I was homeless
and you sent rockets to the moon
I was homeless
and you built more office blocks
I was homeless
and you said I did it on purpose
I was homeless
and you sent me to yet another official
I was homeless
and you said I had too many babies
I was homeless
and you promised to pray for me
I was homeless
and you said you must write to your MP
Poems from St Piran’s
A theology of story affirms that one of the deepest routes into the meaning of God, of God’s human creation, and of their mutual loving relationship is through the medium of narrative. It further affirms that story is performative in the changing and improving of the human condition, and that the stories told by Jesus are examples of this. The collection of stories of everyday life requires listening, observing, recording, and analysing, in a framework of loving respect, especially when these stories reveal the painful, hidden aspects of human life. Stories of homeless people are vulnerable stories, narratives of despair and weakness, and also of life, strength and humour; but they are also lives lived in context.
One example of a particular practical context is the Alcoholics Anonymous organisation about which interviewees spoke on several occasions. The social, cultural and legislative history of people without homes is a broader context, updated by an understanding of contemporary politics and policy around homelessness. The changing and problematic nature of how homelessness is defined is thereby disclosed. An international context is recognised by reference to the financial and social crisis in the West deriving from problems in the US housing market in 2007–2008.
The significance of context for the development of theology has been outlined earlier. Recently developed theologies of place by Philip Sheldrake, Tim Gorringe, John Inge, and David Brown inform a context for considering a theology of those who might be considered placeless, or whose place is open to critical contestation. A writer like Duncan Forrester calls for Christian theology to defend the cause of equality in UK society, an equality which would end the destructive poverty reflected in these stories. He demands that Christians be critically aware that they may do little more than pay lip-service to this aspect of their heritage.
Theological context is also at work when John Vincent describes how some aspects of Third World liberation theology are now present in Britain, but that a Church from the poor remains a more distant objective. Evidence here both supports and challenges his findings. A final example of theological context is a more uncomfortable one. It questions the legitimacy and honesty of First World theologians borrowing the language and techniques proper to a theology originating in the Third World. After all, it is First World theology which has contributed to the oppressive conditions from which Third World theologians seek liberation, both political and academic. Ched Myers unravels some of the problematic issues raised by the Latin American or South African theologian’s question, ‘How can you comfortable theologians write of God on our behalf given your upbringing and your affluence?’ Myers calls this the pursuit of theology in the locus imperii, the ‘place of empire’. The tented cities of the Occupy protests in 2011 and 2012 may be an attempt to answer this question in the context of First World austerity. There is also personal context whereby the life experiences of some of the theologians cited here bear directly on their theology; and it is around the motif of story that Forrester and Myers formulate their ideas.
In sharp contrast to my desire to respect research subjects whose background is different to mine, it was possible for a Conservative MP as late as 1977 to describe the homeless as ‘scroungers and scrimshankers’ during discussion of the proposed Housing (Homeless Persons) Act of the same year.1 Such emotive language is hardly shocking in public debate, for it was not until the late 1960s that serious consideration was given to challenging the commonly held view that those who were homeless had chosen to be so to escape the responsibility of earning a living and maintaining a house. Structural explanations for homelessness – that there were underlying social and economic reasons why people did not access satisfactory housing or were unable to provide a home for themselves – gained ground only slowly. It is from this earlier period that we have the classic picture of a down-and-out, a tramp, a bum, whose life is immortalised albeit in a relatively sympathetic manner by George Orwell:
At about a quarter to six the Irishman led me to the spike. It was a grim, smoky yellow cube of brick, standing in the corner of the workhouse grounds. With its rows of tiny, barred windows, and a high wall and iron gates separating it from the road, it looked much like a prison. Already a long queue of ragged men had formed up, waiting for the gates to open. They were of all kinds and ages, the youngest a fresh-faced boy of sixteen, the oldest a doubled-up toothless mummy of seventy-five. Some were hardened tramps, recognisable by their sticks and billies and dust-darkened faces; some were factory hands out of work, some agricultural labourers, one a clerk in collar and tie, two certainly imbeciles. Seen in the mass, lounging there, they were a disgusting sight; nothing villainous or dangerous, but a graceless, mangy crew, nearly all ragged and palpably underfed. They were friendly, however, and asked no questions. Many offered me tobacco – cigarette ends that is.2
The 1563 Poor Law with its emphasis on parish responsibility was amended in 1834 to establish a system of workhouses which were by design to provide less in the way of conditions than might be possible for the poorest wage earner. Sexes were separated, families divided, unmarked paupers’ graves were dug. A Royal Commission of 1905–1909 summarised the principle of ‘less eligibility’: ‘The hanger-on should be lower than him on whom he hangs’.3 When the Poor Law authorities were made responsible for the housing of those who were victims of bombings in 1939, the inadequacy of such arrangements became clearer. The National Assistance Act of 1948 moved the administration of temporary housing to local authorities, marking the final repeal of nearly four centuries of Poor Law provision. However, since the working experience of those responsible for the new system derived mostly from the former arrangements, actual practice for homeless people remained almost unchanged.
