Saturday, November 06, 2010

The Parish System - Close, But No Cigar

I think there is a lot to be learnt from Milbank's criticism of fresh expressions for giving up on society and community and its relationship to God. But, not having read the new book - only Milbank's article from 2008 in Studies in Christian Ethics - my guess is that it doesn't go far enough for me.

Community and society does matter, and for that very reason the parish system presents a problem.

Society is socio-economically divided. Not a profoundly original comment, but when was the last time I found the church recognising this and working against it. Redistribution of parish share is just guilt money! Schools? Yep, ok. More guilt money and evidently ineffective on any significant level.

Up and down the country, parishes are divided along these lines. Even if we set aside the problem of evangelical gathered congregations, full of the like-minded middle-class, the parish system on its own simply christens social division. Rich people live, by and large, in prosperous areas. Poor people live in the housing they can afford. Some parishes do cross boundaries. Many do not.

What would it take for comparatively rich educative Christians to live with and contribute to the community of poorer neighbourhoods?

Perhaps you could say that the parish system isn't broken, but society is. As things stand though, it is too small a unit to effectively combat this.

What would it take for Christians to recognise this and for individuals and families to play their part in turning this upside down?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Greetings. Stumbled across your blog - very interesting.

I'm a rather huge fan of the parish system as an ideal, though I realize its historical realization has been frought with problems. You point out a significant one, which I assume you observe from your firsthand experience (in the U.K.? I'm across the pond).

Have you ever read Thomas Chalmers on his advocacy of the parish system? He was very much concerned with class reconciliation and saw the parish plan as an effective vehicle to that end. His St. John's and West Port Experiments in the slums of Industrializing Scotland were testaments to his faith in the viability of the parish to deal head-on with this social polarization.

That being said, I think the dictum "the poor you shall always have with you" has implications for demographics. Most of the wealthy or the wealtheir tend to migrate away from less desirable areas because they can afford to. If the poor could move away from their drug- and violence-infested neighborhoods, I'm sure many would. I don't suggest the parish system can ever hope to reverse that reality, and I doubt any alternate could. But what the parish system can do (ideally) is to assign faithful pastors to the cure of souls both in suburbs and slums. The clergy, typically representing the middle- to upper-middle classes, can be that immediate bridge over the social chasm. Chalmers made a lot of this.

cranmer said...

Thanks for the comment. I haven't read Chalmers, and it's interesting to read that he saw 'the parish plan as an effective vehicle' for class reconciliation. I wonder to what degree his ideas have failed, not been implemented or have ameliorated even worse social problems. I no doubt should read him!

I should also read more closely. It turns out that the new Milbank book I was referring to is co-authored by Alison Milbank and not by her husband.