VICAR'S LETTER

17 Sundon Road     
Streatley      

November, 2005      

Dear All 

The layout of this church spells out the political role of the church. The altar speaks of the ideal. We are working for a world at one. Our position in the Nave defines our relationship to that ideal. We look towards it but we are far from achieving it. The screen speaks of what is in our way. It is the will to power. It is the sad fact that when human beings gather together in political-sized groups relationships between them are governed not by love but by the will-to-power. The political role of the church therefore is to work constantly to break down that barrier. The question now is how are we to go about it.

The first thing must be to remain true to our ideal. This means supporting those organisations that, however inadequately, are struggling to uphold the ideal of a world at one. On the grand scale it means supporting constructive reform of the United Nations. At the local level it means supporting the efforts of organisations like Town Twinning, Rotary, and the Diocesan Links to bring together communities, or the building of that network of helplines that connect this church to places all over the world. It also means resisting the pressures that urge that the church has no place in politics. It means resisting the pressure from outside that comes from those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. It means resisting the siren voices from within the church that say that the world will never change and that the church should withdraw from it and seek its own salvation.

The church must remain true to its own ideal. It must also be active in challenging all manifestations of the will to power. It must challenge actual malpractice and injustice, supporting, for example, the work of Amnesty International, and, where necessary, speaking out itself as Helder Camara did in South America, and as our own church did in the report "Faith in the City". It must also turn a sceptical eye on the hypocrisies and myths by which the will to power seeks to put a moral gloss on its actions. It must ask, for example, do we really believe that the war in Iraq was embarked on purely to restore democracy to that troubled country or do we think it has more to do with ensuring control over the world's diminishing supply of oil? It must ask, for example, is the extension of choice a valid principle for government, when the ability to choose is open only to those sufficiently well off or well-connected to take advantage of it? It must ask whether the market forces really are as irresistible as a force of nature or whether that is a myth put about by those who have done well, and sometimes obscenely well, out of a system in which those forces are allowed free play.

The church must uphold its ideal. It must also challenge all manifestations of that will-to-power that stand in the way of realising that ideal. In the interim, however, there is also a third task. That task is to minister to those who are the victims of that will to power - the poor and the powerless of the world. Our own CARE Committee does active work in this area. On a grander scale there has been the support from Faith Communities that helped push through the Gleneagles Agreement cancelling at least some of the burden of debt currently borne by the Third World. Beyond that there are the efforts of all the International relief agencies. These efforts to bring relief are sometimes belittled. They are described as applying sticking plasters rather than addressing the fundamental disease. But the need is here and now, and not to address it would be an abdication of all responsibility for immediate pastoral care.

Jesus' sentence, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" is often quoted by those who would have the church keep its nose out of politics. However, in a world that increasingly treats market forces as a God whose will must be obeyed, more than enough seems already to have been rendered to Caesar. It is the church's job in such a world to reclaim for God what is properly his own.

All best wishes

Roger

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