It was only in the 1970s that pressure for change really grew, reflected in the previous decade by the foundation of the charity Shelter and epitomised by the 1966 film Cathy Come Home. The result was the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977, which recognised that homelessness was essentially a housing problem, and gave to local authorities statutory duties to provide accommodation in certain circumstances. This Act became Part III of the Housing Act 1985. While recognising the considerable advances since 1948, these pieces of legislation maintained the distinctions of earlier generations. Instead of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving poor’ homeless people were only entitled to secure, permanent housing if they were deemed to be homeless by virtue of the legislation, in priority need, were not intentionally homeless and had some local connection.4 Single homeless people, and families without dependants were automatically excluded unless they were ‘vulnerable’.
This Act remained in force until 1996, when Part III became a very different Part VII of the Housing Act 1996. The tests of priority remained the same, but those of intentionality and eligibility were strengthened. Under accusations of ‘queue-jumping’ by homeless people seeking social housing, accommodation was now only provided in hostels and in the private rented sector. Council housing was only available through the normal waiting list. The biggest change was a move from statutory provision of permanent accommodation to temporary housing, potentially for a maximum of two years. Lowe concludes:
Part VII of the Housing Act 1996 is an historical throwback. Under the new system the punitive attitude of the Poor Law workhouse is re-kindled in modern guise as the hostels and residual private rental accommodation to which homeless families will now be destined, and with no certainty of long-term help. More even than this is the fact that the language and prejudices of the Poor Law (truthfully never far from the 1977 system) are set to recover the lost ground of twenty years.5
Throughout this period, there were widely differing interpretations of the Code of Guidance, with, for example Plymouth, accepting 98 per cent of applicants in 1987. Nationally, numbers of those considered homeless rose considerably: in 1976, 33,000; 1978, 53,100; 1992, 184,000.6 The Homelessness Act (2002) places a responsibility on local authorities to respond to enquiries in a given time period (33 days), with assessment made on five criteria familiar from previous legislation: eligibility, made more complicated by the probable exclusion of asylum seekers; homeless or threatened with homelessness within 28 days (various definitions); a system of priority need, with unclear definitions of vulnerability; intentionality; and a local connection. Only those in priority need are entitled to temporary accommodation provided by the local authority, with assistance to move thereafter.7
In addition, the Social Security Act of 1986 introduced the payment of Housing Benefit in arrears and raised the age of an eligible claimant from 16 to 18. The Rough Sleepers Initiative (1990) aimed to reduce the numbers of homeless and rough sleepers. It was extended beyond London in 1993 and came to the South West in 1996. It was replaced in 1999 by the Homelessness Action Programme which focused on resettlement work and preventative work with vulnerable adults. A continuing focus on rough sleepers by Tony Blair in 1998 witnessed a national reduction from more than 1,800 to 500 by 2007, but the charity Crisis commented that the ‘hidden homeless’ amounted to a figure nearer 400,000. The number of those defined as statutorily homeless in England at the end of 2011 had increased by 18 per cent to 48,920 compared to the previous year.8
Proposals by the Conservative Liberal Coalition Government in the Localism Bill of 2011 will further affect housing provisions in Great Britain, with potentially serious consequences for homeless people. These include a possible limited length tenancy for occupation of social housing, followed by a review; raising social rents to nearer 80 per cent of market rents; capping housing benefit (now called Local Housing Allowance) for certain private rented properties; and greater use by local authorities of the private rented sector. Critics allude to two obvious consequences: a disincentive to improve family income if this entails a forced move of house; and in London and other expensive cities in the south of England, a further ‘spatial polarisation’ as certain areas become wholly unaffordable by the majority of the population. These factors are exacerbated by more general reductions in government expenditure on welfare following the financial crisis of 2008, and the recession which ensued.
