The recent row between Churches and state over welfare policy shows how the power of the clergy is waning, argues Paul Goodman
By Paul Goodman
Justin Welby has taken over a Church of England that idealises the welfare state Photo: Getty Images
The Church’s report was seen as an attack on the Government, and the counter-assault from the Conservatives came quickly. “Pure Marxism,” said a Cabinet minister. A Tory MP added that it had been produced by “a load of Communist clerics”. The Prime Minister complained to a friend that the document contained “nothing about self-help or doing anything for yourself”.
The indignant vigour of that last sentiment gives the game away. The report in question wasn’t The Lies We Tell Ourselves, the recent attack on the Government’s welfare reforms produced by the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Methodist Church, the United Reformed Church and the Church of Scotland, and the offended prime minister wasn’t David Cameron. It was Faith in the City, issued in 1985 by a special commission to the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, and the leader in question was Margaret Thatcher.
Mind you, comparing and contrasting the two rows should indeed bring Karl Marx to mind. After all, they provide yet another reminder that he was wrong. For today, history is repeating itself as farce – without, as Marx claimed, repeating itself first as tragedy.
The contrast between Faith in the City and The Lies We Tell Ourselves is telling. Whatever one thinks of its conclusions – not least the idea that Thatcherism was to blame for the growing spiritual and economic poverty of Britain’s inner cities – the first was a serious and detailed piece of policy work, one capable of inspiring a follow-up report 10 years later. The second contains no recommendations. It is simply a plea on behalf of those claiming benefits – and therefore one on behalf of the benefits system itself.
Indeed, the entire dispute is artificial. The Lies We Tell Ourselves was published over a month ago. It seems to have been rehashed by the BBC over the weekend – on the verge of the Government’s changes to the welfare system going live. (Bias, anyone?). Whatever the background, the diminished vision of the report, and the muted reaction of ministers, says much about how Britain has altered.