The Church Of Ireland
Press Release

The idea of 'citizenship' is an important part of this understanding of the Christian corporate experience. We are 'members' of a larger body from which we draw our strength and for which we have direct personal and collective responsibility. This understanding has been visible in a wide range of theological and spiritual writings, in hymns and religious poetry and in liturgical texts. Christianity therefore is a religion which espouses and requires a sense of social responsibility.

In the secular world, concept of social responsibility is accepted but, equally, is under threat. The European Union, for example, has promoted the idea of a European 'citizenship', but has developed no effective sense of what this should mean in practice, away from the geo-political arena. In individual countries, including Ireland, the entire social fabric has been subjected to enormous stress as prosperity has been successfully 'individualised' and collective responsibility has been marginalized. In the UK, this kind of attitude was driven to its logical extreme when Margaret Thatcher declared that 'there is no such thing as society'.

The consequence of this trend is to create a climate in which prosperity and progress is accompanied by a significant degree of 'social exclusion'. This exclusion affects the uneducated, members of minority racial and cultural groups, the homeless and the simply unlucky. Worse still, it creates an impression that ignoring these excluded groups is not wrong or, to use Christian parlance, is not sinful. Success is not a reward for virtue in this mindset, success is virtue.

A successful economy needs a sense of individual industry and effort, and individual responsibility, and individual reward; it needs acceptance that commercial enterprise is desirable and good. But it also needs a sense of inclusiveness, and a sense of shame when groups are excluded or marginalized. For Christians, there is a particular responsibility to speak out in such matters. Questions of personal lifestyle, including questions of sexual morality, are of very minor significance alongside the major sin of social exclusion, and the churches have risked falling into disrepute and losing the respect even of the faithful when, apparently, they have given more priority to lifestyle issues than to social justice issues.

However, there is a significant body of theology relating to social equity and progress. Some of this needs to be given a more modern slant, with a greater awareness and acceptance of new forms of commerce and technology, and an understanding of the very different demographic characteristics of modern economies compared with those of the 19th and early 20th centuries; but it could be developed successfully in this way. In the interests of the survival of the churches in the new emerging society, but more importantly in the interests of the emergence of a society which is fair and just and capable of meeting social needs and relieving social tensions, the churches must urgently reassess how they speak to the world, and how they view their responsibilities.

And we, as individual Christians, must play our own active part, in recognition of the fact that there is something greater than us of which we are a part, which nourishes us and which we must ourselves support. We must re-discover a new sense of an inclusive Christian society.