The Big Society

... is an opportunity and also a challenge for Christians. The ideal is not far from the Christian ideal, not least in the way that it seeks to value the local. For much of recent history discussion about society has focussed on the state, family, schooling - and perhaps not much else. All though has tended to be subsumed to the state. However, the scriptures see the state as serving those local communities that God puts us in. When society has a godly focus, the state finds its proper place.

Yet we must beware as well. At a simplistic level, the Big Society could easily become a political football, seen as an excuse for 'cuts'. But there are deeper issues at work as well.

For how can there be a Big Society without a Big God. Studdert Kennedy, The Word and the Work, pp 32f is perhaps helpful, albeit that its context is a different time (published 1925 - this is evident in the writing)


"There are just two alternatives that face the world to-day, either that life or agony and death. The enormous increase in population, and the conquest of space and time by increased rapidity of communication, both of which are only rendered possible by a continual divIsion and subdivision of labour, have locked and bound us all into a material unity of universal interdependence from which we cannot escape, and which we must therefore either acknowledge and respond to in spirit or perish. Our environment constitutes a self evident moral and spiritual challenge. We must either adapt ourselves to this intensely complex and delicate network of human relationships, which our environment imposes upon us as a necessity, or face the perpetual and inevitable alternative of death, which has faced all living things ever since the world began. That is no " high falutin " extravagant theory, but the plainest and most indisputable fact in the world of to-day. lt is the Lord's doing and is marvellous in the eyes of those who see. Once more we return to the prophetic view of life, and see it all as a matter of life and death, a crisis, a great choice which we must make now or never. And this choice comes to every individual soul, and his salvation here and hereafter depends upon how he answers to the call. The fate of the world depends upon the social responsibility of the individual, and his power and willingness to bear it. It is in form and content a social responsibility, arising out of the new relationship with our fellow-men and women into which the working out of God's purpose has brought us, but it can only be borne by individuals in the last analysis. Corporate action we must take, but right corporate action cannot be taken except as individuals hear the call and answer, acting as personalities responsible to God for their actions. The question of all questions is whether the ordinary individual man can bear the enormous burden of personal responsibility which the new world imposes upon him. At present it seems impossible. The ordinary man is bewildered and perplexed, trying to shift and shirk the responsibility, and to put his trust in mass movements and organizations. Mass movement and organization we must have; those who despise and decry them are mostly people who do not want to bear the moral responsibilities which they impose upon them, but desire what they call freedom, power to express themselves, independence of this crawling crowding mass of humanity, which they gratuitously assume is inferior to themselves...

The outcry against organization and rational regulation of our corporate life is largely the refuge of moral cowards from the insistent call of God. But mass movement and organization can themselves be used as a refuge from that call, they can be used to save the individual from the painful duties of thought and righteous action, and, when they are so used, they constitute the most terrible menace to which we are exposed. When an organization or mass movement becomes an end in itself, and mere loyalty to it is regarded as the highest duty, whether it be a nation, a class, a party, or a Church the result is the moral and spiritual degradation of the individual soul. Churches, nations, classes, parties, unions of a hundred different kinds, are necessary and inevitable, it is worse than useless to object to them, but they will be good or bad, constructive or destructive, exactly in proportion as they increase or decrease the sense of personal responsibility in the hearts and minds of the individuals composing them. The fate of a complex civilization ultimately depends upon the mental and moral quality of the individuals who bear it."