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 PrintableVersion Superglue or WD40?Are Christians 'social capitalists'?Last year, an American sociologist took breakfast with Tony Blair at Downing Street. Press comment depicted him as the 'guru' behind British and American plans to promote a role for religious groups in providing social welfare. What's Robert Putnam is a Harvard Professor whose books 'Making Democracy Work' and 'Bowling Alone' argue that successful societies are rich in 'social capital' - which means a readiness on the part of most citizens to co-operate in each other's best interests. Without social capital, people act in their own immediate self-interest - which usually means a 'beggar-my-neighbour' response to other people's needs. With social capital, most people operate on the 'do unto others' principle. According to the theory of social capital, 'mutual confidence' marks the difference between societies that succeed - economically, politically, socially - and those that fail. Mutual confidence is what 'makes democracy work'. With social capital, people behave co-operatively towards others, not out of moral self-sacrifice, but because they expect others to act the same way and therefore recognise such behaviour to be in everyone's interests, including their own. Social capital, says Putnam, is built mainly by any kind of social organisation that brings people together voluntarily to achieve shared purposes. Sports clubs, parents' associations, community groups and churches all fit the bill. People who join such groups are, Putnam's research finds, more likely to give money to charity and time to good causes, to take part in civil and political life, and even live longer and healthier lives. They belong to networks that produce what Putnam calls 'sociological WD40' - the social capital that lubricates social relationships, freeing us from tribal bonds and enabling us to join neighbours in getting a shared result. This reservoir of 'social capital' results in more volunteering, more 'good cause' giving, more voting and political participation, greater trust and a healthier economy. The title 'Bowling Alone' expresses his idea in one simple image: Americans go bowling just as much as ever - but in the past they joined clubs, now they go as individuals. They 'Bowl Alone.' His controversial conclusion (hotly disputed by some other American researchers) is that 'bowling alone' represents a decline in many kinds of civic engagement. The stock of social capital is diminishing, and this threatens the fabric of social and economic order. Catholics and evangelicalsWhere do churches fit in to Putnam's model? True, he does find that social capital is linked to the life and presence of churches. Some American commentators have even claimed that it should be called 'spiritual capital.' But Putnam's books do not suggest that he has any personal spiritual commitment, and nor do they show that he favours widespread church involvement in social provision. 'Making Democracy Work' was based on Putnam's research in Italy, where he contrasted regions strong in social capital (thriving economies, stable and progressive democratic politics, healthier lives) with ones that weren't (beggar-my-neighbour peasant economies, corrupt politics, poverty and ill health). He found the Catholic Church was a poor contributor to social capital-it is too much of a vertically-structured hierarchical organisation to support the 'horizontal' mutual relations that build social capital. In 'Bowling Alone', turning his attention on America, he finds evangelicals also poor at producing social capital - they produce 'sociological superglue' - the 'bonding capital' that causes like-minded to stick together. American evangelicals, he says, help each other, not their unconverted neighbours; so good Samaritans need not apply. It is in mainstream Protestant denominations that Putnam finds his 'WD40' - 'bridging' social capital that makes disparate groups work together. Putnam wants churches to be a part of the new networks needed to rebuild social capital. But this is founded not on Christian moral codes but on faith groups such as volunteer social clubs with a positive ethic. By joining such groups - whether churches or bowling teams - we learn to give to others on the basis that others will give in their turn, so teaching trust that spills over into the rest of our social life. No unconditional loveHere is a key difference between Putnam's theory and Christian thought. For Christians, the demand to 'love our neighbour as ourselves' is bound up with the parallel injunction to 'love God with all our heart'. Christian love is sacrificial - God gives unconditionally and love's ultimate proof is shown in Christ's readiness to suffer a painful death for the benefit of the (as yet) unknowing and ungrateful. By contrast, for Putnam, neighbourly and self-giving love is sensible only because it is ultimately reciprocated - we give in the confidence that sooner or later someone will give back to us. Sacrificial love is a nonsense - a sign of gullibility. 