These present proposals reflect two distinct, but connected, trends in housing policy evident since the mid twentieth century. The first is that (with a few exceptions) the market is considered the best provider of housing, and therefore secondly, that a process of ‘residualisation’ is almost inevitable, that is, that non-market housing is only provided for the most needy. The most common way of analysing housing has been on the basis of tenure, but an alternative lens is to examine how a capitalist market operates. A third theme considers the dynamic of continuity and change. Through most of the post-War period, tenure was for the most part owner occupation, local authority rented, and privately rented. Only in the 1990s did the term ‘social rented sector’ come into common usage to reflect a mixed economy of local authority and housing association ownership. The original tenants of local authority housing were better-off, mostly white, traditional working-class families, with the less well-off in the poorer quality private rented sector. From the 1970s a process of residualisation began, with a decline in private renting forcing these tenants into the public sector, while betteroff families were becoming owners. Other factors contributed to these changes: a general improvement in income and living standards, an increase in women in the labour market, an increase in divorce and separate living, a growth in total population, and the recognition of housing for previously overlooked groups like single mothers, the elderly and BME (black and minority ethnic) people. These changes were crystallised in the Right to Buy legislation of 1980.
This quintessentially Thatcherite privatisation policy sold around 1 million council houses in the period 1980–88, and in the period 1980–86 raised more receipts than all the other privatisations together. It reflected both a distrust of local authorities per se, who moved from being seen as the solution to housing problems to their source, as well as a belief in the market, with post 1979 ‘a particularly aggressive intensification of this view’.9 The contemporary rhetoric emphasised the merits and virtues of home ownership and denigrated the provision of public housing. While not the cause of residualisation, this policy certainly contributed to its becoming chronic, so that the majority of these tenants are now society’s most vulnerable, and as a result it is a tenure most often linked to poverty and social exclusion. Peter Malpas comments that for the poorest, ‘Having been excluded from social renting, they are now excluded by it’.10 While the specific Right to Buy policy was introduced by a Conservative government, New Labour also embraced such changes as the transfer of local authority housing to housing associations, thus also continuing a policy of suspicion towards the local. There remains, however, the tension between the allocation of a scarce resource to the most vulnerable, and the problems which ensue from a concentration of people with educational, health and social needs. The Devonport local regeneration partnership (one of the 39 New Deal for Communities programmes) sought to address this by the demolition of old and tired council flats, and the introduction of mixed tenure developments including owner occupied housing, socially rented and part ownership. One government initiative was ironically trying to correct the problems caused by another.
In a market based analysis, the perspective of the consumer (or occupier) is compared to that of the producer. House builders, the production and retail of white goods and the DIY sector are major components of the British economy, so that there is an arguable government role in ensuring the profitability of this industry. It was only perhaps in the need for a rapid expansion of housing post-War when the private sector could not respond sufficiently that serious government support for public provision was forthcoming. Housing as part of the Welfare State settlement was always more questionable than the inclusion of education or health. Yet market orientated systems of distribution of such a ‘basic determinant of well-being’ as housing (with their in-built flexibility and insecurity) reveal and contribute to a new set of inequalities. Thus within a dynamic of continuity and change, despite many apparent shifts and manoeuvres, the dominant theme of the last half century has been to balance the population’s housing need with sector profitability, where state invention becomes ever more restricted to those who cannot provide homes for themselves. The majority of citizens have to rely on the market.
