Jenny Sinclair explores how Christians can offer faithful witness when familiar social structures are coming apart. Drawing on stories of joint leadership, she shows what becomes possible when church leaders step into the civic life of a troubled city and stand in solidarity with local communities. She demonstrates how the Catholic Social Teaching tradition equips us for this volatile moment, calling churches to move beyond partisan loyalties and the dynamics of service-provider charity. In response to today’s hyper-liberalism, she urges a relational approach: building local friendships and alliances, speaking truth, and intentionally reweaving our fragmented society. This is an unflinching yet hopeful challenge to live as outward-facing people of the common good at a time of deep unravelling.
This is a transcript. This talk was given for Churches Together Horsforth in Leeds in March 2026. You can watch the talk here and listen to the audio below.
Christian Witness in the Unravelling
From the Sheppard-Worlock Story to the Catholic Social Tradition
I think we’re all beginning to see that things are unravelling. It is pretty serious, what’s going on. That is our backdrop for this evening
First, let me introduce the Sheppard Worlock story.
I’m David Sheppard’s daughter. Now, when I was a teenager, the language world that I lived in was the church, justice, gospel, poverty, politics. That was the currency of our kitchen table. But I wasn’t happy being a bishop’s daughter. I really didn’t like it. I was a bit of a rebel. I preferred Liverpool’s music scene. If there are any teachers here tonight, I was one of the people you were worried about. I became estranged from the church. I left home in 1980. I drifted.
And then in my mid 20s, I experienced a dark night of the soul. And an unexpected grace, I had a conversion experience, and to everyone’s surprise, I was drawn to the Catholic Church. Of course, I had grown up in an Anglican family, a very prominent, high media profile Anglican family, so that was quite a big deal.
I married, I had children, I lived a quiet life. Then over 20 years later, in my mid 40s, in 2011, I felt what I now know - I didn’t know then - was a nudge of the Holy Spirit. My life was about to change. I was sensing things around me in the country that weren’t right, I was sensing the seeds of what now are really showing. I felt that the politics of both left and right were failing, and that the churches were unable to respond adequately to what was going on. You might remember the Tottenham riots around that time. This was three years after the banking crash.
I had a find a strong, faithful prayer life by that time. I was just working as a graphic designer. I wasn’t doing anything special. I’d done a really bad degree at Goldsmith’s. I wasn’t pursuing a career. But I prayed, and I felt that God was calling me, and, I felt a trail was being set for me – that I needed to meet this person, that person, that I needed to look at a significant partnership my father was involved with.
The Sheppard-Worlock Partnership in Liverpool
Let me take you back to when I was 13, in 1975. We had moved from London to Liverpool when my dad was made Bishop of Liverpool. As some of you might realise, Liverpool at that time was a really troubled city. High unemployment, a history of sectarianism, no go areas, a dysfunctional local government leadership, divided, unstable. Seen as a bit of a basket case, really.
We were sent there, and within six months of our arrival, the Catholic Archbishop was appointed, too. So two bishops, one from the Anglican Church and one from the Catholic Church were arriving within six months of each other. Neither of them had had any ecumenical experience before. Remember, this is pre Churches Together England, pre, the “ecumenical spring” which happened in the 1980s. The two bishops had only met once briefly some years before; they didn’t really know each other.
My dad, having arrived first, decided that he had to go and meet his opposite number. So he went round to Archbishop’s House, rang the doorbell, standing there on the doorstep, holding a bottle of wine. He said, I thought I’d just come and say hello. So that was the beginning of an extraordinary friendship, which became well known among people in the churches.
They saw themselves as “brothers in Christ”. They felt they had, humbly, been called at that moment to the city, and that somehow they needed to step into a leadership role – a joint leadership role. Of course, over time, their partnership extended to Baptist, Methodist, URC, Salvation Army, Free Church Partners, too. But I’m talking about their friendship tonight. They were close friends. In time, they went on holiday together; they spoke on the phone pretty much every day for 20 years. They prayed together, though they never broke the rules, they never took Communion together.
Supporting civic life
But quite early on, they started acting in the civic space together. One of the earliest things that happened was they were approached by some local people who had spotted a piece of land where a Tate and Lyall factory used to be. These people were being faced with eviction and moved out of the city; they didn’t want to move out, they said “we want to stay together – and that piece of land there, we want to live there.” They wanted to build a village. That’s a long story that I won’t tell here - but it ended up being the Eldonian Housing Association.
