William Temple Foundation research into “Religious Capital”

I took part yesterday afternoon in a meeting called by the William Temple Foundation about their research on the notion of “religious capital”. The phrase was coined to link to the concept of “social capital”, which is frequently used in discourse about regeneration and community development. The meeting took place at the Church Commissioners, 1 Millbank.

Hannah Skinner and Chris Baker of the William Temple Foundation started by outlining their research programme. They explained that, to date, most of their research had been with churches and church-based groups and communities, but now they wanted to extend the discourse to include non-Christian faiths. As it happened, I was the only non-Christian representative at the meeting. Brian Pearce was there for the Inter Faith Network; there were a couple of people from the Church Urban Fund, and a community theologian.

On the way to London I had skimmed through Secret of Divine Civilization (SDC) to remind myself what ‘Abdu’l-Baha says are the foundations of regeneration and community development. I was able to draw on this in my contributions to the discussion.

‘Abdu’l-Baha states that knowledge is the foundation of civilization. By knowledge He refers both to the spiritual knowledge given us by the Manifestations of God and to rational, scientific knowledge. These two strands are complementary and we need them both if we are to develop a new, global civilization. We have to use the instrumentalities of science and technology as well as the values and spiritual sustenance from the Word of God.

Clearly, such an emphasis on knowledge implies that education becomes a central activity in development, education that addresses every aspect of the human being: spiritual, intellectual, emotional, physical. Education should give people self-respect, noble purposes, high resolve, integrity, moral qualities and “immaculacy of mind” - an interesting phrase to be found on page 19 of SDC.

In my interventions I also referred to the solidarity and spiritual strength of faith communities. This is deeply rooted and, paradoxically, is strengthened by challenge. It would seem to be one of the key elements of religious capital. There are dangers if the solidarity becomes tribal in nature - to be healthy and balanced it needs to remain open and communities need to build bridges.

It is difficult to language this solidarity in a way that is accessible to government. And this is not the only mismatch between religion and government. None of us were particularly happy with the phrase “religious capital”, but could accept that it linked with the notion of “social capital” and thus could be acceptable to government. But, as with all metaphors, there is a danger of hypostatization, that “religious capital” may come to be seen as a “thing” that can be accumulated, accounted for, checked off against criteria and so on. This is really not a picture or a language that people of faith use or feel sufficiently represents the nature of what faith communities do.

Furthermore, faith communities and governments work to completely different time scales. Governments need to get things done in 3-5 years; governments are “initiative” driven. Faith communities have been around for a long time - thousands of years in some cases - and are going to be around for a long time. They are not initiative driven, but are more concerned with the rhythm and pattern of life and with relationship to God and to our fellow human beings.

It’s at this point that we begin to think about service to our fellow humans. Service, being of service, without hope of reward is central to all faiths. What could be more central to an understanding of “religious capital” than this?

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