Ahead of Wednesday’s budget Rachel Reeves is having to hunt for cash behind every sofa cushion. But if she removes help to repair places of worship, she could find unintended consequences await
Imagine if you had tens of thousands of volunteers who were motivated to give their time simply because they wanted to make the world a kinder, fairer place. Imagine that their volunteering plugged gaps left unfilled by government and neighbours. Imagine that all these helpful souls needed was somewhere safe and warm to operate from, but without that, they’d have to give up and go home.
This isn’t hard to imagine, of course, because it’s the situation the government finds itself in vis à via the vast array of community work done or hosted by the nation’s places of worship.
The National Churches Trust has estimated that the social and economic wellbeing benefit of the UK’s churches is worth £55bn. That takes the form of food banks, warm spaces, debt counselling, after-school clubs – providing the safety net that prevents people in need from slipping further into poverty or isolation and potentially require more costly intervention by the state.
You’re not going to attract a dementia café or mums and toddlers club to an unheated Victorian barn.
Because many churches are old, leaky and creaky, (some 45 per cent of the UK’s Grade I listed buildings are maintained by the CofE), their congregations want to do the only responsible thing and fix the roof, update the windows, install more efficient heating. You’re not going to attract a dementia café or mums and toddlers club to an unheated Victorian barn.
What made such repairs easier was the Listed Places of Worship Grant scheme put in place in 2001 by Gordon Brown, Reeves’ predecessor as chancellor (rewind past the Tory ones and Alistair Darling), which allowed Listed Places of Worship grants to cover the VAT on repair bills higher than £1,000. Brown understood the contribution faith communities would willingly make.
Yet in April it was suddenly announced that the scheme would only award grants up to £25,000, leaving any major project that was under way or about to begin either scrabbling to find hundreds of thousands of pounds or having to go back to the drawing board to be scaled down. A few churches have supporters with deep pockets, most don’t.
As the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, told the SundayTelegraph, “The vast majority of fundraising for our churches is done locally by heroic volunteers and we are deeply grateful for all they do. For more than 20 years, they have relied on the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme to give that crucial bit of extra help.” There are fears it could be scrapped all together.
Volunteers at St Laurence Church in Chorley, Lancashire, (also above) which has had to postpone finishing roof repairs because of the cap on VAT relief. Photo: CofE
Clearly, ahead of Wednesday’s autumn budget, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves is having to hunt behind every sofa cushion to find cash that can be put towards reducing the national debt. Aside from these buildings’ heritage value, ending the Listed Places of Worship scheme might make some sense if churches only served as a self-righteousness boost for the few.
But a survey published by the Church of England late last week found that two in five people, or 43 per cent of all adults, reported having had contact with their local church, 23 per cent of those – nearly seven million people in the UK – “for community support such as parent toddler groups, lunch clubs and food banks”. The CofE, which runs or supports 31,300 social action projects, estimates that “2.8 million people, 4 per cent of the UK population, have been in contact with their local church for a food bank.”
The churches have shown themselves to be a trusted partner of government. They shut their doors during the pandemic, aware they had to set an example to other faith communities even though many of their own members were furious; they rallied support for the Coronation of King Charles with the bellringing initiative Ring for the King.
Yet even cathedrals, irreplaceable treasures, are not immune. Jo Kelly-Moore, Dean of St Albans and Chair of the Association of English Cathedrals, said: “The threat to end the Listed Places of Worship Grant, and the cap currently imposed, is having a hugely negative impact on our cathedrals, many of which have long-term repair and renewal projects costing hundreds of thousands of pounds.” Cathedrals are often criticised for charging visitors to look around, yet how else are they supposed to keep the lights on? (And they do stress that anyone wanting a space to pray can be shown in without charge.)
Cutting costs where heritage places of worship are concerned is short-term thinking. Churches come with ready-made goodwill and generally accessible premises. If churches cannot host community events because they are too cold or simply unsafe, alternative provision will sooner or later end up costing the state, undermining what Ms Reeves is trying so hard to achieve.
Bishop Sarah Mullally’s appointment as the next Archbishop of Canterbury is ground-breaking but she inherits a fractured Church. What comes next?
Congratulations to the Rt Revd and Rt Hon Dame Sarah Mullally DBE, who has today been announced as the 106th archbishop of Canterbury and the first woman to occupy the role.
Her move from just north of the river, as bishop of the diocese of London, is one of shortest distances on the episcopal chess-board. But she arrives at a desk where the in-tray overflows: divisions persisting around how far the Church should recognise gay relationships, ongoing factional point-scoring, and a long-term slow decline in the numbers of dedicated, generous members (bar a modest post-Covid bounceback).