The charity Plymouth Access to Housing (PATH) provides one example of how homelessness is managed at a local level. Their remit includes work with rough sleepers, tenancy and rental support and advice, engagement with refugees, ex-offenders and those with mental health issues.11 Having presented at PATH and registered as a homeless person, a three-stage process is initiated. There is a maximum stay of four or six weeks at two direct access hostels (Open Doors and The Victory) during which an assessment is made. Stage two is admission to the Salvation Army’s hostel for a maximum of two years, funded by the Supporting People programme (national government funding from the Department of Communities and Local Government, locally administered). This hostel has 62 individual rooms for men, of which 60 are part of this funded scheme, and two are retained for emergencies and non-funded places. There is also the possibility of ‘safe sleep’ in a sitting room where occupants are provided with a box containing pillows and blankets, and breakfast vouchers are provided. There is no access during the day to the rest of the premises. The third stage is a supported tenancy in one of three accommodation units in Plymouth. A conversation with a manager at the local Salvation Army hostel reports that everybody is almost always working to maximum capacity.
This local snapshot reflects the national initiatives described earlier concerned principally with sleeping on the streets. But such funding comes with conditions, is evidence-based and time limited. Two years is a relatively short time to address chaotic lives, and while assessment is now more focused, there was at one time a possibility that the most needy people were not accepted because they might not contribute to a successful assessment. Prison was designated a bad outcome in funding terms, as was the death of a service user. (I suppose that death could hardly be regarded as a good outcome, but more importantly, the limits of assessment regimes are revealed starkly and blackly.) One advantage, however, of time restrictions is to address the risk of institutionalization in hostels run by organisations like the Salvation Army; on the other hand the need for long-term supported housing for some people is further underlined. The Salvation Army believes that its distinctive faith-based ethos, while challenging to some residents at first, leads to a more hopeful and forgiving regard for homeless people, which contributes to the success of changing lives.
It is instructive to look back to the banking crisis of 2008 not simply because of its origins in the US housing market, but because it reveals what may happen when residential property is fully commodified in an almost unregulated market. While these events happened in America, the ethical questions which arise are more universal; such events may also hold up a mirror to what is happening currently in the UK.
The collapse of the technology bubble in 2000–2002 and the consequent lowering of US interest rates led almost inevitably, perhaps deliberately, to a boom in domestic consumption and in real estate prices. Deregulation in the financial sector was exemplified by the repeal in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act separating retail from investment banking, and large institutions knowing that they were ‘too big to fail’ took greater risks. The notion of ‘moral hazard’ which was applied to individuals (that is, the concept that the incentive to repay is weakened if you know that you will be rescued) was reversed for the banking industry. A third factor was a failure to understand the extent of inter-connectedness of property markets across the US, and of financial institutions across the world.
Banks manufactured ever more complex mortgage products with a maximisation of fees which would benefit executives whatever happened to the underlying property and property owner. Such products included 100 per cent non-recourse mortgages (if there was a default, debts only applied to the property itself, and not to other assets), introductory low rates demanding a later re-financing and further fees, ‘liar loans’ for which proof of income was not required (known in the UK as self-certified loans). These were often sold to those who may never have owned property previously, and whose financial circumstances were potentially shaky. Such mortgages attracted the now infamous moniker of subprime. They were based on two false assumptions, fully supported by the public rhetoric in favour of owner occupation: the promise of constantly increasing prices, and the easy availability of credit. Mortgage holders were encouraged by low interest rates to borrow more to finance further retail consumption, and banks sold bundles of loans (securitised products) imagining that they were spreading risk rather than contagion. The complexity of such products was also designed to bypass regulation. The warning signs were ignored when there was a peculiar alignment of interest – all parties including those holding the mortgage, those selling the mortgage, those selling on derivative mortgage products, were encouraged to take on the biggest loan possible and therefore the greatest risk. But this was entirely dependent on the ‘greater fool theory’, as near as possible to a legal Ponzi scheme, a kind of reverse pass-the-parcel.