The bishops’ role in that story was not to lead, but to support local people’s desire and to help them along the way. That was one example of a local institution that they helped build.
They also championed the union of Catholic and Anglican teacher training colleges which were under threat of closure. And over many years, they managed to assemble them together into what later became Liverpool Hope University.
So there’s a theme emerging here - that they are not just church leaders in churches and cathedrals. They’re acting in the city.
Rising unemployment, unstable politics
And some of you will remember the 1981 riots - serious social unrest between the black community and the police. Now, by this time, both bishops had very much established a culture within their clergy of being close to communities, a strong listening practice, a sense of solidarity with communities. The clergy already knew the people on the ground. This meant that when this unrest happened, the bishops were in an interesting position, because they had also forged relationships with the police. This meant they were in a unique position of being able to mediate between this great tension. So that is another example of the kind of leadership that we’re talking about.
Around about the same year, this is happening all over the country. There is rising unemployment, and, of course, we’re in the middle of the Thatcher years now. You might remember that moment when Norman Tebbit said, at a Conservative Party conference, that people should get on their bike and go and look for work. Now, that seemed quite an affront at the time, because it was seen to be the norm that you would stay home, and you would get a local job. We’re going to see a bit later on this evening how that has changed. That was the moment things started to change.
The bishops cared about communities and families, and they knew that jobs are absolutely at the heart of the flourishing of a family and a community. They began to be aware of the context in which they’re operating, they can’t help but become drawn into the civic life, the politics of a place, because that’s what God cares about, too.
In the year after the riots, they recognised that there was a real problem with a sense of agency among the black community. So they helped to establish the Liverpool 8 Law Centre. This not only helped the local black community access legal advice, but it also sets some people on the road to becoming lawyers. So, again, we are back to the theme of local institutions strengthening the city.
A change in Church relationships
Now by this time, the relationship had really settled. It was a daily relationship, they’d be on the phone together, they’d be responding to media calls together. They would do joint statements -I don’t mean the sort of dry joint statements that we see today from churches together nowadays. In those days, they’d be responding directly to questions, and they would be on the media quite regularly. They were quite vocal about challenging the government policies of the time. They acquired a reputation for being a bit “firebrand”. But their indignation came from their care for families and communities, what was happening to human beings.
Now, by this time, in late 1981, Derek Worlock, wrote to Pope John Paul and said, there’s something happening here - will you come and visit us? Something is happening. What he meant was, up until that point, the Catholic Church, in England, had been in a sort of siege mentality, still somewhat in its recusant history, there was a hangover from that past. For the first time, Derek was saying, “things are changing.”
I got to know Derek later on. He was a gifted diplomat, having been a private secretary to three cardinals, so had had a lot of international dealings. He was a canny operator. I would say he was politically more astute than my father. My father had the sort of common touch in the media. Between them, they were an exceptional combination. But Derek had been good friends with one Karol Wojtyła, who had become John Paul II.
Indeed, there was something going on. My father was saying to Derek, effectively, “you’ve got a gift that we all need - you need to be outward-facing and share it with the whole country. Not just serve your own.” This was a departure from the past. So, it was a genuine partnership; there was no leading figure; it was an equal partnership.
John Paul II wrote back and said, “Yes, I’ll come.” This was to be the first visit of a reigning pope to the UK since the Reformation. A historic moment. Now, we take it for granted when we see the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury kneeling next to each other, but it had never happened before Pope John Paul’s visit.
Because of the Falklands War it was difficult diplomatically, but Derek knew how to handle negotiations, and that’s why it was a pastoral visit and not a state visit. Of course, we then see Robert Runcie and John Paul II kneeling together before the tomb of St. Edward of the Confessor. Thereafter, this joint public witness became the norm. And that, and then after that, you get the “ecumenical spring”, and the ecumenical “instruments” start to emerge.
Ending the sectarian divide
I don’t usually use the word “ecumenical” now. Some people use “unity” - that’s fine. But ecumenical is the technical term for what was happening. It was a big part of what they were consciously doing. They knew how significant this was. In fact, when they first met and people recognised they were becoming friends, there were those who warned them, “Don’t do this joint witness. You don’t know what a can of worms this is. You are going to open up dangerous things.” At the time some thought Liverpool was close to becoming another Belfast. But they ignored that advice, of course, and just went ahead anyway.