There is of course, good news; the Bible Society’s findings of a “quiet revival”, especially among young men, should gladden the heart of any church leader. The robust discussion around where the Church should allocate its finances has led to a hearty public defence of the humble parish and the system that has for centuries been the nation’s unofficial safety net. And the Church’s work to address racism and links to historic slavery is giving the Church more of a right to speak up when racism spills anew on to our streets or seeps back into our public discourse.
As one of the first women bishops, Archbishop-designate Sarah is no stranger to moving into worlds dominated by men, by tradition, by Old School ways. This will surely serve her well. And women leaders are generally seen as more trustworthy when it comes to handling situations of abuse.
Much has been made of the fact that several provinces in the Anglican Communion, over which she is now “first among equals”, do not recognise female leadership. Closer to home, the campaign group Watch, Women and the Church, say 1 in 12 bishops do not fully accept women as priests or church leaders. (Parishes that don’t are given “flying bishops”.) Today on Twitter/X the group added: “the Archbishop of Canterbury will not be able to celebrate communion in 439 churches – simply because she is a woman”. Meanwhile a statement from Forward in Faith welcomed her while noting that a 2014 agreement meant “provision for an assured sacramental ministry for traditional catholics would continue as before”, with “the consecration of Society bishops … undertaken exclusively by other Society bishops”. Is this a triumph of Anglican “living with difference” or a failure of unity?
I’m also interested in how her first meeting with Pope Leo XIV will go. Her predecessor Justin Welby got on famously with Leo’s predecessor, Francis, who referred to him as “brother Justin”. Catholics who long to see women ordained in the Catholic Church, or at least given more space to use their gifts in the Church, will be watching closely. It calls to mind the photo of Queen Elizabeth II giving the Saudi King Abdullah a spin in her Landrover at a time when women in his country were not permitted to drive. (I’m not equating the Catholic Church with the Saudi kingdom, though 11 years after his eye-opening ride, women’s capabilities were recognised and the ban lifted.)
As for the Church’s need to prove its integrity on dealing with abuse victims with the utmost seriousness, what is needed? A clean sweep, a new broom? Clearing away cobwebs? I’m wanting a metaphor that points to the new archbishop signalling a decisive and much-needed clean start in all sorts of areas where cobwebs lurk.
At 37, Mullally became the youngest chief nursing officer in England. Now she is to become the most senior bishop in the Church of England. Anglicanism’s other famous nurse, Florence Nightingale, would be thrilled. She is quoted as saying, “I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse.” That could be a good medicine for a Church that suffers from periodic lethargy.
It’s too easy and almost too hackneyed to do down the Church of England, with its deep divisions and widening differences. But the nation’s not in great shape either. That means there’s plenty of space for Archbishop-designate Sarah to articulate a renewed vision of the nation, one that is hopeful, compassionate, just, wise and varied, but united around common goals.
Photo: Archbishop of Canterbury-designate Sarah Mullally. Credit: Lambeth Palace
Boris Johnson wishes religious leaders would address the “aching spiritual void in people’s lives”. He makes a good point
It was one of the most intriguing headlines I had seen in years: “Boris Johnson blames the Church of England for obesity crisis”. Of all the shortcomings our rotund former PM could pin on the Church, that was not one I had expected.
He had recorded his comments for the National Food Survey, an independent review by the Government, before the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, announced two weeks ago that he was stepping down, taking “personal and institutional responsibility” for safeguarding failings.
Welby’s move has prompted a good deal of raking over personal and institutional failings, much of which has circled around the undeniable reality of declining church attendance.
What is up with people that they plainly are seeking solace in something that they know is self-destructive?
Academics have tried to understand this numerical trend of the last 50 years or so, and pointed to, among others, a desire for greater sexual freedoms, the end of deference culture, clergy failing to keep up with social change, and people having more disposable income and greater expectations of individualism.
However, Johnson made an astute point about “what is obviously an aching spiritual void in people’s lives, that drives them to gorge themselves”. “Religious leaders, as well as politicians, they think, ‘what is up with people that they plainly are seeking solace in something that they know is self-destructive’. And when did you last hear the Archbishop of Canterbury preach a sermon about that?”
According to the white paper in which the plans were outlined, a record 2.8 million people are out of work due to long-term sickness, and “economic inactivity is higher in some coastal and ex-industrial communities”. The paper proposes expanding access to mental health and musculoskeletal services, and tackling obesity. Analysis by The Times found that “the problems are concentrated in the poorer, ‘left behind’ places that successive governments have failed to level up, where obesity, inactivity, addiction, depression and hopelessness caused by lack of opportunity can become a mutually reinforcing spiral … Some 69 per cent of those claiming incapacity benefits cite mental health conditions and 47 per cent cite musculoskeletal problems, with the average claimant having 2.7 illnesses which often interact with each other.”