When the music stopped, perhaps with the collapse of the bank Lehman Brothers in 2008 (the biggest bankruptcy in American history), the aphorism attributed to Warren Buffet came true: ‘It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked’. The catastrophe was not simply economic but social, as the loss of a house represented a loss of future for retirement or children’s education, above all the loss of the American Dream. Already in 2007 there had been 1.3 million property foreclosures, by 2009 15.2 million US mortgages were in negative equity (‘underwater’) about one third of all mortgages, which had reduced by 2010 to about one quarter. Prices had declined by 30 per cent from their peak, and by 50 per cent in some areas. By the end of this cycle, home ownership will be lower than at the start. Joseph Stiglitz commented in 2009 that the UK system is yet more reliant on its financial and property sector than the US, and that he reckons on a possible contraction of consumption of 10 per cent.12 The Royal Bank of Scotland became Europe’s biggest bank, but also saw the world’s largest financial losses in 2008. America had exported its recession just as it has exported its market philosophy.
Such events provide an opportunity for reflection and reckoning about the kind of society people want, with the suggestion that markets have not simply shaped the economy, but in doing so have shaped society, and therefore individual behaviour. In contrast to solving economic problems, too little attention has been paid to the ‘moral deficit’ which has also been revealed; that ‘financial institutions discovered that there was money at the bottom of the pyramid and did everything they could within the law (and many went beyond the law) to move it towards the top’.13 The spirit of rugged American individualism manifest in financial markets took (and takes) little account of its effect on others, being expert at gaining credit for success, but denying responsibility for failure. Such focus on the individual can lead to a breakdown of community and the erosion of trust, yet ironically the need for trust was never more apparent than when the credit systems froze over. Stiglitz is not overly optimistic about the future, seeing that the moment for a new kind of social contract may have passed without the necessary reforms in place, and that Wall Street and Main Street (both non-financial corporations and workers) are further apart, with an ability to solve problems thereby diminished.
The recognition that globalisation, (characterised loosely to include privatisation, free trade and deregulation) has an effect on the well-being of communities is in many ways self-evident; less so, is that homelessness is a by-product of such processes. Policies on housing and homelessness are choices, and therefore ideologically and politically motivated. Gerald Daly writes: ‘A central unifying concept is the notion of global economic shifts and their reflection in political decisions to limit social spending’.14 Sociological research enquires how such decisions about homeless people are made by reference to classifications and language attributed to different groups, how such attributions arise and how they in turn reconstitute and reinforce these same ideologies. The notion of ‘the homeless’ as a homogeneous group which can then be distanced from everybody else with an accumulation of other negative epithets is summarised thus:
‘They’ become an amorphous, remote, alien mass lacking indivisibility or even humanity. A sense of community is lost. Definitions and descriptions of ‘the homeless’ expose our personal values and beliefs, especially when homelessness is characterized by what it is not.15
A significant flaw in the agenda around homelessness, including attempts to formulate policies is the lack of engagement with homeless people themselves, so that public officials, voluntary and statutory agencies feel able to speak on behalf of homeless people in ‘a web of interdependent communities based on self-interest’ – a kind of homelessness industry. Stories of homeless people are routinely sidelined or ignored, and the question of contextual knowledge dodged. It is easier to present simple cause-and-effect linear relationships than to examine the complex processes connecting economic change, deinstitutionalization (that is, the closing of long stay hospitals and the placing of former patients in the community), national and international demographic shifts and marginalisation. A closed and orderly system may lend itself to politically acceptable quick solutions but if it bears little connection to the alternate reality of homeless people, it will be considerably less effective. Instead, a dynamic social model which respects the context of life on the streets begins to answer the epistemological issues raised by homelessness. However, to rely overmuch on extensive quotations from homeless people themselves may be to pass over underlying structural problems within wider society. The same tension underpins this theological endeavour, with the added factor of theology’s own preference to start from the abstract. Yet without a preference for the stories of homeless people, albeit with a critical reading attached, the cycle of marginalisation will never be broken.
