social capital
This is an interesting article. Some extracts:
Churches were once points of community gathering across ages and across ethnicity. They were non-instrumental forms of association – that is, people did not get any financial or career benefit from their association in a church – but they gained a point of belonging, and opportunities for interaction with people who might not necessarily be their friends.
But as the state and market grew in the twentieth century, Christian social thought moved steadily away from these interactive forms on a personal scale. As the state assumed more functions and powers, it seemed proper to add the voice of the church to those wanting the state to look after the poor, provide security and education, and act to ensure social cohesion and even ‘community’.
Three things happened in this process. First, the social message of the church was increasingly directed, not to the community or to individual persons or even to parishioners, but to the government of the day. The duty of a church member became one of barracking for the state to make a good society on behalf of us all. Former Deputy Prime Minister and Uniting Church minister Brian Howe typified this thinking in its late twentieth century heyday.
Secondly, the relationships between people in civil society (the level of trust, belonging and co-operation between us) dropped out of the equation. The character of persons and their sense of obligation to each other in civil society disappeared from the public agenda. These notions have now virtually disappeared from the social pronouncements of the churches.
The article concludes with the statement: “Social capital and trust are good things. A politics that takes them seriously is not ‘soft politics’. It is revoolutionary politics.” I wonder if the Church be an agent of change and once again provide acceptable centres of community, spirituality and compassion.