'Generalised trust is a community asset, but generalised gullibility is not.' To love neighbours is therefore rational behaviour - the kind of conduct that economists call 'maximising'. While for Putnam 'all prominent moral codes contain some equivalent of the Golden Rule' there is no place in his analysis for unconditional love. Radical breakHowever, Putnam is a sociologist, not a theologian, and to search his work for evidence of an attachment to spiritual values would be to ask the wrong question. An academic with powerful influence on social policy makers, he gives a central position to personally-shaped ethics and to voluntary organisations - including (with reservations) to churches - in resolving the problems that a previous generation of social thinkers saw as settled by the welfare state. This thinking represents a radical break with earlier academic generations, materialists for whom individual ethics and small-scale local networks were, at best, of marginal interest compared with the great tides forced along by technology, class and large scale corporate organisation. By contrast, Putnam is part of a trend that reinstates a recognisably Christian philosophical perspective which sees the individual as morally accountable, ethical movements as critical to social progress, and voluntary organisation as significant for welfare and democracy. He also challenges Christian practice with his finding that evangelical churches make a low contribution to neighbourly social interaction outside their own like-minded groups. Preaching only?Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are interested in empowering churches to contribute to social welfare programs, and they are influenced in this idea by Putnam and other prophets of 'social capital' and 'civil society'. The response from many evangelical quarters can be summarised as follows: Churches should stick to preaching, and leave social service to those who know about it (i.e. the state). Individual Christians should be socially involved as much or as little as their gospel-shaped consciences guide, but for churches to become corporately engaged in social welfare is a dangerous distraction, encouraged by politicians with suspect motives. This response explains why 20th-century evangelicalism produced 'superglue not WD40' here as in the USA. There is nothing unrespectable about this approach, and you may not wish to look beyond it. Another wayBut there are churches within the reformed, evangelical tradition that are exploring their role as (to use Putnam's term) 'social capitalists' as we enter the 21st century. One fine example is in south Liverpool. Under the leadership of Bill Bygroves, Garston Bridge Chapel has grown over 20 years so that it now occupies a former comprehensive school building. Badged as 'The Bridge Centre', it has the look and feel of a seven-day-a-week, multi-service community centre. For example, it has offered popular 'divorce recovery' classes using a secular programme with no biblical teaching at all. Well before Putnam published his concept of 'bridging capital', Garston was talking and thinking about how to build 'bridges' to and within the surrounding community. With breath-taking radicalism, Garston believes the church should create 'bridges' which demonstrate Christian love and service to neighbours, irrespective of their readiness to listen to the gospel at any one time. If people want to learn more, then it is obvious what the 'core business' of Garston is all about. But people are suspicious of churches' motives in spicing community service with pressure to 'sign up' to a spiritual package. As a matter of policy, Garston's bridge-building reaches out in a practical and giving way to all those whose needs it can help meet, without confining itself to gospel ministry. For many Christians, such an approach is dangerously distracting from the church's purpose. Their favoured alternative - the traditional, evangelical approach - does not deny the value of social and community service, or indeed its importance in Christian work. But the traditional approach sees it as the task of converted individuals, not the church. The key breakthrough in the Garston model is, I think, its simple recognition that the church is in itself a voluntary organisation in society. As such, it treats its members as participants in that society, not just in their individual life, but in and through the corporate life of the church. As a voluntary grouping within the social network that makes up the fabric of daily civilisation, the church can and should offer itself to the community round about, using its building, its people, its money and its ambitions as a resource to meet the human needs on its doorstep. Christians as social capitalists? Perhaps. It is a vital debate which, I hope, this review may have invited you to join. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy Social Welfare and the Local Church, Peter Milsom and Ian Shaw, pages 135-150 in Paul Lusk© Evangelicals Now - March 2002 |
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