Over time, their joint leadership - this dynamic of standing side by side - it really works, because if you’re standing side by side with someone with different interests, you can’t possibly be advocating for your own. And the city saw that. The city responded. They became objects of affection by ordinary people in the city. Taxi drivers would say, for example, “oh, yes, they were for us.” People didn’t perceive the church leaders as on a marketing exercise to try and get bums on seats into the church. They saw these church leaders acting for the city.
So we’re now in the mid 1980s, and we’re talking about the miners’ strike. We are seeing the beginning of deindustrialisation. There’s a lot of tension, and the bishops see the impact on miners’ families. They get involved with this, they advocate for the striking miners. But they try not to be explicitly partisan - they’re saying we care about the livelihoods of families.
And of course, now we’re getting into the territory of the report, Faith in the City, that’s now in the pipeline as well. My father had published the book Bias to the Poor in 1982, which had been a huge influence on the Church of England, leading to the Faith in the City research and report, which was published in 1985. This caused a rumpus, again involving Norman Tebbit, who had described it as “Marxist”, which gained it more publicity as a result. It contained lots of recommendations for government, and also recommendations for the church. It instigated a new energy in Christian social action.
There were other things going on alongside this. People may have had the impression, and certainly it was the case in the press, they were seen as the “red” bishops, or “left wing firebrands.” But what people didn’t realise was that behind the scenes, they were doing other things too.
Committed to communities, confounding left and right
In 1984, they started what they called the Michaelmas Group – a group they co-chaired involving the major employers of the region - 12 leaders who met privately under Chatham House Rule, every six weeks, for 13 years. Remember this is the time of capital flight – the deindustrialising period where investment is been pulled out and going to the Far East. It’s hard to prove a negative, but one can imagine perhaps the damage would have been a lot worse had they not been meeting. The opportunity to share privately, not only the pressures they were under, but also their shared commitment to safeguard jobs for families and communities, and to express their commitment to the city, to do everything they could to keep the investment there. So this group somewhat undermines the radical image of the bishops. The fact is they not only worked with business, they also marched with unions for jobs – a “both/and” approach.
During those Thatcher years, you might remember the Militant Tendency - that’s a bit like the hard progressive left or the Greens now. In 1985 they deliberately bankrupted the council. Their politics were very extreme. They expected the bishops to side with them. But the bishops wouldn’t do so. They upset both the right and the left.
They published a book together, Better Together, in 1988. They appeared on Wogan live together. They were often called “Fish and Chips - always together and always in the papers.” They were held in great affection.
In moments of terrible tragedy, in particular the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 - when the whole city was in terrible mourning after 94 people had been killed - the way they responded was to hold a civic mass. It was held in the Catholic Cathedral. It was packed to the doors, thousands of people turned up; David and Derek processed in together. They also held a service in Anfield for people to express their grief together. This was an era in Liverpool where church leaders were not only welcome – but were seen as part of the civic infrastructure.
Once we get into the 1990s, we see a consolidation of their partnership. They’re advocating for the city, making joint statements, doing joint talks, and a lot of community action. The city is no longer divided by sectarianism. They are awarded the joint “Freedom of the City of Liverpool” in 1994.
I think we would properly regard them as servant leaders. They tried not to be too top down, though we might see that slightly differently now. I think from a modern perspective there’s a certain patrician element to their approach that doesn’t land so easily today.
Derek died in 1996. My father retired in 1997 and died in 2005. And in 2008, they were honoured with a statue in Hope Street between the two cathedrals. And their motto was, “do everything together except the things which conscience forces us to do apart.” That has become a standard motto for ecumenical joint working.
A Historical Parallel: Manning and Booth in 1889
Let’s make a shift now. I want to give you another example of joint Christian leadership in a time of crisis. I’m going to take you back to 1889, in East London, and the Great Dock Strike. Here we find William Booth, the founder of Salvation Army. He had been an English Methodist preacher. He and his wife, Catherine, had gone to the East End, given up the settlement ministry of Methodism, disillusioned by the traditional limitations. They wanted to work among slum dwellers. They established a “soup, soap, and salvation” ministry to the poor. They knew their people very well.
At the same time, there was Cardinal Manning, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster. He too, had changed denomination. He previously had been an ordained Anglican and had been married. He was widowed, tragically, after 24 years marriage. He then became disillusioned over matters of doctrine, left the Anglican Church and became a Catholic. He later became Archbishop of Westminster, and then a Cardinal. Manning and Booth knew each other. They both knew their people - they were close to families. They knew about poverty. They also understood what was happening at this critical point.