“Work is a necessity, part of the meaning of life on this earth, a path to growth, human development and personal fulfilment”
Pope Francis
What if some of these problems point to, to quote Johnson, a spiritual void? One that is also not filled by over-eating, substance misuse and inactivity? Many poorer areas are post-industrial, ie where mining or manufacturing, which used to provide the economic foundations of those communities, have departed for cheaper climes, leaving the old workforce without a job, without alocal work stream, and without the community and way of life that grew up around it. The white paper stresses that there is work to be done – as they immigration stats bear out – but new forms of work have been slow to fill the gaps that were left, or have appeared in different areas, or may not offer the same level of community or, in its stead, fulfilment.
Why would this count as a spiritual void? Because as the Work and Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall MP, acknowledged in the white paper, work itself can provide “dignity and purpose”, and people of faith would argue that dignity is God-given. The so-called Protestant work ethic puts a positive moral value on doing a job well, and the place of dignified work is important in Catholic Social Teaching. Pope Francis has said: “Work is a necessity, part of the meaning of life on this earth, a path to growth, human development and personal fulfilment. Helping the poor financially must always be a provisional solution in the face of pressing needs. The broader objective should always be to allow them a dignified life through work.”
Material help, in the form of cash benefits, can meet material needs. However, any initiative that offers the person who is long-term sick counselling and physiotherapy could make only temporary progress if the reason for their depression and back trouble is exacerbated by not having meaningful work and a meaningful community life to get out of bed for.
It is rare to find a preacher talk about eating disorders, body image and self-destructive behaviour in a way that is not glib
Perhaps what Johnson was alluding to was that it shouldn’t be the duty of government to preach hope, and that is what he believes is the task of Churches. Johnson has a lengthy relationship with Church. The twice-divorced father of nine (or thereabouts) children was baptised Catholic, confirmed Anglican and married his current wife, Carrie, at Westminster Cathedral. Around a decade earlier, while he was mayor of London, I heard Johnson addressing an interfaith group of community leaders with a fond and clear recollection of a Sunday School lesson. It concerned the achievements of Rahab the prostitute but had some relevance for 2010s London that was something to do with faith without deeds being dead (look up James 2). More recently, Johnson described himself as a “very, very bad Christian,” but judging by his comments to the food survey, in this instance he could be commended as a refreshingly honest and thoughtful one.
A few points then: when one of the main sources of employment for a town shuts, a viable replacement or replacements need to be available, or a kind of social depression will follow, that can take decades to recover from. Expectations of work that provides meaning – and enjoyment – have grown in the social media age, not always in ways that have matched the jobs and salaries that are on offer.
Historically, religious industrialists such as the Quakers were motivated by a holistic vision for society to open factories and look after the needs – including the spiritual needs – of their employees (albeit in a way we might regard as paternalistic). These days we expect business to step in, but there may be scope for partnerships forged between business, the state and the third sector. The government’s plans draw in employers such as the Premier League, Channel 4 and the Royal Shakespeare Company may inspire young job-seekers, though it is to be hoped that enough jobs in these competitive sectors can be found.
Second, Johnson clearly expects church-going to nurture the soul, and I hear his comments as a plea for churches to be more emotionally literate. It is rare to find a preacher who will talk about eating disorders, body image and self-destructive behaviour and link them in a way that is not glib to the way that a relationship with God can come to fill the spiritual void. The church I attended as a student did just that, and as a result attracted many people who found considerable healing there.
Finally, if Johnson has felt frustrated by a lack of spiritual content in newsworthy comments made by an archbishop, a better way to find out whether the Church is preaching its message of hope is perhaps not to tune into HQ but to pop into the local branch.
Archbishop Justin Welby’s shock announcement that he will step down, and the circumstances around his decision, present urgent questions for the Church of England
After the shock announcement of Justin Welby on Tuesday that he is to resign, following his handling of allegations of abuse by the prolific abuser John Smyth, the hunt begins for the next Archbishop Canterbury, Primate of All England and head of the Anglican Communion.
Archbishop Justin announced on Tuesday that he would step down in due course, after the damning 251-page Makin review published last week found a “distinct lack of curiosity” into allegations around John Smyth QC among senior church leaders including Welby, “and a tendency towards minimisation of the matter”. Accounts the report carefully pieced together “conclude that Smyth had subjected” around 115 boys and young men in the UK and southern Africa “to traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual attacks” over around 40 years.
