by the council; in people spontaneously putting tables outside their houses for anyone to donate food and other essentials, and anyone to take what they need.

We, the church, are profoundly shaped – formed and re-formed – by encountering our neighbours, and encountering God in our neighbourhood

In our book, Being Interrupted: re-imagining church from the outside in, we explore an alternative model of mission, which is rooted in our experience of this neighbourhood and the abundance we have encountered here. Rather than the conventional missional approaches of either ‘counting in’ or ‘giving out’, we want to propose an economy of mission which assumes that we, the church, are profoundly shaped – formed and re-formed – by encountering our neighbours, and encountering God in our neighbourhood. We want to ask what happens if we ‘reverse the flow’ and, instead of seeing worship as what equips us to go out and serve our neighbours, we see our encounters with our neighbours – and our experience of God in those encounters – as what equips us to come in and gather together all our experiences, encounters, stories, wonderings, questions and concerns in worship.

We can be tempted to see our neighbours as primarily lacking or needy, and ourselves primarily as useful, as having something to give

This approach relies, primarily, on genuine and equal relationships, which recognise our radical interdependence on our neighbours. Too often in contexts like ours, where there is a high level of material poverty, relationships become distorted. We can be tempted to see our neighbours as primarily lacking or needy, and ourselves primarily as useful, as having something to give. This dynamic we name as the temptation to the ‘power of the provider’, the need to be needed. It can be profoundly distorting of our understanding of both our neighbours and ourselves as fully human and fully – and mutually – interdependent. As we challenge this dynamic, we are seeking instead relationships of mutuality and hospitality, in which the boundaries between guest and host are blurred, and the power dynamics of philanthropic approaches to mission are challenged and dismantled.

Out of the mutuality of relationships which see each other primarily in terms of gifts to be cherished rather than needs to be met, new and sometimes surprising things can grow

The doorstep, we have found, is a powerful place for those encounters. It is – literally – a liminal space. It is a space where neighbours can encounter each other without an agenda. And out of those encounters, out of the mutuality of relationships which see each other primarily in terms of gifts to be cherished rather than needs to be met, new and sometimes surprising things can grow.    

Being Interrupted: Re-imagining the Church’s Mission from the Outside, In, by Al Barrett and Ruth Harley, is published by SCM Press on 30 November.

Budget 2023: Speaking Truth To Power reaction

Budget 2023: a precious chance to bridge the rich-poor divide

Books about poverty: some recommendations for World Book Day

Journey into Activism – new book from a Church Action on Poverty campaigner

Undercurrent book review: “you can’t kick hunger into touch with a beautiful view”

What does it mean to be a church on the margins?

News release: Poor communities hit hardest by church closures, study finds

We need to dig deeper in our response to poverty

Gemma: What I want to change, speaking truth to power

Church Action on Poverty Sunday: St Cuthbert’s Church Event

SPARK newsletter winter 2022-23

Kenny Fields revisited: new hope, amid the tough times

A posed group photo for the Neighbourhood Voices event at YMCA North Staffordshire in Stoke

Stoke voices: We want opportunity and hope

6 people holding cut-out numbers, reading 150,000

Merseyside Pantries reach big milestone

Transforming the Jericho Road

Thoughts on child hunger, privilege, and immunity against judgment

Rev Jules Middleton, Associate Vicar at Trinity, Lewes, responds to the child hunger debate

This summer I, my colleagues, and an army of amazing volunteers ran the Food Hub in Lewes to help the local foodbanks cope with the overwhelming number of referrals coming in – due to the pandemic. I believe a key reason the church is here, is to help, support and love those in our community – all, not just those who come to church. But running a food hub is not something I really want to celebrate and here’s why…

We already have 3 foodbanks in Lewes, a town that most people assume is affluent. Of course it’s not inner city London, our problems seem small compared to larger areas but they don’t feel small to those who face not being able to feed their families, or pay the bills, on a daily basis. Running the Food Hub I have heard first-hand the real life struggles of those who need to use a foodbank, I’ve seen parents in tears or overwhelmed with shame, pathetically grateful for a few carrier bags of tinned goods that most of us would take for granted. It’s been frankly, heartbreaking.