The Industrial Revolution is in full swing. They are seeing firsthand, on the docks, the effects of unrestrained capital on human beings. Every day, thousands of men turn up on the quay side, half would get work, and half wouldn’t - and their families starved. That was the reality. In 1889, there was a dispute over pay that led to a great strike. It spread to over 100,000 workers across the Port of London. Now Manning, it turns out, was the son of a banker. He had no illusions about how unrestrained capital can behave. He was invited to act as honest broker. He was trusted by both sides. He mediated and helped to settle the dispute. His intervention was known as the “Cardinal’s Peace.”
The impact of the Industrial Revolution on the human being
Interestingly, this leads us to the beginning of Catholic Social Teaching. What Manning is doing at this point is feeding back to the Vatican what he’s seeing happening on the ground - he’s telling them that he is seeing human beings being subordinated to the interests of big money. Because the Catholic Church is global, they’re getting this information from all over the world. They are seeing patterns emerge.
Leo XIII was the pope at the time. He ends up publishing a seminal historic document called Rerum Novarum - which means “Of New Things”. The new thing was of course industry. The document focused on the Industrial Revolution and its effects on the human being. That was the first of a series of documents that collectively is now known as Catholic Social Teaching. It examines in detail what happens to the human being from a deeply theological position. One of the things it does is to give a gospel interpretation of what the economic system is doing.
The Catholic Social Teaching tradition
Since then, the Church has continued to respond directly to the great social changes of our times. Of course, 1891 isn’t the beginning of Catholic teaching – it is building on Augustine, Aquinas, and the wisdom of the ancient Fathers. This is the beginning of the modern era. In subsequent years, the documents that are published cover every aspect of human life: from the family, to just war, from conscience, to love of neighbour, from the natural world, to science and technology, missionary discipleship, political economy, euthanasia, the excesses of capitalism, the tyranny of communism, from social peace to civil rights, from local association to the dignity of work. Every aspect of human life is covered, in response to the issues of the day.
This year - the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum - we are expecting our new pope, Leo XIV, to be publishing a new Catholic Social Teaching document, which we call an encyclical, probably this May, probably on AI and the future of work. He has chosen the name Leo for a very particular reason – to link himself with Leo XIII’s focus on social justice and the impact of the economy on the human being.
We are now on the brink of a new Industrial Revolution. This is the new thing. It’s vitally important for those of us who are Christians who care about the human being - because we’re made in the image of God, and God cares about human beings – to recognise what this revolution is going to do to the human being.
Let’s look briefly at some of the principles and the themes that run through this tradition.
Human Dignity
What this tradition does is to train us to look at any system and what it does to human beings. It trains us to critique systems that dehumanise. It trains us to praise systems that rehumanise and enable the flourishing of the human being. Human Dignity is the key principle. From human dignity, we get the dignity of work, we get respect for life. These are the things that flow from it. We also get human equality. But we are not meant to be the same. We are designed to be complementary. We are equal in the eyes of God.
Solidarity and Subsidiarity
The principle of Solidarity trains us to think about whose side we’re on. We are to make a dedicated effort to recognise that we are each other’s brother’s keeper. We are to support each other.
This is partnered with the principle of Subsidiarity – an important principle which trains us to think about agency, the integrity of the person, about responsibility being taken at the appropriate level. Subsidiarity holds that decisions should be taken closest to those they affect, and that decisions should not be taken by a higher authority if they can be taken lower down. If you think for example, about the structure of a country, or a family, or a school, Subsidiarity helps us to think about how to prevent somebody losing agency, how to prevent deskilling, when someone may be doing too much for them.
Intermediary Institutions
One of the key concepts in Catholic Social Teaching is the “intermediary institution.” Within the tradition’s conception of social architecture – think of the state, the market, the human being, the family – in the middle, there’s this layer that we call intermediary institutions. By this I mean businesses, clubs, associations, charities, churches and so on - the human-sized institutions through which we learn how to live well together.
In a healthy society, in a healthy neighbourhood, you’ll have cafes, restaurants, boutiques, tenants’ associations, a fishing club, a book club, a social club - there’ll be a layer with a variety of institutions. But in a poor neighbourhood, you might just have a chicken shop and a betting shop. That is a very thin layer, and that means that life is too harsh, because there’s nothing between the person and the state. When life is too harsh, people have fewer opportunities to take responsibility, to be social, to interact. This layer of institutions is very important. We can recall examples like the Liverpool 8 Law Centre, the Eldonians Housing Association, Liverpool Hope University. These are intermediary institutions and they are important.