Yet the task is a daunting one. So split is the Church of England over issues of sexuality, and specifically gay unions, that this issue is believed to be behind the failure to agree nominations for a number of episcopal roles. And so angry are the various factions over Welby’s attempts to reach out to both sides that both liberal and conservative clerics were involved in calling for him to go.
Both liberal and conservative clerics were involved in calling for him to go
Because Welby came from the Evangelical wing of the Church, one might now expect an archbishop from the liberal wing. And yet if liberals hope for a leader who would conduct and promote gay blessings, or even usher in a liturgy for gay marriage, the Evangelicals, especially the conservative ones, who are traditionally enthusiastic funders of the Church’s mission, would likely break away as they have threatened to. And such a move would have knock-on effects on the more conservative and already fragile Anglican Communion.
Archbishop Welby brought admirable qualities to the seat of Canterbury. He stood in a marked contrast to his charming, if somewhat other-worldly, polymath of a predecessor, Rowan Williams. Here was plain-speaking man who came from the world of business. When he was installed in 2013, this was a breath of fresh air: the world was still reeling from the global financial crisis and struggling to find the words to challenge the money men who had plunged so many people into poverty without being held accountable for it. Welby spoke the language of finance confidently and could cut through their jargon to raise basic questions of right and wrong. This ability led to his being invited, while Bishop of Durham, on to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards.
What kind of Church uses NDAs?
His openness was also commendable. First he spoke of his and his wife’s devastation at the death of their first child Johanna in a car crash in infancy. Then he opened up out his difficult childhood and his struggles with depression. Commendably he coped publicly with the revelation that the man who raised him had not been his biological father. In these ways he has not been a distant figure but one who was prepared to make himself vulnerable, perhaps to show the depth of his faith in, and need for, God.
He was happy to go against the flow of public opinion, first welcoming a Muslim Syrian family to Lambeth Palace at the height of the refugee crisis, and more recently attacking the Conservative Government’s its plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda. In calling the plan “the opposite of the nature of God” in his Easter 2022 sermon, he restored dignity to the idea of godliness and, by implication, shame to ungodliness.
Yet his clear thinking and clear speaking did not seem to be reflected seen in the wider leadership of the church. He said he was “horrified” to learn from a television documentary that non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) were being used to silence people raising complaints of racism within the Church, and would write to bishops to tell them to stop. Had he not known what his bishops were up to? And what kind of Church uses NDAs?
Welby’s resignation alone cannot dismantle the culture and structures that enabled the cover-up
Welby forged a refreshing friendship with Pope Francis, which was most clearly seen on their joint visit to South Sudan in 2023. Yet he and his fellow bishops could have learnt more from their Catholic counterparts, given the scandals from the other side of the Tiber: namely that silence is seen as complicity; and that abuse – or failing to prevent it – puts public opinion squarely on the side of the victims; and victims should be met and taken very seriously. No matter that some Catholic bishops’ responses have been far worse, in some cases knowingly moving abusive priests to a new parish where they continue to abuse, and even committing the abuse themselves in the cases of the late Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien and the now-laicised former Cardinal-Archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick.
With Welby the bar has been raised. Even though he commendably increased the number of safeguarding experts at Lambeth Palace, being insufficiently curious and failing to follow up with police became a resigning offence. His resignation announcement includes the line: “When I was informed [about the allegations against Smyth] in 2013 and told that police had been notified, I believed wrongly that an appropriate resolution would follow.” Should leaders of institutions be scratching their heads over which issues they have been insufficiently curious about?
The report also faults him and his team for “a distinct defensiveness” in response to a BBC news item about Smyth. This was not the time for defensiveness, but for humble and swift action.
Silence is seen as complicity, and abuse – or failing to prevent it – puts public opinion squarely on the side of the victims
The Archbishop of Canterbury is not a pope, but a first among equals, with little authority to boss bishops around. And yet in this age that demands clear lines of accountability for failings, he said he had to “bear personal and institutional responsibility” over abuse committed by a man who was not ordained, at camps run not by a Church of England body but by an independent charity. Smyth wielded huge influence over young men who were part of the CofE, and many of those whom the Makin review says knew about the allegations were Church of England clergy. The structures along which power flows in the Church of England are labyrinthine yet there is an acute need for them to be clearer. The report stresses that other people knew a lot more about Smyth’s abuse than Welby, and his resignation alone cannot dismantle the culture and structures that enabled the cover-up. The stepping back of Hampshire vicar Revd Sue Colman from her ministerial duties, and her husband, from his volunteering, whom the report said “had significant knowledge” of Smyth’s abuse, is a welcome first move.