A relatively recent development theologically has been the exploration of place and space. The extent to which space has become a commodified and therefore contested concept is relevant here, especially when joined to a consideration of those deemed out of place or placeless. John Inge suggests an Enlightenment movement from the particularity of place to the abstraction of space, matched by a growing theological preference for the abstract over the particular. Linked to the development of capitalist economies during the same period of the eighteenth century, and especially to its recent intensification, a growing divide is witnessed between the wealthy and the poor in terms of place and space. While the better-off appreciate the benefits of abstract space as expatriates working for multinational corporations, the refugee or migrant worker faces the same phenomenon as a malign loss of place and dislocation from the familiar.16 Uncertainty of place is a contemporary practical issue for governments and communities faced with desperate population flows from global south to north, as well as an intellectual one with postmodernity implying a crisis of place: we no longer know where we are individually, socially and relationally. The traditional ‘knowing one’s place’ has given way to the discomfort of shifting sands, as place is discovered as a plural concept constructed by politics and power. If mobility is preferred over stability in this spatial economy, then such freedoms tend to be restricted to those with access to money and education. Groups marginalised by poverty or age become ‘stuck’ rather than stable. They face increasing fragmentation, and the growth of non-places described by Marc Augé: supermarkets, airports, hotels, motorways, televisions and computers.17
The sharp end in Western society of being out of place is to be without a home. Homelessness and homeless people reveal much about the conceptual construction of both place and home which is often taken for granted. Tim Creswell confirms place as an epistemological factor, given how place frames our way of understanding and seeing the world, so that those without place are viewed in a specific way: ‘Homelessness is very much defined by a certain kind of disconnection from particular forms of place’.18 Home is frequently an idealised form of place, loaded with ideological and moral baggage: bricks and mortar carrying contested ideas about heteronormative families, employment and secure futures. As a category which tends to define normality, its opposite – homelessness – is sometimes used as a term of abuse for those who fail to conform to an ever-narrowing definition of social acceptability. Homelessness also needs to be understood in relation to the places in which it is situated, so that periodic political attempts to ‘clean up’ certain city areas are intimately linked to neo-liberal ideas: ‘Homelessness is produced through the push to reconstruct the city as a cohesive place according to middle class/elite values’.19 Human beings are reduced to the level of detritus to be removed like any other litter.
An alternative view is to remap the city in terms of homeless people, and discover the ‘performative and affective geographies’ that emerge.20 Not only are certain spaces determined as prime (for example, shopping centres and retail space where homeless people are often deliberately excluded) or marginal, but also as disciplinary/regulated space (for example where homelessness services are provided) or unregulated. Homeless people move between these spaces in a fairly predictable rational way, but also in a non-rational, affective mode, finding ‘places of care, generosity, hope, charity, fun, and anger’.21 This second mapping may enable a re-inscription or re-reading of the homeless city to give a fuller and richer picture of both the city and homeless people.
