Religion: the God squad

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/30/religion-god-squad-pope-welby

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Pope Francis, already Time magazine's person of the year, has been heralded everywhere, often as a welcome new voice for the liberal cause – although such is his hold on the popular imagination that his name is hitched to causes he may not recognise, including American Esquire's list of best dressed men. Since his election last March, he has done much to revive the tarnished image of Catholicism. In a more minor key, as befits the leader of a much smaller communion, the archbishop of Canterbury is doing something similar for Anglicans. Predictably, there is now a backlash. The argument against goes like this: neither of these men is truly liberal, and the pope is the head of a deeply conservative organisation that is hostile to women, institutionally homophobic and fundamentally concerned with the protection of the status quo. These criticisms unquestionably contain some truth, but there's an important message in the enthusiasm these leaders have generated in the secular world.

The pope and Justin Welby certainly have an unusual amount in common, beyond the experience of leading the two largest communions in the Christian world and sharing the dilemma of trying to meet the cultural and organisational challenge of managing churches whose numbers are growing fastest in the global south while based in headquarters and funded from the heart of the global north. They are both outsiders in their churches – Francis the first pope to be a member of the Jesuits, the rigorous guardians of the one true faith; the archbishop drawn to Anglicanism by the evangelical style of Holy Trinity, Brompton. They took charge of their very different organisations (the Catholic church has more than a billion members to Anglicanism's 80 million) in the same month. And most obviously, they have both preached a return to Christianity's traditional concern for the poor and the excluded, which has had the helpful consequence, among others, of distracting attention from their internal rows over doctrinal purity and sexual misconduct.

What is unexpected is how plainly their confidence in the possibility of people living better lives and contributing to a better world meets a deeply felt need. That message used to belong to politicians but in the wake of recession and scandal – when Denis MacShane got a six-month prison term for expenses fraud earlier this month, he became the 16th senior British politician to be sent to prison since 1998 – they struggle to be taken seriously at all. It may be the very lack of an audience for politicians that gives church leaders such particular appeal.

Labour has begun to understand that tapping into the hunger for an ethical social model may provide the energy for renewal that politics needs. Jon Cruddas's George Lansbury memorial lecture in the summer was one attempt to draw the parallel. As Lansbury himself exemplified, the social teachings of the church have a useful part to play in shaping the climate for political action. Rolling back the model of voter as consumer, pushing back against the message of otherness that's contained in an agenda that vilifies the poor, the ill and the stranger, are essential preconditions to a renewed Labour party.

Dr Welby played a big role on the banking commission. But it's not church business to draw up plans for the kind of structural change that reform needs. Nor are they likely to. While Pope Francis famously won't judge those who fall beyond the pale of doctrinal orthodoxy, like Catholic homosexuals, it's only one very small step on a very long journey. Women priests remain beyond his comprehension. And when neither Anglicanism and Catholicism bring new thinking to bear on gay marriage, it's hard to imagine them welcoming the kind of radical approach that would be needed to turn the pope's message about the failings of capitalism into a plan of action. Church leaders can make the weather. Politicians have to act.

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