Terry Drummond[1]
Urban mission and ministry – reflections on urban theology and practice[2]
Introduction
The aim of this lecture is to explore the issues and questions that underpin the contribution of the Churches make to the building up of communities in urban areas. To fully understand the implications of this area of the Churches ministry it is important to have some understanding of how we reached where we are today to assist in developing an appropriate approach for the future. The context I’m starting from is that of theological reflection and practical ministry. The themes that I will cover are:
Ø The Biblical imperative
Ø The 19th and 20th Century up until the late 1950’s
Ø Theology and urban life – the 1960’s
Ø The Publication of Faith in the City in 1985
Ø The publication of Faithful Cities in 2006 – What makes a good city?
Ø Urban theology and practice at the present time.
It is my intention to open up theological reflection on urban life and consider the implications for ministry and theology that is looking to the wider community and public square. The reflections whilst having an urban bias and focus can I believe also resonate with ministry in other communities.
It is important to begin with both the Bible and the historical context.
The Biblical imperative
The statement that the Bible begins in a garden and ends in a city is one of those sayings that state a truth though it can jar with over use. The Bible is in many ways about one city in particular – Jerusalem and the history of the people of Israel and their relationship to this all important place. It is a home to kings, the temple and the place where Jesus must go to die.
The history of the people of Israel is one of seeking to ensure that this city is preserved and the Biblical narrative gives many examples of its importance, these include Jeremiah purchasing land in the city to show his commitment to its future.
The story of Nehemiah who returns from exile to rebuild the city walls and the focus on the temple which is at the heart of the city is a constant reminder of its importance for the people of Israel.
The verse ‘pray for the peace of Jerusalem’ rings down the centuries and might also be used to pray for any city where its residents/citizens seek to create a community that is based on an understanding of the common good.
A key element for me in considering urban ministry is the importance of incarnational ministry. Jesus lived an earthly life which ended in Jerusalem and we are called to a ministry that reflects the teaching and ministry of Jesus and our understanding of the incarnation. It leads to care for the outcast, the widow and orphan particularly in the context of this paper in an urban setting, it is out of our incarnational ministry that we are able to speak to people who are living in what can both be a place of comfort and hope or equally of hopelessness.
The place of the city in the biblical narrative underpins the call to continue to ensure that we have a vision for ministry in an urban setting and in what follows I hope that we can remember that we are called to continue to pray for the peace of the city and build up a sense of community in what today all too often can become an urban sprawl.
The 19th and 20th centuries up until the 1950s
In what follows my aim is to give a bird’s eye view of the work of the Church in urban communities from the growth of cities in the 19th century through to the 1950’s. It can only be a brief overview but it is intended to offer a perspective and context for the urban ministry of the 21st century.
The 19th century was a very important period for the development of the Christian Churches in their ministry of reaching out to serve the urban poor and dispossessed. The importance of the Evangelical movement cannot be underestimated; it is perhaps best encapsulated in the foundation by William Booth of the Salvation Army, Wilson Carlisle who founded the Church Army and others like Dr Barnardo who started work with street children. All of them and many others led the way in offering care to the poorest and whilst preaching the gospel realised that physical care was needed if spiritual care was to take any kind of root. In the same period the Oxford Movement was taking root and in the words of John Orens:
“Although most Anglo –Catholic clergy found comfortable livings, others led by the sense of priestly vocation, ventured into the neglected and poverty-stricken districts of the nations cities. Left behind were academic concerns of Oxford and the Tractarian reverence for ecclesiastical authority. In their place the ‘slum ritualists’ brought a rough and simple Catholicism expressed in beautiful, although often eccentric ceremonial and a pastoral zeal which compelled them to champion the cause of the parishioners against the slum landlords, sweat shops, and even bishops”. J.R.Orens Politics and the Kingdom Jubilee Group 1981
In recollecting the positive outcomes of both the Evangelical and Anglo Catholic movements we must not lose sight of the more negative perspective of a working class lost to the Church a thesis developed by Ted Wickham who founded Sheffield Industrial Mission and became Bishop of Middleton. His book Church and People in an Industrial City (1957) was a seminal work in its time in the way that it challenged the Church.
The First World War was, of course, a time when religious faith was challenged by the fact that many of the soldiers who enlisted came from the cities and in many cases had little or no link to the Christian faith, a perspective reinforced by Wickham. Two figures stand out in the context of urban mission and in particular the post war period. They are Philip (Tubby) Clayton and Geoffrey Studdart Kennedy (Woodbine Willy) both Church of England Chaplains who served in the trenches. These two men played a pivotal role in the way that they ministered to the soldiers and the contribution they made in the post war period. In the case of Clayton, a contribution that was important until the middle of the 20th century.
Clayton established in the Belgian village of Poperinghe, Talbot House to be a place of rest for soldiers, and the upper room which was and is the Chapel had the motto ‘abandon rank all ye who enter here’. The house was open to all comers and its importance was not lost in the period after the war, when in 1923 he established the charity Toc H, building on the principles of fellowship and commitment to men working together, he set up a number of branches across the UK. The branches were meeting points for men and later women (who had their own branches) from which community projects were organised. In many new urban communities that grew up between the First and Second World War, local Toc H branches were often the hubs for community activity. On the New Addington Estate in Croydon, one of the largest post war housing developments in Europe, it was the local branch that initiated the library, youth club and other social amenities.