The Dignity of Work
The principle of the Dignity of Work is another key principle, and a theme running through everything so far tonight. It is so important because work is much more than a way of making a living. It is how we contribute to God’s great creative participation. Decent work, decent pay. This is going to become a major issue as the AI revolution takes hold. AI is going to change everything about work. It is hard for us to predict how. The danger is that we may end up in a dystopian future of Universal Basic Income where most people are on a subsistence level, and only the privileged have satisfying work. We must be careful to discern which elements of work can be outsourced to AI and robotics, and which elements should remain human.
The Option for the Poor
Then, of course, one of the biggest principles in Catholic Social Teaching is the Preferential Option for the Poor. Now, the reason this is here is - it’s not just because it’s nice to be nice to poor people, it’s not just because they lack material goods and need something - there’s something deeper going on here. Pope Francis and other Latin American bishops back in 2007 said that the poor have an awareness of each other, an awareness of the need for other people, an awareness of God that the affluent and the busy so often lose. The affluent and the busy tend to get sucked into an individualistic lifestyle, an indifference to others. People who are poor tend to have a greater sense of their need for the other.
That is part of the reason why it’s important to have people who are poor at the heart of the church. And it’s also why decisions should be taken with people who are poor at the heart of decision-making. If you don’t have that central focus on the option for the poor, you will come to the wrong decision. If you think of making decisions for the country, and you ignore the poor, you’re going to come to the wrong decision. Think of the “one body” image in First Corinthians. If you overlook the vulnerable part, you’re going to make a mistake, the whole body will become sick, and all will suffer.
The Common Good
Finally, let’s look at the principle of the Common Good, which is central in Catholic Social Teaching. This is often misunderstood. People think it’s a bit woolly. Like it’s a medicine you ought to take, or it has a vague meaning about social justice. It’s not really like that. Correctly understood, it’s about a shared life – it’s about how we live together. The Common Good happens when we all contribute voluntarily, without coercion; it’s that very precious moment between human beings.
For example, think of a choir. It could be a pretty ropey choir, but all the voices together make a beautiful sound, and everybody thrives through it. It’s about that precious connection between human beings, being together, that allows everyone to thrive.
We can see that the principles and themes – the same ones that in the late 1800s informed Manning and Booth’s response to the dock strike - the dignity of the person, the dignity of work, that capital must never subordinate labour, the importance of the family, solidarity with the poor – these same principles also informed the Sheppard-Worlock partnership in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s. We can see that their focus was also on the dignity of work, solidarity with poor communities, the flourishing of family life, subsidiarity enabling the agency of local communities. For 22 years, their focus was like that. We could say they worked together for the common good, although they never actually used that phrase. We could describe this an example of civic friendship, indeed, a kind of spiritual partnership.
Those contexts are kind of familiar to us today, aren’t they? Dysfunctional government, polarised extremist politics, discontent, sectarianism. However, I don’t think we should inherit the Sheppard-Worlock legacy wholesale. This is a new time. Their partnership was of its time. If I was to critique them, I would say they were too trusting in the State as a solution. And although they refused to side with extremist politics, they were still partisan; they sided very much with the Labour Party; they didn’t understand the true nature of the neoliberal project – which was later to wreak such terrible damage on our country. I would also say there’s a certain patrician element, that sense of care for the poor. Tellingly, my father’s biography is called Batting for the Poor (you may know he was a cricketer before he was in the church). Not batting with but batting for. A different posture is appropriate for today.
The Current Unravelling and Its Causes
So this brings us up to date. This is now – this is a new time.
I think it was Hemingway who said that change happens slowly, and then all at once. It certainly feels like that. Pope Francis said some years ago that “this is not just an era of change, but a change of era.” He said that we’re going through a process of being “stripped of false securities”, where it’s no longer possible to complacently enjoy the illusions of the old era.
It is not credible anymore, to continue with the assumption that governments can adequately represent us, nor that the socio-economic model we’ve been living with can underwrite a flourishing life for all.
So what do we see now?
