The Church’s right to interfere in politics

Rev Chris. Brice, Chair of the Operation Noah Board, delivered a Justshare  lecture at St Mary le Bow in January 2011 on "The Church’s Right to Interfere in Issue of Politics and Economics”, based on Archbishop William Temple’s famous book “Christianity and Social Order”.

View video of the lecture. 

The text of the lecture is below:

On the 15th of November 1941, when Britain still stood alone in her darkest hour against the full might of Nazi Germany, William Temple, Archbishop of York, signed off the prefatory note to his ground-breaking book, ‘Christianity and Social Order’, prior to its publication by Penguin, early in 1942.  In this prefatory note, we learn that Professor R.H.Tawney,  and Miss Alice Lascelles, BSc Econ., read the typescript, and that Mr. John Maynard Keynes read the galley proofs, and enabled me by his comments to avoid some ambiguities, and to improve the argument.

The book opens with a trenchant defence of the Church’s right to interfere in matters of Politics and Economics, and laments that hardly any one reads the history of the Church in its exercise of political influence.  For instance, Temple says, there is Archbishop Grindal’s injunctions to the laity of the Province of York in 1571, which expressly emphasized the duty of bringing before the Church authorities those who lend money, and then demand back more than the principle sum, whatever the guise under which the transaction may be concealed.  [Temple is here quoting R.H.Tawney, “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism” p.161.]
                                        
It was not until after the Restoration that the Church of England ceased to claim moral control in the field of business, Temple says.  And then there was a rapid retreat upon the central citadel of religion, and during most of the eighteenth century theology and the direct relation of the soul to God were alone regarded as the Church’s concern.  But this could not last.  John Wesley had no intention of bringing the Church back into politics; but his revival had that effect.       

And, referring to the long campaign for the abolition of the slave trade, the movement for the reform of prisons, and the series of reforming Factory Acts, all inspired by fervent Christian faith, Temple comments that, though prompted by human sympathy and care for the individuals affected….., not only was the action taken political, but, in the last instance in particular, it was concerned with the relations between employer and employed, and to that extent, represented the Church interfering in and commenting on the structure of society.                                                                 

Temple writes, We all recognise that in fact the exploitation of the poor, especially of workhouse children, in the early days of power-factories, was an abomination not to be excused by any economic advantage thereby secured; but we fail to recognise that such an admission in a particular instance carries with it the principle that economics are properly subject to a non-economic criterion, and in this case a religious and Natural Law criterion.

Temple approaches the problem of the Church’s right to interfere in political, social and economic issues along four distinct lines.

Sympathy for those who suffer

Firstly the claims of sympathy for those who suffer.  Here Temple focuses on the issue of long-term unemployment, those cycles of prosperity and depression, boom and slump, a condition that, he remarks, seems to be incurable under our present system, except by the drastic remedy of war.                                                                               

He says rightly that the worst evil of long-term unemployment….. is its creating in the unemployed a sense that they have fallen out of common life, that they are not wanted!  And that is the thing that has power to corrupt the soul of any man not already far advanced in saintliness. -  which is most of us. 

Nothing, he says, will touch the real need except to enable the person to do something which is needed by the community, for it is part of the principle of personality that we should live for one another……. The only real cure for unemployment, he says, is employment, and we are challenged to find a social order which provides full employment for all, and our conscience should be disturbed until we succeed.  Christian sympathy demands this.

The influence of the social and economic system

The second point he looks at is the persuasive and often malign influence of the social and economic system which prevails in a country.  Referring to Plato’s ‘Republic’, Temple first reminds us that the social order operating in a country expresses the sense of values which shape the minds of the citizens of that country, and which is then passed on to successive generations.  So if, as in Nazi Germany, the State is so ordered as to give great prominence to the military leadership and to military leaders, this must be because those in charge, which may be a small minority, regard military qualities as specially honourable or …. important.  This idea then constantly impresses itself on the minds of every growing generation in that country, who aspire towards military values.                    

