On being Salt

Dismayed.
That is the word. I am dismayed at the Church of England. It has forgotten the lessons of our recent history. It clings wretchedly to vain avenues of what it seems to regard as ways to influence society. Church schools are a sad example.

It has always seemed to me axiomatic that the appropriate task of the Christian community is to be prophetic. To perceive where society lacked, and put their energy into supplying that need, until the rest of society caught on, responded to the church’s prophetic word and action, and common provision could be made by the state. At which point, the church no longer needs to continue its trail-blazing, and can turn its energies elsewhere.

Thus at a time when Education was not easily available in England, except you be rich, godly folk up and down the land left provision by legacies to found schools, often church schools, for the children of the poor. Time passed, and their numbers grew, and eventually enough folk right across society came to believe that education should not be an accident of birth, but a right for all. At that point, when universal provision for education began to be made by the state, the church’s function should have ceased. The argument had been won. There was no need for the church to go on providing a parallel system of education. The true place thereafter for Christian folk, ought not to have been teaching in separatist Christian schools. They should have thrown themselves into the common system, and leavened the lump.

Had they done so, we should not now have such difficulty with many religious groups seeking their own distinct religious schools. And the church would not be wasting its resources maintaining its own half-secular tier of secondary education. I say secondary, because I suspect there is still a battle to be fought for the right of small communities to keep their own local primary schools, and since very many of them are church schools, the church can still influence that debate whenever clever educationalists who think they know best, or even cleverer accountants who are sure they know best, decide small schools are not economic or not of any educational worth.

But there will come a day when that battle is won, and the church will no longer need to prop up half the junior schools in the land. At that point it will behove us to get out of education, leave behind the once prophetic role of providing what too few folk valued, and turn our attention elsewhere in society. It is tempting to want to hang on to the schools as spheres of influence. It is even more alluring today, for dioceses to hang on to their very professional and worthy education departments. In our kind of society both provide a semblance of function and purpose for the church in an age which no longer believes in a God.

It is a wasteful illusion. Wasteful of cash, and of people who ought to be busy being Christian folk out in the common education system. What is it these management gurus keep telling us? That we must leave our comfort zones behind? Well, education has become a Christian comfort zone. And it is high time the church got out of it.

But an even worse prospect looms. Politicians, local and national, have long found the notion of partnership with charitable organisations convenient. Now, partnership is becoming even more desirable. We inhabit a topsy-turvy society. That is, we have such mixed up notions of value and worth that we put huge monetary value on many things of little real worth, and miserably little value on things that ought to matter.

Thus government can find billions on our behalf to fund military intrusions to ‘help’ countries whose people only come to resent our forces’ presence. They can waste untold millions of our future incomes on empty projects for public databases and ID cards. But we must not point the finger at government alone, for the cost of really good health care for everyone is more than anyone actually wants to have to pay. The cost of good social services is likewise not appealing. The cost of education is more than anyone wants to have to share. So government is naturally unwilling to raise the kind of taxation such things would need.

But hey, why bother? What are all these charities and churches for, if not to be brought into ‘partnerships’ like the ones we already have with industry, which, at least on the face of it, can fill the gaps in providing the kind of social and educational and general welfare provision which we profess to believe that any modern liberal democracy worth the name ought to maintain as a matter of course? Alluring for the churches and charities, too. Another set of comfort zones to get lost in. Instead of doing the really prophetic thing: saying to both government and people, No. We will not bail you out. Get your values straight. Bite the bullet and take proper responsibility. Admit the cost of things that really matter for our commonweal, and fund them properly as our supposedly civilised nation should. But we aren’t saying that, or anything like it. The comfort of partnerships and the sense of purpose they confer, is great; our salt has lost its savour.

So we are in danger of simply going backwards. I suspect that serious Higher education is already becoming the preserve of the rich. Pensions meanwhile can already somehow no longer be funded. All kinds of social welfare provision are already heavily dependent on ‘volunteer’ labour..... How much longer, before the dream of the Welfare State unravels altogether?