We see extremes of inequality. We see estrangement between civic groups. We see commodification of creation. We see war, displacement of people. We see the hyper-liberalization of abortion, assisted suicide - a huge shift in the understanding about human dignity. We see the proliferation of social media exploiting the young. We see place – the local – being subordinated by the digital world. We see the acceleration of AI and the technocratic paradigm. We’re beginning to see the collapse of trust in institutions. There’s tribalism. We’re also seeing loneliness, especially among the young - statistics show that loneliness is much worse among the young than the old. We’re seeing a sense of nihilism and distress about meaninglessness.
When I was saying this ten years ago some thought I was exaggerating. Talk of unravelling was seen to be catastrophizing. But now, I think we can see what is happening. Notwithstanding the fact that healthy, normal life goes on, it depends where you live. It depends where you live, who you know, and what media you consume. We’ve become so fragmented now that our lives are in parallel.
I want to say something about why this has happened. What has happened over the last 40 years, that Sheppard and Worlock were only just beginning to sense?
Every era is shaped by an animating idea. The idea underpinning the era that’s in the process of breaking down comes from the philosophy of liberalism. A particularly extreme strain of liberalism, stemming from the idea of the “unencumbered self”, where freedom is understood as freedom from constraint. Freedom from the constraint of family, from freedom, from the constraint of borders, freedom from history, freedom from God, freedom from natural law.
This is where we are now. This is why you get to the point of people saying that it’s perfectly alright to have abortion up to birth. This is why you get people saying that it’s got nothing to do with you if I choose to kill myself, that it’s not going to affect you. I mean, obviously, this is nonsense, right? If someone takes an action, it’s going to have effects on everybody around them, everyone that cares for them, everyone they are in a relationship with. So this idea of the unencumbered self is actually denying reality. But this is where we’ve got to.
This ideology is inherently unstable because it relies on a false anthropology - a desiccated, soulless conception of the human being as an isolated individual. This generates a false idea of freedom and leads to a cult of self. You can see it in the “i” this, the “i” that. Everything is about “my personal preferences.” The culture has been dominated by the idea of “choice”. But it is not really choice. The false anthropology underneath this is so completely unlike Christian anthropology - where the person is a relational being made in the image of God. This philosophy goes against the grain of humanity.
Eventually, inevitably, it liberates society from truth and from mutual responsibility. Its spirit is anti-human: that is why the system is breaking down. That is why we see the unravelling. It is based on a relativistic and a materialistic logic that ultimately brings about its own destruction.
This is not just happening in this country. Every country in the world - mainly Western countries - that have adopted this particular philosophy is seeing the same effects. It took hold in 1979. It has roots going back in the Enlightenment, but it particularly went on steroids from 1979.
This misconception of the human being as an isolated, rights-bearing, competitive individual also led to the emergence of identitarian politics. This is why we get the distorted forms of victimhood and the culture wars. This has led to spiritual confusion and demoralisation.
It has also distorted the meaning of “social justice”. The conception of social justice now dominant is focussed upon identity and the “oppressor-oppressed” dynamic. This is not the definition of justice from a Christian point of view. Correctly understood, Christian justice is about relational justice. We can see this in the Old Testament: the rabbinical tradition of justice is about right relationship, not division. By contrast, the animating idea of the unencumbered self has eaten away at our shared values, has eroded our sense of citizenship; dissolved relationship, undermined the particularity of place.
Not least, we can see that it had a huge impact on the economy. It broke the tradition of vocational jobs. In the process of “deindustrialisation”, jobs were offshored to the Far East; investment went abroad. This was replaced by the knowledge economy and the service economy. The purpose of this profound change was to make a “frictionless” environment for investors. It worked very well for them, but it was devastating for many of our communities. It also sucked workers from poor countries, away from their families, to come and work for Western business models here, on very low wages.
And so we end up with a low wage economy. But many wages are too low to live on, which is why we now have 9 million people on Universal Credit. That is up from 7.5 million just last year. This is completely outrageous from a Christian point of view. It is an affront to human dignity, not only that so many people are poor, but also that so many are without work, which creates a culture of entitlement.
The breaking of relationship with place has been quite devastating. Earlier, we referred to the Norman Tebbit moment 40 years ago, where he was saying, “get on your bike”, which, back then, felt like a really right wing thing to say. But now, it’s seen as “freedom”. It’s been rebranded. The idea of movement to find decent work is now supposed to be a great freedom. But of course, the reason this is happening is that this globalisation system is serving the interests of big business.
You will begin to see now that what I’m saying is coming from a tradition. This Catholic Social Teaching tradition is saying, “What is happening to human beings? What’s happening to families? What’s happening to communities? Are they thriving?” Answer, no. “Why is that?” It’s because the economy is structured in this way.
