Before and Beyond the ‘Big Society’ – John Milbank and the Church of England’s Approach to Welfare
Review by John Schofield
This book, the outcome of doctoral research by Joe Forde, is a substantial contribution to the study of the Church of England’s attitude to welfare provision over the last hundred years. In particular it assesses and critiques the politico-theology of John Milbank especially as it affected the Church’s response to David Cameron’s Big Society project, launched with much fanfare in 2010.
An interesting aspect of this book is that it is written by a Roman Catholic lay person who chooses mainly to worship at and play a significant role in an Anglican Church. This gives it a certain, but possibly qualified, detachment. Forde critiques Milbank’s views from both an historical and a theological perspective.
I should state an initial caveat from the outset: I don’t subscribe to the basic tenets of Radical Orthodoxy, so what I write may be slanted. In part this is because attempts to defend orthodoxy - even when it is given the sobriquet of radical - are always prone to defensiveness, and what Peter Michael Howard has called the imprisoning effects of orthodoxy1. not to mention its starry-eyed romanticism about the structure of church and society before the Reformation. Indeed, Radical orthodoxy rejects post-modernism and liberalism, and draws heavily on a form of Neoplatonism, influenced by the likes of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. In its political manifestation it finds expression in blue socialism or red tory ideas. In general it is somewhat alien to the open, liberal and questioning outlook for which the CRCOnline website was founded to give expression.
Forde outlines three basic strands of Anglican social thinking - the welfare statist strand, the Christendom strand (of dubious standing following the collapse of the medieval paradigm of Christendom), and the revolutionary strand. Each is given detailed analysis, but after the initial description the revolutionary strand is not address being, so Forde thinks, of peripheral interest. In this overview of the rise of the welfare state and the thinking behind it in which people such as Tawney and Temple were significant, we are shown how in the later decades of the last century the relationship between the state and the voluntary sector in the provision of welfare developed and shifted significantly, with more money poured into voluntary sector provision of welfare and unemployment services.
There is a good identification of the differences in the theological approaches of welfare statist and Christendom views (and Millbank lives in this latter world), together with good historical contextualisation, though it’s a pity that there isn’t as much as I would have liked about the Blair/Brown era, which immediately preceded, and included, the financial crash of 2008, which precipitated a change in government, the launch of the Big Society project, and the arrival of austerity.
That there’s a certain lack of reality in the Christendom view becomes evident as the book progresses. In an interesting footnote, Forde quotes Graham Ward’s view that ‘Christendom is over; and with it Christian hegemony’. Indeed, some would argue that Christendom itself was an aberration of early and continuing medieval Christianity’s conflation of church and state to the church's harm. Understandably there is no reference back to the pre Constantinian period, and little on the way in which, in Christendom thinking, the state had usurped the place of the church. Whatever the historical developments since Constantine, the church is not society neither is society the church. Nor should either be uncritically accepted as the Kingdom of God. God works through the church to bring about the Kingdom; the two are not identical, and mission theology of the last 50 years has been quite clear about this as we are reminded in David Bosch’s seminal missiological work
Transforming Mission2.
The thesis of this book is that in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis the Church of England’s approach to welfare took a different turn from that of the previous sixty years and more, in embracing the idea of the Big Society, and that the influence of John Milbank's theology was a major contributor to this. Over the course of the book Forde begins to hang his hat on the line, asking towards the end:
How far a society based on the nature of the common good can accommodate levels of inequality in the levels of access to the political, economic, social, educational and cultural aspects of life that are necessary for human flourishing.
But that is to pre-empt the journey on which Forde takes us.
It is perhaps no surprise that Radical Orthodoxy is fascinated with the Middle Ages given its main location within Anglo Catholicism, as there are many similarities of approach between it and the wave of gothic revival and the interest in medievalism which on many fronts was stimulated by the nineteenth century Anglo Catholic revival, However, not all Anglo Catholics have accept this trajectory, of which Conrad Noel and Ken Leech are examples cited in the book.