The day after Welby’s appointment was announced in 2012, the BBC lost its director-general George Entwistle over the ongoing fall-out of the broadcaster’s handling of the scandal around the high-profile serial child abuser Jimmy Savile. Entwistle, facing MPs on the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, was criticised for “an amazing lack of curiosity” – that word again. He admitted that the way that the past “culture and practices of the BBC seems to allow Jimmy Savile to do what he did, will raise questions of trust for us and reputation for us, adding it is “a gravely serious matter and one cannot look back at it with anything other than horror”. His words could have echoed this week around the walls of Lambeth Palace, and it is to be regretted that they didn’t sooner. But how tragic that such costly scandals – unquantifiably costly to the victims first, and only second to the institutions through their own poor judgment – have happened again.
I wish Archbishop Justin well in his retirement, which will begin a few months sooner than he expected. The circumstances surrounding his resignation reflect as poorly on the clerics who covered up as they have on him. Denial in the Church will not bring Smyth’s victims healing.
Historically the Church has been likened to a ship, carrying the faithful through the storms of life. The battle for the helm needs to be calmed quickly if the Church is to keep itself afloat and repair any credibility as a moral guide through the issues of our day, most urgently the assisted dying vote.
Photo: Archbishop Welby. Credit: World Council of Churches.
Try walking with one eye shut, and then re-open your other eye. You get that moment of sudden greater understanding when you get to see your surroundings in 3D again.
Sometimes there is a way of looking at the world that shows us a dimension we had missed. A way that explains a person’s priorities, their concerns, their red lines, the communities with whom they share concerns. A dimension not always obvious.
What does the Greens’ co-leader Carla Denyer have in common with Ruth Cadbury, who is descended from the confectioners and social reformers? What does that mean for the values they espouse? Why was new Hindu MP Uma Kumaran so proud to meet Pope Francis, whom she whom she hailed as “probably the world’s foremost climate leader”?
For my article in this week’s issue of The Tablet I delve into the increased religious diversity that’s now filling the benches of the House of Commons, and take a look at what it could mean in practice.
This isn’t about tribalism – thank God. This is about the way our elected politicians understand, navigate and value difference. We have MPs of all faiths and none representing mixed constituencies fairly and faithfully. In July’s election we had Muslim MPs standing against fellow Muslims of other parties, showing that values derived from the same creed can be expressed in different ways politically.
So look at the Commons through the lens of religion and see what you hadn’t previously spotted.
Smartphone boycotters can learn from the match girl strike and other historical protests.
Meta’s assets totalled nearly US$230 billion last year; Pinterest’s were over $3.5 billion and Beijing-based ByteDance, parent company of Tik Tok, was valued at $220 billion. Between them they have attracted billions of users, and, enabled by the spread of smartphones, transformed the way that young people especially communicate, spend time alone and carry out friendships.
But parents’ concern at the impact of what their children are viewing, and the tech companies’ slow responses to a drip-drip-drip of teenage deaths linked to harmful online content, have pushed parents’ patience to the limit. In the last month an estimated 20,000 have joined a grassroots protest group – Parents United for a Smartphone-Free Childhood – whose founders are hastily developing a campaign strategy.
This pushback against the march of big tech cannot come soon enough, and if well co-ordinated it could finally give parents a weapon: their numbers.
The stats are becoming all too familiar – half of nine-year-olds own a smartphone and 68 per cent of children as young as three use it to get online. Drill down and it gets more startling: according to a Statista survey of 13-17-year-olds, 30 per cent of TikTok users had seen sexualised images or been trolled anonymously on the platform in the previous month; 14 per cent of respondents who visited YouTube had recently seen “violent or gory” content, and 10 per cent of respondents “had seen images of diet restriction on Instagram”.
But these aren’t the only forms of online harm. I attended a meeting recently in the Palace of Westminster where one speaker argued that just as bad, especially for teenagers, are the algorithms that promote content that leads to peer comparison and discontent, which niggles away at contentment and self-confidence.
The age checks on which they rely will be brought in by the tech companies, who thus far haven’t proven the most trustworthy partners on child safeguarding.
Some of these hi-tech problems will require hi-tech solutions and new laws. But might there also be some far older wisdom that could help us a society chart a course to a safer online experience for young people?
The Government’s finally passed Online Safety Bill marks a pushback, making the tech companies legally responsible for keeping children and young people safe online. It mandates platforms to protect children from “harmful or age-inappropriate” content such as porn, depictions of violence, bullying, and sites promoting anorexia, and platforms will face tougher scrutiny of the measures they take to ensure under-13s can’t have social media accounts.
However, these changes won’t take effect until partway through 2025 at the earliest; the age checks on which they rely will be brought in by the tech companies, who thus far haven’t proven the most trustworthy partners on child safeguarding.