I would describe this whole state of affairs as a breach of a common good. Because communities that suffered at the hands of this dogma have not just been left behind (and it is not a feeling, it is a fact). There’s also been no meaningful correction, no further investment, no retraining. It just hasn’t been done. On top of that, those communities were then framed as deficient and backward. So we shouldn’t be surprised to now see this politics of discontent emerging.
The impact on our common life has been quite devastating. We now have a breakdown of trust, and a huge problem that is now manifesting in our politics. This hyper liberal idea has infected both the left and the right. Both our main political parties have been completely colonised by it: the Conservatives stopped conserving, and Labour stopped advocating for the dignity of labour. They completely changed their priorities.
Indeed, there is a mutual blind spot going on which still persists: the right attribute the moral unravelling to excessive liberalism, but somehow the neoliberal economic system gets a free pass. Meanwhile, the left attributes poverty to the neoliberal economic system, but embraces the progressive ideas of unlimited self-actualisation (for example, the idea that I can remake my own body, as if I’m God). So both the left and the right – in different ways – are still captured by this doctrine.
Impact on the Churches
We ought to broach the difficult subject of how forty years of this hyper-liberal system has impacted the churches. There are lots of angles we could take here, and we haven’t got time to go into all of them, but let’s particularly look at the relationship of the churches with poor communities.
What’s happened? We could formulate this into three “sins”.
The first sin we can identify is the disconnect between charity and justice. For example, continuing to hand out food parcels whilst not challenging the socio-economic philosophy that generates poverty in the first place. This sin is inadvertent, through great well-meaning and kindness, but it can mean that Christian charity can end up being part of the problem, propping up an unjust system. This happens when we fall for the wrong kind of justice, a welfarist, utilitarian model, as opposed to a justice based on the dignity of work. The pursuit of that welfarist model masks prophetic justice: the more efficient we become as a service provider, the less likely it is that people will see the root of the problem.
The second sin is about encouraging dependency - again, inadvertently. Sometimes the “service-client” dynamic in Christian charity encourages dependency and entitlement. It turns a person in need into a passive recipient, into a supplicant role. It also puts them in a transactional dynamic, where the benevolent giver is giving, and they are receiving. This is not a relationship of reciprocity, which is what we’re looking for if we want relational justice.
This sin also undermines solidarity, because what people who are poor really want is a job, the dignity of being able to support their own family. I know someone who puts it very crudely. He says, “the church has become a woke food bank. What we really need is decent work, so we can make a life.” Yes, decent conditions and a decent wage. Remember we have a low wage economy. That is something that international finance companies lobby governments to deliver. It is in their interests to keep wages low. This is one of the reasons for mass migration over recent years. We can all have different opinions about that. I do not take a racialized position on this. I think it’s actually an economic issue. Successive governments of all parties have perpetuated this to keep wages low. And it’s destroyed the social peace.
The third sin I wanted to draw attention to is secularisation - the disconnect with faith. Many Christian charities have become a little shy about being Christian. Perhaps worried they won’t get funding. Or perhaps they think it’s not cool anymore. Or they want to make the language on their website a bit more “inclusive”, so they dumb down the Christian side of it. Sometimes faith fades due to a lack of confidence, or for fear of what funders might do or think. Sometimes the original Christian charism that underpins a charity gets fossilised when its founding inspiration isn’t fostered, or when it’s neglected.
For example, a charity may have been founded on a genuine charism at the beginning, and then over time, the trustees change. The CEO is now very efficient and professional in the NGO world, but he or she is not a practising Christian, and so the values subtly change. This can happen imperceptibly over time. This can sometimes compromise Christian distinctiveness so that the visible elements of Christianity become indistinguishable from a secular NGO.
The system sometimes even affects the way the churches perceive themselves. Government voices may say, aren’t you wonderful? aren’t you useful. The transcendent meaning of Christianity is reduced to social usefulness. Local governments may offer us money and we are flattered, we think isn’t it great! But if we get too close to the system, we end up enabling the problem. I’m not saying we should stop doing charity. It’s essential. But we have to be prophetic, too. Christian charity must not become a handmaid to the state.