Tellingly for our generation in the West in 2011, he adds, if it is wealth, rather than military power which has the highest place of honour, where the Nazis take all young Germans and put them in the ‘Hitler-Jugend’ and train them in the qualities admired and needed by the Nazi regime, we throw most young English people out into a world of fierce competition, fierce economic competition, where each has to stand on their own feet”, which if done properly is OK, and to “fight for their own interest (which is bad) if they are not to be submerged.  And, although not deliberately intended, Temple says, our economic system shapes and moves people in the direction of combative self-assertiveness.  Does that sound familiar?                                                                                                    

If, as the economist Marshall claims, and we need to follow this carefully, the economic system of a country ranks alongside religion as the most formative influence moulding the minds and characters of the people, then the Church absolutely must be concerned with the economic system, because of its malign influence.  For a primary concern of the Church, he says, is to develop in people a Christian character.  If, on the basis of analysis and experience, the Church decides that the current economic system has a partly or wholly malign influence on the development of a Christian character, by the selfish characteristics its aspires to, then, since the influence of the economic system is ranked so strongly, the Church must do its utmost to secure a change in the economic system, so that it may find in that system an ally and not an enemy.                                                             

Temple concludes, at present it is enough to say that the Church cannot, without betraying its own trust, omit criticism of the economic order, or fail to urge such action as may be prompted by that criticism.

The challenge in the name of justice

Thirdly, he looks at the challenge offered to our existing system in the name of justice.  The charge against our social system, Temple says, is one of injustice.  It is not merely that some who ‘have not’ are jealous of some who ‘have’.  And he quotes a familiar banner in unemployed processions of the day, which people like Francis Maude might take note of:  “Damn your charity, we want justice,” as vividly exposing the situation as it was seen by its critics.                                                                                                                                 

If the present economic order is, of course, considered sacrosanct, and there’s no viable alternative, he says, then charity from the rich to the poor would seem virtuous or commendable as being the only way out.  But, if the current economic order itself is suspect, or worse, such charity, he says, can be seen as blood money.  Why should some be in the position to dispense to others their largesse, and meet their needs, and that kind of charity?  If the need for charity could be eliminated by a more just system, he says, it’s blood money if we don’t change the system and dole out charity.                                     

If all are children of one Father, then all are equal heirs of a status in comparison with which the apparent differences of quality and capacity are unimportant.  In their relationship to God, all are equal.  Why should some of God’s children have full opportunity to develop their capacities in freely-chosen occupations, while others are confined to a stunted form of existence, enslaved to types of labour which represent no personal choice, but the sole opportunity offered, or are denied work at all?                               

The Christian, Temple says, “cannot ignore a challenge in the name of justice.  She must either refuse it, or accepting it, devote herself to the removal of the stigma.  The moral quality of the accusation brought against the economic and social order involves the Church in ‘interference’, on pain of betraying the trust committed to it by Christ.

The ‘Natural Order’ and the purpose of God

Then he looks at the duty of conformity to what he calls the ‘Natural Order’, in which, he says, is to be found the purpose of God.  The Church, as the Body of Christ on earth, is to be an instrument of Christ’s will.  We belong to the Church not for what we can get out of it, but in order to take our share in the great work, the fulfilment of God’s purpose in the world and beyond it.  And we do this not under coercion, but when we are ready to respond to God’s love in Christ, freely and willingly.                                                                                

In this way God gathers in Christ a fellowship of those who respond to that appeal, to be at one and the same time the hub of the universal fellowship of love, and the chief mechanism, means and way of establishing this on earth.  If we belong to the Church with such a purpose and hope as this, he says, we are obliged to ask, concerning every field of human activity what is the purpose of God for this activity?  And if we discover this purpose, it will be what Temple calls, the true and proper nature of that activity.  It might be economic activity.  And the relation of the various activities to one another in the divine purpose will be the ‘Natural Order’ of those activities, including economics, social and political activities and outcomes, and business and commerce.                                                  

And to bring these back into the Natural Order, where each assumes its natural place, if they have in fact departed from it, must be one part of the task of the Church as the Body of Christ.  If what has true value, say economic activity, or commercial enterprise, as a means to an end beyond itself, building a better world, if economic activity is in fact not being used to build a better world, but is being sought as an end in itself, the Church must rebuke this dislocation of the structure of life and if possible point out the way of recovery.  It is bound to ‘interfere’, because it is by its nature the agent of God’s purpose, outside the scope of which no human activity can fall.

How should the Church interfere if it’s going to? 