What are parents to do? And increasingly, employers and economists? After all, youth mental health experts were quick to point the finger at social media following the Resolution Foundation research that found five per cent of 20 to 24-year-olds were economically inactive due to ill health last year and 34 per cent of 18 to 24s reported symptoms of mental health conditions such as depression or anxiety – a reversal from two decades ago, when they had the lowest incidence of such disorders at only 24 per cent.
Sat indoors, not interacting and liable to stumble across harmful content. Photo: Freepik
The Department for Education wants heads to ban mobiles in school, which some already do. But what about outside school hours? As one participant and parent at the meeting asked, “Isn’t the genie already out of the bottle?”
A couple of voices suggested young people needed an engaging real-life alternative to their screens that involved learning to take risks, such as rock-climbing. Another added that young people are too protected in the real world and not protected enough online.
One woman who has felt the sharpest cost of this inadequate protection is Esther Ghey. I would have hoped that the tech companies would be quick to change the ways their platforms work once they knew about the harmful material that her teenager Brianna was able to view online and the violent material her killers were able to discuss online.
But then I hoped the same after 14-year-old Molly Russell took her own life in 2017 having viewed content promoting self-harm and suicide on Instagram. Instead, her family were made to wait two years for Meta, parent company of Instagram, to provide evidence for her inquest. Representatives from Meta and Pinterest apologised at the inquest, five years after her death. Big deal.
Molly and Brianna were not just vulnerable teenagers – they were victims of the powerful machinery of Third and Fourth Industrial Revolutions.
Parents can – in theory – enact all parental controls offered by their internet provider, limit screen time and ban phones from their children’s bedrooms at night, although setting and reinforcing boundaries can be exhausting. Esther Ghey said Brianna’s phone usage “was a constant battle between me and her”. Other parents may lack the capacity to, or just not feel the need to, carry out such measures. And it only takes one child to share material for it to become a problem for a whole peer group.
It’s a good step that phones are entering the market that are designed to be safe for children, with parental controls and minimal access to the internet. But they don’t get kids rock-climbing (or your wholesome outdoor team activity of choice), they still normalise children’s phone use, and they require parents to spend more time monitoring their own phones to check their children’s usage.
So what’s to be done?
Molly and Brianna were not just vulnerable teenagers – they were victims of the powerful machinery of Third and Fourth Industrial Revolutions, the rapid advances in tech that have taken computers from the office to the pocket and loaded them up with the capability of dozens of devices combined.
Molly’s father Ian has teamed up with Esther Ghey to work together on holding the tech companies to account. And thanks to Parents United for a Smartphone Free Childhood, other parents now have a way of voicing their fears in a co-ordinated way, to try to prevent the next disaster. Organisers Clare Fernyhough and Daisy Greenwell estimate that already some 20,000 people have joined, from every county across Britain. This is an online campaign for an online age: it was sparked by a post by Greenwell in the fertile soil of Instagram, and communities are organised into WhatsApp groups. Nonetheless, the pair are encouraging parents not to give children smartphones until 14 and social media access until 16, and they have put together resources to help members urge headteachers to restrict, and other parents to delay, smartphone usage.
Examples like William Booth are a reminder that, when it comes to systemic challenges, individuals are not without agency.
But what if these steps aren’t enough? History recalls some impressive David-vs-Goliath campaign victories that could be of use here. In the first Industrial Revolution, exhausted and overworked women and children lost limbs and even lives in the newly invented machinery. According to a landmark report commissioned by the House of Commons in 1832, these workers were often “abandoned from the moment that an accident occurs; their wages are stopped, no medical attendance is provided, and whatever the extent of the injury, no compensation is afforded.” Years passed from the creation of these voracious machines to reformers such as Lord Shaftesbury, a politician driven by his Evangelical Christian faith, passing laws to cap children’s hours at 58 hours a week and introduce other safeguards.
A few decades later, the Bryant and May match company was employing hundreds of East End women to make matches using white phosphorus, which can cause phosphorus necrosis of the jaw or Phossy Jaw. The employees formed a union and went on strike; the Salvation Army, led by William Booth, another social reformer inspired by his Christian beliefs to help people in poverty, set up their own factory in 1891 offering better working conditions including the use of less toxic red phosphorus. Although their factory only ran for 10 years, the episode spelt bad publicity for Bryant and May and a ban on the use of white phosphorus in matches followed shortly after.