This same philosophy has also impacted the church in terms of moral leadership. For example, there is significant anger among some working class communities, with the C of E in particular, about the grooming gang scandal, that the church has said next to nothing about it. There is only one bishop, as far as I know, who has said anything. To his credit that was +Philip North, and he apologised for leaving it so late. There has been an abrogation of moral leadership which makes people angry. It actually drives people away from the church. Of course, the Catholic Church also has its faults; its history of child abuse has alienated those same communities from the church.
This is a new era. New things happening. We have serious geopolitical volatility - the end of the liberal world order, the Tony Blair project of exporting democratic liberalism around the world. Many other cultures just don’t want this, they never wanted it and they’re angry about it. The dynamics have changed. Meanwhile at home, domestically, we have a dysfunctional government. And we are facing a new industrial revolution.
Amidst all this we are seeing a spiritual confusion. We are seeing the signs of what some people call a “quiet revival” - and, what some are describing as a “dirty revival”. The picture is mixed. There seem to be movements of middle class people attracted to traditional forms of church - Orthodox, Catholic, Anglo Catholic. Many are fed up with being in a sea of meaninglessness, and are looking for something solid to attach to, and finding meaning through that.
Meanwhile there are widespread anecdotal reports of Christian movements among post-industrial working class communities. Having experienced great loss, there is a yearning for identity. Disillusioned with the churches that have not delivered on their responsibility for moral leadership, they are reaching for Christian morality from non-mainstream sources. It may look rough to a middle class sensibility, but something is happening.
Alongside this, we are seeing the political space becoming more religious, not less. We are seeing insurgent, Muslim political movements, Hindu movements, various different types of Christian flavoured politics pressing through, being expressed. It is becoming a contested landscape.
The Christian Response Today
So, how are we supposed to respond?
The reason I set out the Catholic Social Teaching principles at the beginning is because I think we need a strong conception of an integrated faith that doesn’t shy away from the realities of the world, an approach based on a solid theological tradition, a deep spirituality, and crucially, which is non-partisan.
The Catholic tradition is often described as both radical and conservative. It asserts the family, it asserts belonging to place, but it also asserts intervention in the economy - it doesn’t support the unrestricted freedom of movement of capital, for example – it recognises the danger that that can bring. It doesn’t map along the lines of the standard left-right axis. I believe we need a Christianity that embodies solidarity, subsidiarity, and common good, the kinds of church engagement that we’ve been talking about tonight.
We have to recognise that the cavalry is not coming over the hill. We can’t expect government anymore to adequately provide. Certainly not for a while, anyway. We’re in a very volatile period.
So, what do we do at the grassroots level? If we understand that the problem - which we diagnosed earlier in terms of hyper-liberalism - is effectively individualism, then how do we counter that? It’s hard work, but it’s not complicated.
It’s about building relationships - intentionally building local relationships. We can see, in the examples of Sheppard-Worlock, Manning and Booth, that it is possible to have church leaders determined to build civic relationships for the benefit of the city - for the people.
It’s also about refusing to be tribal. We must build broad-based alliances with our neighbours. This is the intermediary institution part of the framework. The church should be outward facing. We can start by asking “Who do we know? Do we know the pizza restaurant? that business? the Tenants Association? What relationships do we have?” We are called not just to build up our own community. Not just to be focussing inward, not just on this lovely space. We’re called to be an outward-facing people. To be a Jeremiah 29.7 “seek the peace of the city” type of people.
We should be resisting the identity politics that divides. We should be talking more about solidarity than diversity. “How can we work together? How do we find common cause with each other, even if we disagree on certain things?”
And we should be speaking the truth. Speaking the truth is very important in this new era. There’s too much self-censorship going on. We all know that sense, don’t we? Sometimes we’re like, “I can’t say that.” We may be afraid of what will happen. We resolve to keep quiet. Well, I’d suggest that next time you feel that, if you feel that prick in your conscience, you should speak - at least inject a note of doubt.
The antidote to this toxic individualism, finally, is relationship. There is something about building friendship in a proactive, conscious, intentional way. If you see a group that’s vibrant and alive, that’s a beautiful thing. The common good is what happens between people, where together they create a sense of mutual flourishing. If you see that, encourage it. Support it, enable it to grow, connect them with another group. Be a part of the reweaving.
Jenny Sinclair is Founder and Director of Together for the Common Good, a Christian charity dedicated to spiritual and civic renewal. Working with leaders, churches and schools, T4CG helps people read the signs of the times and play their part for the common good.
Hear - and here 👏
Thankyou for this Jenny. May you continue to be blessed in your prophetic vocation.