Full Fat Faith

In The Church Times this week, Angela Tilby wrote a refreshingly honest article titled Emptied-out belief leads to empty pews:

“At my end of the C of E, everyone remains very polite, tolerant, and a bit disconnected. It is just slightly embarrassing to speak directly about God.”

And she pin-points how this reticence affects the social engagement of such churches:

“While I often listen to well-meaning sermons about our duty to the poor and the marginalised, those who actually are poor and marginalised may be finding a more congenial spiritual home at the Elim church round the corner.”

Reticence

This sense of disconnection and reticence to speak about God can also be a tendency which affects church-based social action.  Overt faith often retreats into the background and is minimised, diluted, neglected and eventually lost.

This means that social action ends up becoming disconnected from the beliefs which started the work in the first place. There are many ‘formerly Christian’ organisations in the homeless sector.

Critical

In 2013 the social research agency Lemos & Crane published the report Lost & Found which interviewed 75 homeless people about faith and spirituality. Although the report’s author, Carwyn Gravell, was an atheist, he was critical of the ‘secular orthodoxy’ in the homeless sector:

‘Faith and spirituality is a dimension of life that is largely ignored within the philosophy of mainstream service provision, regarded as irrelevant, or as a private matter best avoided, and even perceived by some in the sector with suspicion and outright hostility.’ (p.20)

But it doesn’t have to be this way. 

Integrated

The most exciting thing I have seen in first 8 months of working for Hope into Action is the blend of professional excellence and spiritual passion among our teams.

Each of the 106 homes in our network is partnered with a local church who offer friendship and support to our tenants. Almost every week I meet tenants whose lives have been deeply blessed through connection to the local church and spending time with people who are not embarrassed ‘to talk directly about God’.

Of course, this has to be done carefully and non-coercively.  We offer housing on a non-discriminatory basis and engagement with Christian faith and spirituality are purely optional.

Complimentary

We have just published our tenant outcomes for the last year. Alongside great statistics relating to our tenant’s low re-offending rates and improvements in their mental health, we have seen 50% of our tenants chose to engage in spiritual activities within the churches (over and above the core friendship and support). And of this number, 6 chose to get baptised.

The important factor is that these steps of spiritual growth are complementary to the steps of recovery away from homelessness and associated issues of addiction, offending or trauma. These are signs of new life and evidence that the church and its message have truly been good news in a holistic way.

Relationships and identity

Providing the resource of accommodation is only one aspect of addressing someone’s homelessness. Homelessness is far more than house-lessness. If a life off the streets is to be sustained, then developing positive relationships and a renewed sense of identity are also vital.  And as Simon Dwight has powerfully argued, Homelessness Ends in Community.

As the Lost & Found report put it:

‘For homeless people, religious belief, practice and doctrine can help them come to terms with a past that is often characterised by profound emotional and material loss, enhance and give structure to the present where time hangs heavy for many, and create a purposeful future built on hope, fellowship and a sense of purpose.’ (p.5)

Hope. Fellowship. Purpose. What better things are there to help someone find?

As one Hope into Action tenant who got baptised this year said:

“Through the love shown to me by people in this Church and as I saw other people’s lives changed by God my own faith began to grow. Then I started to pray myself and God met me in my prayers. Now I know Jesus is real and I have chosen to follow him.”

Perhaps there is enough skimmed religion in the world. We need more full-fat faith.