A Salvation Army matchbox. Image courtesy of The Salvation Army International Heritage Centre
Examples like William Booth are a reminder that, when it comes to systemic challenges, individuals are not without agency. But other chapters in history underline that one person’s vision or persistence may need to be amplified by scale to be taken seriously. Had the civil rights activist Rosa Parks, who in 1955 refused to give up her seat for a white passenger, boycotted the buses alone, the authorities in Montgomery would have shrugged their shoulders. But when 40,000 other Black passengers, led by Rev Martin Luther King, joined her, the authorities could not afford to ignore them.
So how do these three stories relate to young people’s social media use?
The harmful effects of social media are a global issue, and if tech companies boast revenues greater than the GDP of several countries, governments may need to work together to get them to listen. And any calls from governments for better regulation and self-policing will be amplified if backed up by millions of parents.
Perhaps we’re seeing the start of this: if the thousands of Parents United for a Smartphone Free Childhood can grow in number and start conversations with schools and other parents, then the demand for smartphones and their dominance of some young people’s lives can be challenged. Such conversations can’t come soon enough. But how can parents make themselves heard? And what do nineteenth-century industrialists, East End match girls or 1950s African Americans have to do with it?
The parallel, in Christian jargon, is the undervaluing of the human person. The tech companies do not just exist to help us stay in touch with our friends or look cooler. So bear with me, if you will, for a thought exercise.
In short, and I wince: adults’ relationship with smartphones needs to be rethought just as much as children’s.
The Shaftesburies of our day need to ensure existing laws are applied, that the tech companies’ promised age controls are water-tight, and harsh penalties are applied for platforms that fail to take down harmful or illegal content. The William Booths need to provide alternatives to dopamine-inducing social media, that affirm the value of each young person and teach them to manage real-world, appropriate levels of risk. Hence the suggestion of rock-climbing or similar. And could we also imagine social network being conceived, funded and constructed on European soil which takes the wellbeing of its users seriously? And some form of online policing?
In the meantime, the Rosa Parks of our age – which is all of us social media users, and Parents United for a Smartphone Free Childhood could lead the way – must consider investing in a dumb phone and enacting a smartphone boycott, at least outside our professional lives. The half of nine-year-olds who reportedly own smartphones can’t buy or fund them themselves; therefore, pretty much half of parents of nine-year-olds have passed theirs on or bought new ones and kept paying the bills. That gives them leverage.
Young people may do better to log off and learn to manage real-world risk. Photo: David Bortnyk
Leading by example would also mean parents swapping their own smartphones for dumbphones – at least in front of their children. An old laptop could be kept in the kitchen for searches that then become public, functional and brief – just like twentieth-century dips into the Phone Book or Yellow Pages. Smartphone ownership could be seen as a privilege of maturity like drinking, learning to drive and (previously) smoking, and doom-scrolling in front of children blacklisted. In short, and I wince: adults’ relationship with smartphones needs to be rethought just as much as children’s.
The reforms of Shaftesbury and others and the ban on white phosphorus helped lay the foundation for today’s health and safety laws. The bus boycott was a key step in the Civil Rights Movement’s long and hard-fought journey towards equality.
The tragic, needless loss of the lives of Brianna and Molly (and, sadly, others) must lead to laws and a wider social rethink that lay the foundations for a safer, more grown-up, properly regulated, internet age. We need to set ourselves on a course from where future generations will look back aghast, just as we do on child labour or white phosphorus or racial segregation, and ask, ‘What were they thinking?’
This article first appeared on Seen & Unseen. Top image: Sarah Chapman and the match girls strike committee. Wellcome Collection, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
We are often told that in times of need or distress, people turn to religion. The nation, pretty much the whole world, has been stilled and quieted by lockdowns to prevent the further spread of the Coronavirus. As the Queen pointed out, people have time to “slow down, pause and reflect”. One might expect the Church to pipe up with a message of hope. But what exactly is it saying?
Quite a lot, it turns out, but you have to know where to look. It is not, as Jonathan Clark argued recently in these pages, “the dog that failed to bark in the night”. But anyone expecting an archbishop or senior theologian to be regularly on the news offering consolation and wisdom will have been disappointed. So far we’ve seen a handful of appearances by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, on Newsnight. His successor Justin Welby and the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Vincent Nichols have both appeared on ITV news.
BBC local radio are broadcasting “from-the-living-room” services by senior bishops, which the CofE is live-streaming on its website and Facebook pages. The Church says these have attracted some 2m viewers, not counting those listening via local radio. Unsurprisingly the most polished services come from the well resourced, well organised churches such as Holy Trinity Brompton. Other churches’ online offerings can be hard to find, variable in quality or both.
