CHURCHES IN the UK have a unique opportunity and rich resources to bring local communities together in a post-COVID-19 world where loneliness and inequality look set to rise, according to a new national report.

The report, The Church and Social Cohesion: Connecting Communities and Serving People, by the Free Churches Group and Theos, has been endorsed by Churches Together presidents the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, pastor Agu Irukwu and archbishop Anba Angaelos.

Set to be launched with an event on Thursday, it will call on every church in the UK to assess whether it is using its resources to the best of its ability to improve social cohesion at the very grassroots level. In contrast to often unpopular centralised policy making in Westminster, the report states the Church is perfectly placed to listen to and know what is needed in their neighbourhoods and has the vision to serve.

According to the report, which interviewed almost 400 people across 14 English local authorities, there are a number of concerning signs regarding social cohesion in the UK; including the hate crime that has emerged following Brexit, the stories behind Black Lives Matter, the loneliness of an ageing population in a transient world, the rise in inequality and austerity, and the fact that Britons are less likely to share experiences with neighbours. It claims that the Church, with its strong vision and desire to “love your neighbour as yourself”, is key to helping bring communities together to aid social cohesion. 

Community cohesion

Welby said: “Too often in studies of community cohesion the place of religion is treated either as only a problem to be solved or as an irrelevance to be ignored. This excellent report brings home the power and potential for the Church at the heart of our communities and provokes us to think what more we might do together in the future.”

The report, which praises the work of churches up and down the country for already working so hard on this, emphasises that the values of Christianity are at the core of social cohesion, which is described as a fundamentally theological task. Many of the interviewees from the church community talked about the importance of being inclusive in their communities and bringing people from all walks of life together, just as Jesus did, and that binding people together is key to the Christian faith.

One Anglican priest in Derby described social cohesion as: “The leaking out of loving your neighbour…” and an independent pastor in Croydon said: “You could take it up to Jeremiah’s instruction in Jeremiah 29, where he said, ‘We should get involved, we should build houses, we should build schools…’ That’s my paraphrase. ‘And we should get involved in the economic well-being of the city, because if it prospers, we prosper’…”

Elizabeth Oldfield, director of Theos said: “Most Christians wouldn’t naturally think of the work they are doing in communities as “social cohesion” work, because that is the language of policy makers. However, in their quiet, everyday ministries of neighbour-love, they are building the links we rely on to call ourselves ‘a community’, all the time. We hope this research helps both policymakers and churches themselves to recognise this.”

The report gives numerous examples of the incredible work that churches are doing. Bolton churches (through Bolton Christian Community Cohesion), for example, are praised for working together alongside the council, police and other faiths to promote the Bolton 2030 Vision, which has given a wider community ownership of the city’s future. The report also applauds the successful “Passport for Faith” scheme in Bolton where schoolchildren met and could ask questions to members of different faiths and collect stamps for their “Interfaith Passport”, as well as others including Faith Trails to visit religious buildings and community festivals. It is praised as an example of how working together can “unleash significant positive energy”.

Resources

One council officer in Plymouth praised their local churches’ work on holiday hunger: “[It’s] amazing. Absolutely amazing. It’s ground-breaking stuff, and it’s given us the freedom as a local authority to do more… They really were the instigators of it, to a degree. Now they’re very much in partnership with us.”

Churches have six important resources to offer their communities, claims the report: 
 •       Buildings – to hold community events (which can foster everything from church events to mother and toddler groups or foodbanks). 
•       Networks – that bring people together from different backgrounds and can be used to send information quickly into communities in times of need. 
•       Leadership – not just faith leadership at a formal level but also encouraging and nurturing young Christians to lead, something which should be further developed. 
•       Convening power – bringing people together offering conversational space. 
•       Volunteering – providing and co-ordinating volunteers and events. 
•       Vision – the desire to shape and transform communities, which is intrinsic to the core values of Christianity.