Originally prepared as a briefing paper for the
Chairman of the Home Committee of the Board for Mission and Unity of the Church of
England. [1983]
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1: From
Church to Society
Attention
must be focussed on the social issues of urban priority areas rather than on
the role of the local church. The local
churches in depressed inner urban areas are themselves also victims of the
wider social processes that create the problems. They do not have access to power to solve only to salve
the presenting hurts in society.
Current
priorities in the church's ministry in such areas, increasing resources for
pastoral care and social action, ease the lot of a few, reduce the need to
tackle the problem and lower social motivation to get at the roots of the
issues concerned without actually changing the causal system operating. The result is that the church's role in the
inner city sedates the system in the short-term while allowing the problems to
intensify leading to further long-term degrade in the social system.
2. From
Inner City to Total System
To
narrow the field of investigation to the urban priority areas would be a fatal
flaw in the terms of reference of the Commission. It may be a politically expedient ploy to pay attention to the
presenting hurts of inner city life but such symptoms are the products of
whole-system behaviour and cannot be treated in isolation from the total social
system of the country within its historical and international context. Much current concentration on the problems
of the inner city represents a displacement of the agenda in defence of
powerful vested interests in other sectors of society.
3. From
Symptoms to Causes
Current
responses to inner city problems whether political or ecclesiastical are
tending to treat the presenting symptoms as the agenda. The resulting policies and interventions
attempt to deal with the presenting symptoms while leaving the underlying
causal dynamics intact. Symptoms point
to the real agenda, they are signs whose significance must be identified and
interpreted if the fundamental agenda of social change leading to the long-term
improvement in the health of urban society as a whole is to be achieved. The confusion of symptoms and causes generates
an abortive flaw in any such process.
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The church as a prophetic agency within society should ideally be in a
position to tackle the causal agenda, to name the unnameable, to face the
unfaceable within the social process. It would appear that other political, business and social institutions
have such vested interests in sustaining the dynamics of the status quo that
they are rendered practically impotent to provide any effective solutions to
the problems of inner urban deprivation. In practice the Church also appears caught in the same web of social
collusion. |
4. Long-term
Perspective
While
short time-scales may be appropriate for the ambulance work of caring for
casualties within the inner city, it is essential that causal problem solving
be geared to a much longer time-span than is currently compatible with the
life-expectancy of any particular government. The centres of alienation and deprivation of our inner cities have built
up over a period of more than a century. They will not disappear overnight. The system variables which have to be altered in order to reverse the
trend appear to operate with long time bases. The church is one of the only social institutions capable of identifying
and articulating these long-time-span goals of social system development, which
transcend the temporary aims and the seductive popularity-seeking policies of
political parties.
5. System
Dynamics
To
the social, political and economic examination of the problem must also be
added the insights of social dynamics (one of the best known exponents is Jay
W. Forrester whose work on Urban Dynamics was based on computer simulation of
urban systems at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the late 1960s and
early 1970s. The implications of his
work have been neither effectively challenged nor practically incorporated into
policy making in this country).
6. Psycho-social
Process
Beyond
the field of the dynamics of complex social systems we must also take
cognisance of the discipline of psycho-social analysis, to ignore which is to
be deprived of one of the most potent tools of causal problem-solving which can
be brought to bear on the issue.
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As we press in to analyse the causes underlying the presenting problems
of priority urban areas it would appear that we are looking at the outworking
in social systems of some very basic and primitive processes, namely,
splitting, idealisation, projection, and denial. One sector or sub-set of society is split off from another. Relationships across the boundary become
polarised. Each sees the other as a
threat, each uses the other to carry, by projection, those 'bad' parts of its
own life which are repressed, denied and disowned. The result is the formation of black-spots, centres of alienation
in society, used by the total system as a 'dump' for unwanted parts. The causal dynamics are then denied but
guilt motivates humanitarian 'caring' interventions to look after the social
victims or system-scapegoats. The task
of such activity is to render the lot of the scapegoat more tolerable (to avoid
insurrection), to absolve the social conscience (lest the system be overwhelmed
by guilt), but to ensure that the centres of alienation are perpetuated in
order to perform their vital, but unconscious, psychodynamic tasks within the system
as a whole. |
7. Outstanding Agenda
The
fundamental agenda facing the Commission may well have to do with finding ways
of modifying these psychotic social processes in such a way as to enhance
long-term development towards health in the social system.
8. Caveat
Since these psycho-dynamic processes approximate
very closely indeed to the core process of institutional religion, it may be
very difficult for the Archbishop's Commission to penetrate this level of
analysis or to present any effective proposals without alienating the church
which commissioned its work.
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