But how should the Church interfere if it’s going to?  When people talk about church history, Temple says, they usually have in mind a record of theological controversies…., and the formulation of doctrine…..  But church history is vastly bigger than that, he says.  It is the story of the impact made by the Spirit of Christ upon the life of humanity, for the greater part of which the Church rarely gets any credit.  Not that the Church should worry itself about that.  What should worry us is that such an assessment arises from a lack of clear thinking about the way Church does its work…..                                                            

Nine tenths of the work of the Church in the world is done by Christian people fulfilling responsibilities and performing tasks which in themselves are not part of the official system of the Church at all.  For example, the abolition of the slave trade, and later of slavery itself, was carried through by Wilberforce and his friends in Parliament, inspired by their faith, and appealing to Christian principles professed by their fellow citizens.  The far-reaching reform of the penal system between the Wars was brought about by a group of people who, because they were concerned with its administration, thought out the question how, on Christian principles, a community ought to treat…. offenders. 

Temple says the Church must explicitly call upon its members to exercise their citizenship in a Christian spirit.  And he describes approvingly the way the Christian rate-payers of a certain London borough, inspired by the 1924 ‘Christian Politics, Economics and Citizenship’ Conference in Birmingham, approached their Borough Council with a demand that their rates should be increased, in order that some very bad housing in the borough might be improved.  And in another example of Christianity in action, when it became apparent after the ‘economic blizzard’ of the time, that the Chancellor would for the first time in several years have a surplus to dispose of, a great number of Christian income-tax payers wrote to their MPs to urge that a restoration of the ‘cuts’ in unemployment relief should take precedence over any reduction in the rate of income tax.                                                 

The Church, he says, must constantly press upon its members that the only question they should ask before casting their votes is the question- not What will best suit ME?, but What will be best for the country?- and even then, he insists, the Christian voter must take care that the standard of ‘best’ and ‘worst’ is the Christian standard, achieved in a Christian way.  Can we, he says, in the face of the Nazi combination of complete personal self-dedication, with absolute national egoism, still say it is no business of the Church to work out a scale of Christian values for the political field? 
He then proceeds to offer a surprisingly disturbing parable to illustrate his point.  So I am to do the best for my country? he says. Very well. There is an opportunity to acquire for it additional wealth and power by merely expropriating some small state whose citizens are happy in their independence, or again by some successful  economic or diplomatic deception.  Is it ‘good’ for my country to gain wealth or power by those means?  Is it ‘good’ for a country to gain the whole world, and lose its own soul? 

Where, we might ask today, does this place the history of the British Empire?  Of colonisation, and of the wealth from which our nation still benefits, arising from the slave trade?  And there are shadows here darkening our role in Iraq and Afghanistan.  We might ask the same about the glee with which we steal a march on our economic and business rivals-  our success directly leading to their impoverishment.  Temple asks             Must there not be some ordered system of principles which represent the real ‘good’, and which is outraged by such conduct, however patriotic its motive or however successful its outcome?                                                                                                                                                      

In the past, he says, the Church has concerned itself very actively with these questions, developing what was, for the needs of the period, a very complete system of principles by which those who were responsible for the public ordering of life might be guided.  But for a variety of reasons,….. this whole area of human activity was abandoned by the Church.  And he says, unless the Church recovers this lost territory, individual Christians will be hard-pressed to act in a Christian character in the public realm. 

Everything distinctive about the Church, he says, comes from its doctrines, the divinely given truth which it believes itself commissioned to proclaim; this is worked out in its theology.  Doctrine and theology should be the basis of the Church’s life.  For nothing will change unless individuals genuinely respond to this in faith and prayer.  From the very outset Christian faith has profoundly affected social as well as personal conduct, and the main Christian tradition carries with it a massive body of social teaching.  The first Christians in Acts showed their concern for one another by a spontaneous community of goods, selling what they owned, bit by bit, to give to those who were in need.  And the growth of the Church led to the need for a statement of social principles- first for the guidance of its own members while they were a small, often persecuted minority, and later, when the Church….. became a factor of influence in public life, for the guidance of the State.                                                                                                                                                  

