Controversial. Offensive. Embarrassingly riding hoverboards. When looking at recent newspaper articles, it’s not hard to work out that, more often than not, contemporary Christianity is covered from a pretty negative angle. One headline: the Church of England, a largely white organisation, plans to fast-track people from ethnic minority groups into leadership of the church. Another: an interview with a gay Anglican priest who has recently been barred from conducting services after getting married to his partner of twenty eight years. My personal favourite though – there was really no competition here – was the Catholic priest in the Philippines this year who, attempting to engage the Mass(es), rode up the aisle on Christmas Eve on a hoverboard. He was subsequently suspended by the Vatican. Merry Christmas.
It’s very easy to take these sorts of stories and form them into a wider narrative about the state of the church today. That’s exactly what I’m going to do. For our first story, we can lament the institutionally racist nature of the church – this change, like the introduction of women bishops, is too little too late for redemption or forgiveness. For the second, again, we see the church as socially backward, if not downright offensive. And as far as the third is concerned, it’s a harsh decision from church leadership to suspend the priest; but more importantly the fact a priest resorted to a hoverboard is indicative of a church that is desperately trying, in increasingly comical ways, to stay relevant. On a similar note is the recent Star Wars themed service held by a Lutheran church in Germany, hoping that not just the Force, but the Spirit would awaken too.
It’s easy to go along with the dominant media portrayal and hold in our minds a negative picture of the church, which fits snugly with our ideas on modern society. It doesn’t take much to look around and conclude that the church is dying a deserved death, and that we will all be better off without its racist, sexist and homophobic brand of institutionalised superstition, that the church has no place in our modern, liberal society. But you’d be looking in the wrong places. It’s no surprise that the view that seeks to expose the church’s systematic narrow-mindedness is in itself rather narrow minded.
For whatever you make of the church’s failings, to say that failings are all that is behind the veil is to miss out on a great deal of good work being done by Christians today, and due to their faith. Much has been made about the rise in use of food banks – over 1 million people used them in the 2014/15 fiscal year. The only charity to run a nationwide network of food banks is called the Trussell Trust. They, in conjecture with Coventry University, this year published a report on the growth of food banks across the UK.
The report found that their network grew, and they reached more people, when they worked through churches. It recommended that churches continued to be used as the primary avenue for rolling out food banks.
And this is problematic because it doesn’t fit with our preconceived ideas of how the church is. Food banks, you see, are very relevant – remember David Cameron squirming when Paxman grilled him on the rise of food banks during his term in the Leaders’ Debate? We like to view the church as antiquated, and not particularly relevant, yet here it is, as relevant as can be.
Some attempt to separate those doing the good things and the church they are part of – if the church did not exist, then food banks and organisational centres would still exist anyway, it just wouldn’t be related to religion. But the Trussell Trust report highlights that a key reason Christians are so involved with food banks is that they are ‘a tool for undertaking the social action work that their faith calls them to do’ – specifically the call to ‘feed the hungry’. At the heart of Christianity is a message of grace and forgiveness, out of which comes the desire to see a just world. Christians are called to ‘live justly, loving mercy’.
You might not know it, but this is going on in Oxford too. Just Love is a Christian social justice group which started in Oxford and has now spread to universities across the UK. They have a twice weekly homeless outreach session, alongside their regular prayer sessions for a more just world. Their Christianity is the bedrock of how they work. Abby Taylor Baptie, who’s involved in Just Love, said, “[For us], being a Christian group is important as we see in the Bible that God loves every single person and is working to redeem every situation, and knowing the love that God has for his creation is a huge inspiration and motivation for why we pursue social justice. We believe there is a biblical mandate to pursue social justice and love our neighbour, and it is this mandate, and God’s love for humanity, that teaches us the importance of social justice, and it is this same mandate and love that gives us the strength to keep going when we are struggling, for example when we feel like we are making no difference. Ultimately, we believe that God moves in power every time we pray or doing anything to help, and that in His strength, as a Christian group, we can make a difference.”
So when we think of the church, and its dull, antiquated services, occasionally redeemed by a priest on a hoverboard, it’s important to remember that there’s something far more exciting going on if you take the time to look.
And there are quite a few groups like Just Love: there’s the Human Trafficking Action Group and the Caring for Creation Group, for example, which have organised Stand for Freedom and Zero Waste Week respectively. Their impact is broad and whether we like Christianity or not, the things they stand for are important and worth fighting for. You don’t have to be a Christian, or have any faith, to engage with these issues. And if more people do get engaged, if people do get stuck in, through all these varying routes on offer, then hopefully we can make Oxford a more just place.