Let's think before judging

It’s so easy to think that this sort of thing only affects them over there, “the poor” and people often assume those on benefits are bludgers, lazy or stupid. Frankly if anything is stupid or lazy, it’s taking that view without doing some homework, because the reality is that unless you’re earning a super salary, or have some decent savings, any one of us could end up needing Universal Credit or a foodbank.

People find themselves needing support in this way for lots of reasons, perhaps an unexpected bout of ill health – short term or long term, loss of a job or being made redundant, self-employed and can’t work for a period of time, having a child, having a child with extra needs, worldwide pandemic… For most people it only takes one thing to change their stable situation. One missed payment means a fee, possible bank charges and often no way to make them up, so next month adds on another charge, and another fee, and so on ad infinitum. It’s very easy to slip into debt quickly.

We could have so much more compassion

So it was deeply saddening to hear that the voucher scheme for free school meals in the holidays is not going to be extended and, more so, to read some of the negative and judgemental comments posted online.

So many of us view things from a place of privilege or from our own experiences. We talk a lot about privilege in this day and age but how many of us actually recognise it? How many of us actually bother to try and put ourselves into the position of the person we are idly judging and try to understand what life is like for them? I wonder how many of us have actually spent any time at a foodbank? Or have actually met those struggling with the shame of having to ask for help to support their families?

How many of us have chatted to those who have had some bad luck – lost a job or suffered an injury and been unable to work? If we all did this a bit more I am sure we would have so much more compassion and understanding for each other. And indeed it was so encouraging to see that in response to the news of the voucher scheme ending many cafes and restaurants have chosen to offer free meals for children though half term.

Imagine...

If you genuinely want to know why parents can’t budget better, imagine what it is like if your income is so tight it’s down to the last penny and any tiny thing could throw it out. What if the washing machine breaks (and that’s assuming you could afford to buy one in the first place), or your child has a growth spurt and suddenly needs new clothes, or someone gets sick and you need the public transport fair to get to the hospital?

Or you may ask, why can’t people shop for cheaper food, grow their own food or even forage?! This assumes choice and time, it assumes the time needed to do any of these, it assumes choice of shops and the ability to get to them, or to be able to buy in bulk. It assumes owning or having the money to buy garden tools, seeds and plants, or even having a garden in the first place.

Are you wondering if the benefit system or food banks breed reliance on ‘the system’? Well, if you’ve ever had to apply for benefits you’ll know how hard it is, the paperwork is lengthy and intrusive – and mostly now online. Did you know many digital forms cannot be filled out on a smart phone? And before anyone notes the expense of a smart phone, ask yourself how you would live your life with no access to the internet or even a phone line? Imagine you can’t get a contract for a landline because you don’t have a good credit rating – because of those bank charges that were not your fault? Don’t think that anyone ‘wants’ to rely on this.

All of this is also to assume that a person needing help has no physical or mental health concerns that might affect how they live and whether they are actually able to find out what support they can get, let alone apply for it.

Marcus Rashford, a footballer who has been campaigning for free school meals, was accused of ‘celebrity virtue signalling’ by an MP this week. But isn’t it a shame that he or any other celebrity even needs to highlight issues like these? Wouldn’t it be much better if our leaders led by example, in helping us all to think about how others’ lives might be; who might encourage us all to look out for one another. A bit like a version of herd immunity where we all protect each other by our love for one another, and with the recognition that sometimes bad stuff happens for no reason and no one is to blame. Isn’t that the sort of society we want to be?

I know some will say I’m simply a ‘bleeding heart lefty’ but you know, I believe Jesus Christ bled and died for each of us, so if my heart is aching for those who are suffering, I’d say that’s a pretty good label.

Cost of living scandal: 7 truly useful church responses

Stories that challenge: Alan & Ben

7 ways a Your Local Pantry could help YOUR community in 2024

Artist Don: How Leith Pantry has helped ease my depression

Are we set for a landmark legal change on inequality?

SPARK newsletter winter 2023-24

A posed group photo for the Neighbourhood Voices event at YMCA North Staffordshire in Stoke

Stoke voices: We want opportunity and hope

6 people holding cut-out numbers, reading 150,000

Merseyside Pantries reach big milestone

Transforming the Jericho Road