The earth belongs to God

The fundamental Biblical principle is that the earth -  land - belongs to God……  The Law of Jubilee, by which every fifty years….. land reverted to its proper family, so that the permanent accumulation of a large estate in a single hand, Mr. Murdoch, became impossible, rested on the basic principle of divine ownership.  The prophets constantly protested about such accumulations…… ‘Woe to them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no room’ (Isaiah 5:8)…..  ‘Woe to them that….. covet fields and seize them; and houses and take them away; and they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage’ (Micah 2:1,2).  And the evil here was not primarily economic, but the denial of what Tertullian would call ‘fellowship in property’-  which seemed to him the natural result in unity of mind and spirit.  And although we are now a global community in economic matters, it is for such as this that the Christians will turn to the Old Testament, as we did with Jubilee 2000.                                                                                               

The institution of property is regarded as being a necessary evil, necessitated by sin; for if we all loved God with all our hearts and our neighbours as ourselves, we would cheerfully labour for the common good, and would take for ourselves no more than our fair share.  But men and women are sinful, so property-rights are needed, not so much for the satisfaction of the rich, as for the protection of what little the poor have. 

St Augustine taught that private property is created by the State, and exists only in virtue of the State’s protection.  And he said the origins of the state itself lay in men’s sinfulness, which had to be kept within bounds.  And that the State has a divine authority, yet was instituted only because of man’s sin.                                                                               
Thomas Aquinas, drawing on Aristotle, bases the State on the essentially social nature of man, not his economic nature.  And so he draws a distinction between on the one hand property as a right of administration and distribution, administering property so it can be properly distributed, which he holds to be lawful, and on the other hand, property as a right of exclusive use, which no-one else can have, which he holds to be unlawful……. With regard to the use and enjoyment of property, St Thomas says that man ought not to possess external things as private, but as common, so that he readily shares them with others in their need.  So clear is this to him….. that he expressly declares ‘theft’ to be no sin if it is committed to relieve genuine need.  HIV/AIDS patients in Africa.  Of course the need must be real and urgent, and other means of meeting it lacking; but then ‘it is lawful for a man to succour his own need by means of another’s property, by taking it, either openly or secretly; nor is this properly speaking theft or robbery’. 

The Reformers, Temple says, put too large an emphasis on the Ten Commandments to the exclusion of other parts of Scripture, and ended up by saying that the prohibition on stealing in the Commandments, presupposed some divine sanction of private property.  And during the Reformation there was an increased emphasis on the free right to acquire and sell property by personal industry and thrift.                                                                                

But Wesley denounced the notion that an increase in income justified an increased personal expenditure. ‘Perhaps’, he said, ’you say you can now afford the expense.  This is the quintessence of nonsense.  Who gave you this addition to your fortune?  Or (to speak  properly), who lent it to you?  To speak more properly still, who lodged’ this increase of money ’for a time in your hands as His steward’.  This saying you can afford something is ’to rob God’ and ’is the very cant of Hell’.                                                                                         

Under the influence of the Reformers, the two main pillars of medieval theological economics were demolished, namely, the Just Price, which couldn’t be exploited in times of need, and the Prohibition against Usury…….                                                                              

Calvin was a townsman, vividly aware of the economic virtues.  Getting rich to him was not a proof of wickedness, it was the use of them for indulgence or ostentation that he condemned. He very cautiously condoned usury as being careful to exclude all exploitation of real need.  You cannot lend at interest to desperate people, he said.  You must deal ‘with usury as the apothecary doth with poison’. [The English clergyman Roger Fenton said this of Calvin in his “Treatise of  Usury” 1611/12]

But the very fact that he gave cautious permission to use usury, charging interest rates, set the door ajar….. and the pressure of life would open it so widely that Calvinism, which began as a system of regimentation, where economic activity was subject to severe moral restraint, became ultimately the mainspring of unrestricted enterprise and competition.  Its profound and essential individualism overthrew its relatively superficial authoritarianism. 

