The opportunity?

In the case of the Church of England alone, there are around 16,000 churches in its national network. With recent church reports suggesting that just over 25 percent of churches have as few as 20 parishioners, it’s been described by Guardian journalist Simon Jenkins as the “nation’s grandest unexploited social resource.”

In terms of the church, a combination of under-use, high maintenance costs, and a lack of income generation has created an “unaffordable architectural legacy” — according to the Arthur Rank Centre church buildings can “become a stifling burden and a drain on energy and resources.” But this vast swathes of church property, as Rachel Laurence of the New Economics Foundation acknowledges, has largely been neglected by those working in Community Economic Development (at least here in the U.K.).

Alongside this institutional decline has been the significant loss of local services and public utilities in many villages and market towns, where post offices, banks, and food shops have closed. According to the Commission for Rural Communities, “it is estimated that 70 percent of villages in the U.K. have no local shop.” And in terms of rural banking services, between 1989 and 2012, 7,500 banks closed in the U.K. – more than 40 percent of banks.

In response to this market failure, many communities have worked together to create new initiatives to save shops, halls, and pubs, as well as leisure centers and other vital local assets. There are now more than 350 Community Co-ops in the U.K., a model that is viable and effective, with the Plunkett Foundation’s research showing that “97 percent of the community owned village stores opened over the past 25 years are still open and trading today.”

But is there an institutional appetite within modern churches to uphold their social purpose, meet changing circumstances, and find new ways to engage their communities?

Image courtesy of the Churches Conservation Trust

New Purpose

Our research shows that churches are already showing a will to engage in new ways of repurposing buildings and land. Church Care, the property division of the Church of England, claim there are at least 35 sub-post office services being delivered from churches, chapels, halls and centers, ensuring communities are able to access local facilities. Where communities have been missed by the national broadband rollout, spires are being used to broadcast wifi, sometimes as co-ops, but often through private suppliers.

Churches have also become involved in providing local financial services. In response to Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s comments on the predatory lending strategies of Wonga, All Saints Church in Murston, Kent, hosted the first community bank to open inside a church. This is a model that could be replicated as a means of localising banking – offering space for regional and local banks – as well as creating new savers and lenders with local investment interests.

With the housing crisis affecting both rural and urban areas, community-led initiatives such as community land trusts have become increasingly relevant. These models often refer to parish territories in their activities, such as community consultations and neighbourhood plans, but without the express involvement of the church and its assets. By co-producing with church groups actively participating from the initial stages, this approach can be replicated through our efforts to unlock church assets for new and existing community initiatives.

There are many positive examples of repurposed churches, but how can CED inform this process so it’s actually based on community need and ensure local people are involved from the start?

Unlocking the Next Economy

Over the last few years we’ve been working with organisations in the creative sector, local authorities, schools, and community groups, exploring how cooperative models can secure local assets, create economic democracy, and ensure these initiatives are based on local needs.

An important part of this process is co-production – based on the work and toolkit of social enterprise Learn to lead – that involves stakeholders in the process from the start. Alongside this, our three pilot communities will be supported by external consultants who are able to encourage local communities, import new ideas, facilitate consensus in an often divisive process, and offer the co-operative model as an option in their CED.

Our process is primarily about unlocking physical assets to support communities to meet their own needs, not to conserve churches. The only way we’re going to save churches, as Simon Jenkins argues, is by giving them away. If churches survive – architecturally and even as places of worship – it will be because they have become a social resource.

Cross-posted from Shareable

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The Church of England has spoken out in trenchant terms about the extreme inequality that defines modern Britain, arguing today that moral principles and sharing should underpin the foundations of society.

In a new book of essays to be published next week, the archbishops of Canterbury and York warn that the poor are being left behind in a country that is increasingly dominated by “rampant consumerism and individualism” since the Thatcher era. The church leaders caution politicians that they are selling a “lie” that economic growth is the answer to Britain’s social problems, contending that the fruits of growth should be distributed in a way that reduces inequality between the rich and poor.

The essay in the book by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, reportedly argues that conventional market assumptions such as ‘trickle down’ economics have failed, and rejects the idea that Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ of the market will ultimately right social wrongs.

An interview with the Daily Telegraph newspaper broadly outlines the leading churchmen’s views on the need for a more equal and sharing society. The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, said that the book draws heavily on the writings of William Temple, the Archbishop of York and then Canterbury in the 1940s, which are credited with laying the foundations for a just post-war society and the welfare state. Sentamu quoted one passage of the book to the paper, in which Temple argued that the art of government was in finding ways to bring together the interests of individuals with those of society at large, such as through universal access to healthcare or education.

As Sentamus explains in the Telegraph interview: “Temple was right; you judge the well-being of any society by how it cares for those who are vulnerable. If it is the survival of the fittest that’s what I call living in the jungle and I don’t want to live in the jungle – this is supposed to be a civilised society. It seems to me if it is to do with the health of the nation and the well-being of the nation every citizen really ought to be at the same table and not some taking more.”

Arguing for a new and more equitable distribution of wealth in Britain, Sentamu adds that this has got “nothing to do with being socialist” or adhering to a prescribed economic ideology. “What it has got to with is: ‘Is this how God has created us?’ Has he created us to be people who go to Black Friday to fight with each other because they want the biggest bargain? No – that’s the rule of the jungle, we left that behind.”

In a short video accompanying the book, Sentamu likens the UK economy to a household and claims that no one member should have “too much” when another has “too little”. He says “it will be quite a pity if the powerful, the richest, are the ones that are thriving in our household and some are left behind. For me, therefore, one of the greatest challenges that faces our nation has to do with income inequality.”

He adds that as a household we need to “deliberate on how we must ensure that this income inequality is addressed properly so that everybody flourishes, everybody shares…” Hence the title of the book – On rock or sand – is intended to help us discover the firm foundations and principles on which Britain needs to be built.

This is not the first time that the Church of England has spoken out in defence of a society that shares its wealth and resources more fairly and equitably. In the short video, Sentamu begins by defending the Church’s involvement in politics which he sees as an essential part of public deliberations on how to create a society based on Christian and moral principles, although he stresses that the book doesn’t take a party political position. Sentamu also defends the Faith in the City report published 30 years ago that harshly criticised the Thatcher government’s policies, and explicitly argued for redistributive policies to reduce inequality.

Pope Francis has, of course, also strongly attacked inequality in recent years on a global as well as a national basis. In April, he tweeted that inequality is the root of social evil, and he has called on world leaders – together with United Nations’ agencies – to legitimately redistribute wealth to the poor in a new spirit of generosity to help curb the “economy of exclusion” that is taking place today.

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