Geoffrey Studdart Kennedy was known as Woodbine Willy because of his giving out of Woodbine cigarettes to soldiers on the front. In the 1920s he was the missioner for the Industrial Christian Fellowship an organisation that brought together the Navy Mission and the Christian Social Union. The ICF alongside its missionary aims was an organisation that undertook research into economic and social issues from a theological perspective; they were in today’s terminology a Think Tank and produced important reports on the economy and unemployment.
I think it is important that in considering the contemporary state of play on urban mission that we remember that there is a history of the Church contributing to debates on public policy – in this context issues that are of central importance to the mission of the Church in urban communities.
Theology and urban life – the 1960s
The next important period for consideration is the 1960s with the publication of two books:
The Suburban Captivity of the Churches, Gibson Winter 1961; and
The Secular City, Harvey Cox 1965.
In Winter’s book he describes the issue that faced the Church and, whilst addressed to an American audience and to Churches organised in a very different way to those in the UK, it did speak to those Churches in England who were prepared to listen. In many ways his initial analysis has a contemporary resonance, though the extremely critical analysis needs to be tempered with recognition that mission in urban communities did and does have some good stories to tell.
The metropolis will be the principal field of Christian mission in the immediate future. This fact is generally acknowledged: however, the adequacy of the churches task is seldom discussed. The churches have had notable successes in the growing suburbs; they have suffered dismal failures in the central areas of the metropolis. No adequate explanation for this fact has been forthcoming and yet the central mission to the metropolis depends on a ministry to the central city as well as the suburbs. The Suburban Captivity of the Churches, Gibson Winter 1961
It is important to recognise the importance of these two books to the debates of the 1960s and 70s. In the Church of England examples of critical thinking and practice were perhaps best identified in the Diocese of Southwark where what was called South Bank religion was being encouraged. The publication of Honest to God by John Robinson was a key to this new development. He was the Bishop of Woolwich and this small book caused a furore that echoed around both the Church and society. A less well known book by Robinson was On Being the Church in the World published in 1960. The chapters included:
· The Social Content of Salvation
· The House Church and the Parish Church
· The Gospel and Race
· The Gospel and Health
I offer these as an insight into the topics that he thought to be important; it is a prophetic book and even though it was first published in 1960 it has much to offer to the Church of today.
In the Diocese of Southwark examples of mission activity and experimentation became a central element of mission in some parishes. The most well known being the work of Nick Stacey at Woolwich Parish Church, Stacey transformed the building opening it up to the community. He invited the CAB and other support agencies to take space. Sadly the community did not return to the Church and he considered the experiment to be a failure. The importance of this period and in particular in this one diocese is a reminder that the debates about appropriate models of urban mission are key to every generation of clergy and laity together thinking about service to the communities they live in.
In offering an overview I hope that I’ve shown that urban mission and ministry must be seen to be of central importance for theological reflection and the development of good practice. An importance summed up in the two reports from the Church of England Faith in the City published in 1985 commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Faithful Cities published in 2006 and in this case commissioned by both the Archbishop of Canterbury and York.
Faith in the City (FiC) 1986
The importance of the 1985 publication of FiC cannot be overestimated; it addressed a Nation, Government and Church on issues of social need that were both prophetic and challenging. The Sunday before its publication day the headline in the Sunday Times was Marxist report from the Church of England. The claim was attributed to a Government Minister. I was never sure if we had read the same report.
The response from government to FiC was critical. In part, it was an attempt to maintain the Church’s role in a spiritual vacuum that excluded concern for the political and social issues. The report addressed issues of poverty, social deprivation and housing need in a way that opened up a debate that had become a necessity. At the time this was a debate that politicians were avoiding leaving a public space for the Church of England to enter into.
In many ways FiC became a touchstone for thinking about these issues and whilst it was weak in its theology it underpinned the debate that followed. Its recommendations to both Church and Government in many ways sadly stand the test of time, to note just a few:
· To the Church:
Ø Resources should be diverted preferentially to parishes in urban priority areas (UPAs);
Ø Churches should be given the opportunity to undertake audits in order to review priorities;
Ø More people from UPA areas should be selected for ministerial training;
Ø Extended urban placements should become a central part of training for ordination;
Ø A caucus for Black Anglican concerns should be established;
Ø A ‘Church Urban Fund’ should be set up to provide financial support for local community projects.
· To the Government:
Ø For increase in social security benefits and greater expenditure on the youth service,
training and job creation;
Ø To invest significantly in public housing;
Ø To encourage community development and participation in local authority strategies;
Ø To address the problems of institutional racism in legal, criminal and public sectors.
The importance of FiC should not be underestimated, not the least because many of today’s senior clergy were beginning their ministry around the time of its publication. It may seem to be a part of our past, but it still speaks to our present in a prophetic manner that is both disheartening because it is now over 25 years since it was published and at the same time it contains challenges that we must be prepared to consider from our contemporary perspective.