The Reformers never intended to produce such a monster as the Economic Man of the last two hundred years.  But their fundamental individualism, which brought a fuller sense of personal responsibility to God, also at the same time undermined the understanding of wealth as essentially social, and therefore subject at all points to control in the interests of society as a whole.  Consequently, when the great opportunities for making wealth arrived, there was much religious teaching to encourage enterprise in that direction, and no accepted traditional body of doctrine to relate the new enterprise to the old faith. This goes far to account for the paralysis of the Church in the face of the Industrial Revolution…..                                                                                                                       
Marx is not far wrong in his famous declaration that ‘the bourgeoisie where ever it got the upper hand, put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations, pitilessly tore asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors’, and left remaining no other bond between man and man than naked self-interest and callous cash payment’. [In ‘The Communist Manifesto’, quoted by Tawney, p269.]                                                                                                                                      

And apart from isolated individual parish priests like Hook in Leeds and Comber in Kirkbymoorside, Temple says, the social witness of the Church was silent in the eighteenth century.   The revival came with men like Maurice and Kingsley, and since then the recovery has been steady, culminating in our own day with reports such as ‘Faith in the City’ and ‘Unemployment and the Future of Work’.   Enough has been said, Temple claims, to show that there is an authentic tradition of Christian social teaching, and he’s just given it.  But like other parts of the Christian tradition, it is a living thing, proving its vitality by its capacity to relate itself effectively to changing conditions and circumstances.

The Church must proclaim Christian principles

The Church must proclaim Christian principles and the Church must point out where the existing social order at any time is in conflict with those principles, and it must then pass on to Christians acting in their civic capacity, the task of reshaping the existing order in closer conformity to the principles…..                                                                                                                   

If Christianity is true at all, Temple says, it is a truth of universal application; all things should be done in the Christian spirit, and in accordance with Christian principles.  ‘Then’ say some: ‘produce your Christian solution for unemployment’.  But there neither is nor could be such a thing, says Temple.  Christian faith does not by itself enable believers to foresee how millions of people, each one partly selfish and partly generous, combined with a complex economic system, will in fact be affected by a particular economic or political innovation - ‘Social Credit’, for example, or the Living Wage.  ’In that case’, says  the politician, don’t interfere in matters you don’t understand.  By your own admittance, you are out of place in the field of economics and politics.  But to this, the Church must say ‘No;  I cannot tell you what is the remedy; but I can tell you that a society of which unemployment (in peace time) is a chronic feature is a diseased society, and if you are not doing all you can to find and administer the remedy you are guilty before God’.  Sometimes the Church can go further than this and point to features in the social structure itself which are bound to be sources of social evil because they contradict the principles of the Gospel, as Josephine Butler did when she condemned the registration of brothels around military towns in England.                                                                                         

One clear example of such an evil in Britain in 2011, I would say, is the obscene level of economic inequality which, following the lifetime’s work of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, has been shown, as Christians might expect, that inequality is the root of so much unnecessary suffering for so many people, of avoidable illness and premature death.  And we should say a society in which such inequality persists is evil.

What is the proper function of business?

Towards the end of his book Temple says that the Christian concern in the face of multiple social and economic ills leads us to ask how far it is true that our existing order corresponds to this Natural Order, where love and justice are the ruling principles.  In practice, he says, the Natural Order or Natural Law is discovered partly by observing generally accepted standards of judgement, and partly by consideration of the proper functions of whatever is the subject of enquiry. 

What is the proper function of business?  So, since God is the Creator of this Natural Order, it is His order, and its Law is His Law.  So in the economic field, Temple says, the reason why goods are produced is that men may satisfy their needs by consuming these goods.  Production by its own Natural Law exists for the sake of consumption.  If, then, a system comes into being in which production is regulated more by the profit obtainable for the producer than by the needs of the consumer that system is defying the Natural Law….  There is nothing wrong about profit….. It has always been recognised that both producer and trader are entitled to a profit as their own means of livelihood, which they have earned by their service to the community.  And there can be no profit except so far as the needs of the consumer are being met.  But it is possible nonetheless for these two to get into the wrong order, so the consumer is treated, not as the person whose interest is the true end of the whole process, but the consumer is only treated as an indispensible condition of success in an essentially profit-seeking enterprise.                                                                                           

According to Natural Law, the economic process is not an end in itself.  It and all its parts are primarily a means to something that’s much more than economic- the Life, with a capital L, of men and women.  Each person is a child of God, destined for eternal fellowship with Him, though a sinful child, who in many ways frustrates his own destiny.  And further, as children of God, men and women are members of one family, and their true development is that of an ever richer personal experience in an ever wider and deeper fellowship.  And that is what political, social and economic activity should constantly be serving.