This is an extract from Jenny Sinclair’s lecture ‘From Charity to Solidarity’. The complete lecture can be read at https://t4cg.substack.com/p/from-charity-to-solidarity-a-radical?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email.
Jenny Sinclair is Director of Together for the Common Good
“Let’s briefly name what this common good vision of renewal could look like:
At the national level it would involve government policies that prioritise families and communities and respect the dignity of human life from conception to natural death.
It would promote a balance between rights and responsibilities. It would incentivise a balance of interests and harmony between those who have become opponents, such as employers and unions, young and old, urban and rural, black and white, men and women, faith and secular, migrants and host communities, the interests of capital and those of labour.
It would deconcentrate capital by enabling regional banks and energy providers and by shortening food supply chains. It would constrain the excesses of capital through a national industrial strategy incentivising job creation and retraining – balancing environmental measures with the dignity of work – that corrects the abandonment of the forgotten places.
At the regional level, it would promote institutional collaboration between educational bodies, employers, businesses, investors, religious and other networks – all working together for the renewal of their region.
At the local level, local governments would create conditions that enable people to run their own local organizations – to build back that lost agency – to foster a diverse interconnected layer of local associations – clubs, businesses, schools, charities, and religious bodies – each living out their own vocational responsibility, each enabling local people to find fulfilment, each meeting local needs, working together for the common good.
This local ecosystem would, at community level, cultivate family life – in all its variety – helping families help each other and their neighbours, teaching young people local civic responsibility and the importance of good relationships.25
At the personal level we’d understand that as Saint John Henry Newman said, each of us is a link in a chain, with a unique purpose. We’d borrow and lend more, buy less and contribute to a reciprocal gift economy rather than weakening our common life by outsourcing everything to the market and to the state.
The people of the churches have a distinctive calling. To hear that, we must resist the determined attempts to discredit and privatise our faith, and the pressure to conform to secular ideologies. When we can discern clearly, we will recognise our responsibility to be authentic, according to our distinctive Christian charisms, to share our vision of Christian justice at every level. We are called to be a light in the darkness. As the new era unfolds it is our job to stay human.
Finally, the language we use really matters. This journey to communion will be paved with the words we speak.
We must speak the language of covenant rather than contract, of solidarity rather than division, of making rather than consuming, of mutuality rather than individualism, of relationships rather than self, of trust not estrangement, of meaning rather than personal preference, of neighbourliness and friendship rather than service delivery. A language of balance, of partnerships, of collaboration across difference, of diversity of opinion.
At a time when many people in our country feel dislocated, our churches and centres are called to be places where people feel at home, where they can speak freely, and feel heard. We are called to create structures of grace – where the Spirit is at work, where we regard everything we do as an occasion for communion.
Brislington Community News 