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Christmas is behind us and the last leftovers have made their way from fridge to waist. Which means it is another 11 ½ months until we get to hear that festive wonder – of believers, agnostics and atheists belting out Charles Wesley’s exuberant Hark the Herald-Angels Sing: “Hail! the Sun of Righteousness! Light and life to all he brings, Risen with healing in his wings…”
Such lines have for me cast a shadow over other familiar words that inhabit our churches – the Creed. Every time I recite it, I feel more frustrated by it.
The Creed is clearly important in marking in stone the edges of Christian belief – what it is, and what it is not. Like a thick wall, it serves to safeguard the flock from non-Christian beliefs and distinguish Christianity from other belief systems.
But in all the times I have listened to Christians explaining their journey to faith, I have never heard anyone say, misty-eyed, they were attracted by Jesus’ being “begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father”. Instead they often talk about the help, comfort and hope they derive from their relationship with Him.
The Nicene Creed, adopted in the fourth century, or the older Apostles’ Creed, make sense when situated in the bustling marketplace of pagan and polytheistic beliefs of their day, and the Arian heresy that claimed Christ was effectively lesser than God the Father. But after centuries of monotheistic belief, our Western default setting hovers between Christianity and atheism, and the arguments against religion have changed.
As Rupert Shortt points out in his new book Outgrowing Dawkins, “by far the strongest argument against faith in a benign, all-powerful providence [is] the problem of evil and suffering.” Sometimes, underneath sophisticated arguments against the existence of God are highly personal ones about unmet expectations or unanswered prayers, leading to a conclusion that God either does not care or does not exist.
Another recent challenge to the idea of a loving God – possibly also borne out of grievance – has come from fundamentalist Islam. Muslims are the first to say that violent jihadists distort their religion; Christians likewise do well to reiterate that portraying God as murderous and petty is a modern-day heresy.
It is these cris de coeur I wish the Creed would address. My problem isn’t so much with what it contains as what it leaves out. God is creator, we are told, but his character – of mercy and generosity – are not mentioned. Much is implicit in a short phrase such as “for us men, and for our salvation, [He] came down from heaven,” but today that benefits from being unpacked. Could it not spell out that Christ came to bind up the broken-hearted, forgive sins, redeem mankind and destroy evil?
The Creed may have been written to fend off heresies but today its adversaries come in different forms. Maybe a new millennium warrants a revised version. I know we’re 20 years in already, but there are 980 left and these things can take a few centuries to agree. So I argue for a revision that is pastoral and poetic as well as didactic, to inspire and encourage, to engage heart and well as mind. The stone wall, if you like, muralled in enticing full colour interrupted only by a welcoming open door.
Growing secularisation is leading to an increase in violence and verbal abuse against Christian clergy, experts fear.
Priests told of experiences including discovering a witchcraft symbol sprayed on a church door and being followed home as academics launched a mass survey of priests to find out the scale of the problem.
There are also concerns that sex abuse scandals and a growing number of female clergy is contributing to a growth in threats and violence against priests.
Academics at Royal Holloway, University of London, are to survey around 7,000 Church of England clergy using £5,000 in funding from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
The survey, which is to be circulated online this month, will ask clergy whether they have experienced verbal abuse, threats or physical violence in the last two years, and how often church property is damaged.
Abigail Frymann Rouch speaks to clergy victims of stalking, and asks whether enough is being done to support them
IT WAS trauma that brought the Revd Graham Sawyer into closer contact with one of his female parishioners: she witnessed her husband killing himself, in front of their children.
“I then exercised the pastoral care that would be expected of any priest,” he recalls. “Unfortunately, she became very dependent on me, and it became a sort of infatuated obsession. . . Her demands on me became impossible for me to meet, which gave her a pseudo-legitimacy to turn her obsession into hate.”
Every so often you start on a project believing to be about one thing, and end up miles past your original destination having discovered a totally different story. I had that pleasure when I saw advertised a programme of music that had been banned by the Nazis. Continue reading “Barry Humphries, the Nazis and the revealing generation gap”
This morning’s Times contains a heartening piece that reports that a statue smashed up by members of ISIS at the ancient site of Palmyra in Syria has been reconstructed using laser technology. The same wizardry, which has been pioneered by the Oxford-based Institute of Digital Archaeology means that reconstruction of other artefacts destroyed by the group can be “done in an afternoon, while a traditional reconstruction can involve years of research, academic argument and highly skilled craftsmanship”.
And, the Times article continues, the technique is being used to recreate buildings and religious objects smashed during the English Reformation, including Newstead Abbey, ancestral home of the poet Lord Byron.
Ron Inglis, of Nottingham city council, said: “The destruction during the Reformation has parallels to how Isis dealt with religious monuments. What we want to do is to try to recreate what the interior of the priory church would have been like.”
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