As the church continues its numerical decline - at least in most of the north/developed world – one of the questions which Forde raises is whether Milbank's view - despite its apparently missiological potential - is a realistic way forward. Milbank and his associates like to talk about the Big Parish. But it seems that parishes are tending to be undervalued at present in their situatedness, and emerging congregations have even less attachment to their locality (unless you listen to the proponents of the Asset Based Community Development model – see the review of
Being Interrupted on this site last year3.). Be that as it may, the decline in church numbers is one reason it cannot respond by increasing its own welfare provision in the way and to the extent that Milbank and other Christendom thinkers argue. Neither is it clear to what Milbank attributes the fact that there was burgeoning church attendance in the 1950s and a rapid collapse in the 60s: any analysis of this has to be complex, whereas Milbank often is presented as thinking in romantic generalities.
There is an interesting discussion which highlights the differences between the ‘Tawney school’ and Milbank about the relationship between religion and capitalism, and the contribution that competing thinking about the fall makes to an understanding of the basic mechanisms of capitalism. One argument cited even suggests that Calvinists encouraged frugality not acquisitiveness, and thus was antithetical to the capitalist spirit. However this analysis is too reliant on the example of Scottish Calvinism.
Value thinking also plays a part in Milbank’s approach, which Forde critiques succinctly; he is also sceptical of Milbank’s ‘socialism with a Burkean tinge’, demonstrating that though Milbank often makes some good points, he is nevertheless idealistic even when his ideas are good. And indeed it is true that some of the analysis of Radical Orthodoxy and its critique of the welfare statist approach is something with which many can identify, particularly in its insistence of the importance of the person who benefits from welfare.
One of the ways in which the Church has contributed to social thinking has been in the production of reports such as Faith in the City. However, Forde rightly points out that the days of big church reports are gone, and argues that the Church of England needs to rethink its theology of the state. His contention is that the romantic but totally unrealistic Christendom model won't work. But though he doesn’t make this point, neither - especially in the current political climate - will a falling back on erastianism. He is particularly trenchant in his comments about accountability if the Church of England were to take on extra welfare delivery responsibilities as, unlike elected representatives, its leaders are not subject to being ousted at the next election.
There has been a change in welfare and attitudes to it from the welfare state consensus of the post war era to the Thatcherite ‘revolution’; this has been reinforced by the financial crisis of 2008 and the ideological austerity reaction to it. At first the church seemed to want to work with the Big Society project in order to claim relevance. Forde reminds us of the emergence, and then almost total disappearance, of Blue Labour and Red Tory ideas, both of which drew on the thinking of John Milbank.
Forde asks whether, on the back of the Church of England’s desire to be ‘politically relevant’ - and also to acquire financial support for its Near Neighbours initiative – ‘the qualified support given to [the Big Society] in 2010, 2011 and the early part of 2012 [was] a theo-political misjudgement?’ To which his answer is a clear yes.
At no point does Forde argue for state provision alone, and even less for more church than state in welfare provision, but for a continuation of and, where necessary a corrective to, the partnership/collaborative way that developed after 1945, without ceding to unrealistic views of either parts of the partnership. In this light, at the end of the book we are offered eight points for consideration to provide a way forward in helping the ‘Welfare Statist Anglican Socialism’ legacy and of Tawney and Temple to develop and thrive.
For me the question that remains at the end is whether, despite the failure of the Big Society project, the Church of England’s theological and social approach the subject of welfare was a permanent shift or a temporary blip. The paper GS1084, The Big Society and the Church of England, presented to General Synod in the autumn of 2010, was perhaps too uncritical - even though it was guarded- of the potential of the BS project. And though there have been signs since then that change is afoot, is it not clear what the answer to this question is.
1.
Unknowing God, Nicholas Peter Harvey, and Linda Woodhead, Cascade Books, Eugene Oregon, 2022, chapter 21 (pagination of the Kindle edition makes a more detailed citation problematic)
2.
Transforming Mission, David Bosch, Orbis Books, Maryknoll NY, 1991
3.
Being Interrupted, Al Barrett and Ruth Harley, SCM press, London, 2020.
Publisher
James Clarke & Co Ltd
Photo Credit: Ismael Paramo |
Edition / Date Published
May 2022 |
Author/copyright permissions
Reproduced with permission of the author |
Resource Type
Books and book reviews |