What should the Church’s ‘prophetic voices’ be calling for?

Jenny Sinclair is the founder and director of Together for the Common Good (T4CG), working to help people across churches strengthen the bonds of social trust.

This winter, many people across the churches are urgently concerned about the so-called "Cost of Living Crisis", campaigns "to end poverty" and calls for the Church to "raise a prophetic voice". Some may believe that a change of government will solve the problem. But this is a false hope and a misreading of the new era we are entering. Over the last four decades, governments of both the 'left' and 'right' across the West have colluded in perpetuating a dysfunctional and dehumanising political philosophy. All have been far too comfortable with unconstrained finance capital that discards places that did not attract investment; too comfortable with a hyperliberal ideology that breaks the bonds of mutual obligation. This neoliberal consensus has wrecked not only our economy but also our common life.

Our attitude of anticipation must combine supernatural hope with the acknowledgement that things in this world don't always get better. We should acknowledge that we may not know yet what being "prophetic" might involve. Authentic prophecy carries great risk, because it requires the surrender of tribal allegiances and the speaking of words that people do not want to hear, that even the prophet may find uncomfortable. It may involve humiliation. Jeremiah found the prophet’s journey hard and lonely.

What should the Church’s "prophetic" voices be calling for? Should they campaign for more generous state benefits and higher cash payments? Maybe, but it does not seem "prophetic” to consign another generation of families to welfare dependency. It sounds more like a capitulation to a politics of low expectations. It sounds like something coming out of a Church that is stuck in the politics of the 1980s, in a worldview that is not yet able to offer the hope and the resistance needed in this new era.

This era’s true prophets should speak out in solidarity with the communities abandoned by globalisation. The Church has a vocation to unveil the sacred, to defend families, their livelihoods, traditions, their belonging to place. The Church is called to uphold the human person in the face of money power on a grotesque scale. The Church’s role is to advocate for the restoration of the abandoned places, for place-based investment, for decent jobs and training.

In the spirit of anticipation and acknowledgement, church leaders in post-industrial societies should engage with issues of class. They should support Levelling Up proposals to restore power to the forgotten towns and outer estates. They should not collude with the politics of abandonment. No, they should become deeply involved in efforts to reform the economic order.

Catholic social thought, or as we sometimes describe it, Common Good thinking, can help us understand what is going on. It contains that tension between hope and reality: it is not utopian. Its preferential option for the poor is not satisfied with parking poor people in endless dependency on the beneficent welfare state. Rather, Common Good thinking envisages dignified work for all, self-determination, and moral responsibility. It provides a framework, rooted in the Gospel, which helps us discern how to reform our political economy to uphold the human person, and to recognise the importance of relationship for reweaving the torn social fabric. It is a language we can draw upon to envisage building the Kingdom within our communities. It stimulates a wider understanding of evangelisation, a missional frame within which to put faith into action.

If the Church fails to resist, then they will lose touch with the poor communities in the forgotten places who understand the damage wreaked by this forty-year political consensus. Those working-class communities bear the scars. It is a grim irony that while the Church claims a prophetic mission to serve poor communities suffering from cold and hunger, those same communities are mostly deeply estranged from the Church.

What is going wrong? Perhaps "social action" has inadvertently alienated the very people it helps. Perhaps too many churches, becoming progressively middle class, have fallen out of relationship with disadvantaged communities. Their kind intentions produce "outreach", but not genuine relationships of loving friendship, trust, reciprocity and mutual respect. The Kingdom will be built from those relationships.

At this point in our national story, Christian anticipation requires humility, repentance and deep listening, to God and to neighbour. To be truly prophetic, we should be prepared to set aside old assumptions and be asking "what does God want of us in this place?"

These tensions need attention at multiple levels - which is why T4CG is dedicated to bringing Common Good thinking into Church, schools, politics and wider society.