A theological response to concepts of place and space frames the more specific exploration of homelessness which is the subject of this book. Initially, there is a call by theologians for a greater recognition of how cultural and social shifts have changed the meaning of these concepts. They wish to return theology to the particular away from the abstract, or as Tim Gorringe phrases it, away from the ‘great tradition’ towards the ‘little tradition’.22 The way in which narrative gives shape and meaning to place is also significant, so that easy narratives may be eschewed and alternatives adopted, especially those which reflect a multiplicity of voices:
It is only by enabling alternative stories to be heard that an elitist ‘history’ may be prised open to offer an entry point for the oppressed who have otherwise been excluded from the history of public spaces.23
The reading of scripture (especially stories about or told by Jesus) in different places and with different audiences opens the potential to hear different interpretations of the familiar, away from the ‘scribal classes’ towards a more popular voice. Louise Lawrence recommends Contextual Bible Study as a ‘transformative ritual’ which provides tools to discover new identities and hidden transcripts.24 Similarly, the reading of place as text opens the possibility of re-reading with homeless people as main protagonists rather than as marginal players.25 Lastly, David Brown encourages the re-enchantment of place and the re-invigoration of the sacramental, in other words the possibility of encountering God in unlikely places. He comments that the Church has made a serious mistake in withdrawing from large areas of human experience, and although God speaks only faintly outside traditional revelation, yet the potential to meet God in the modern city still remains.26
In the light of liberation theology rooted in the experiences, reflections and sociopolitical reality of South America, South Africa and the Global South, theologians situated in the affluent North are faced with questions of legitimacy and authenticity: how to do liberation theology (Third World Theology) in the First World. A process common to several theologians seems to begin with the kind of personal experience which is replicated at the start of this book. Reflection on such an experience leads naturally to look at other stories, particularly the stories told by Jesus. For example, the biblical leitmotif for Ched Myers is the story of Peter in the Courtyard of the High Priest (Mark 14: 54ff). This represents those First World Christians, who when confronted with oppression at home and abroad and their complicity in it, take refuge in Denial (Myers’ capital): ‘I neither know nor understand what you mean’ (14: 68). Christians are torn like Peter between being with Jesus in the cells or remaining with the police and soldiers in the courtyard.
Given the benefit of the doubt, we love Jesus and have vowed, perhaps even stridently, to follow him. We have recognised him as Messiah – it is just that we don’t understand what that really means. Of course, we First World Christians are more comfortable in the Palace Courtyard than Peter could ever have been. We participate obediently in its political mechanisms (and machinations). Presidents and military leaders sit in our churches.27
His response to Denial is to recommend an interrogatory theology, based on an image of Jesus who questions both his contemporary world and its religious culture. Mark’s gospel reflects a wide range of questions to, by or about Jesus, so that Jesus is not a sage of the ancient world but an ‘interlocutor of reality’. The central example of this stance is Jesus’ question to his disciples at Caesarea Philippi about his own identity (8: 27). In their turn the disciples begin to ask questions, the interlocutees become interlocutors. The Church, then, is potentially empowered to question all authority, but prefers a different bargain.
Mark’s gospel, the prototype of Christian narrative theology, suggests that the church’s own theological discourse should also be interrogatory. But if we wish to discover such a discourse, our reconstructive task is formidable, for ecclesial doctrine long ago buried the voice of Jesus the Interlocutor.28
Denial of the voice of the poor is reinforced by two Faustian pacts which the Church and theology have entered into. The older one dates back to Constantine, when Jesus of the poor is replaced by the Jesus of the throne – Christians take on the trappings of empire. A more recent bargain underpins our current ambivalence between remaining with Jesus or standing outside in the Courtyard. Myers sees that Christian theology has conceded authority over the public sphere to the state (secular capitalism) in the hopes of retaining a modicum of authority over the private sphere. The Church’s response to an issue like homelessness is thus impoverished, reduced to a commentary on private morality.
A theology which interrogates is also the response of Duncan Forrester to the parable of the Good Samaritan, for the lawyer’s academic question ‘Who is my neighbour?’ is answered by Jesus with a story from daily life. This shift from abstraction to the existential, from theory to concrete, is a model set up by Jesus for how Christians should live in any age. Forrester’s particular daily experience of meeting a leper (Munuswamy) on the way to the South Indian college where he is teaching brings to mind the chasm of equality described by the parable of Lazarus and Dives in Luke’s Gospel. Forrester reacts to this by wishing to present ‘the human meaning of inequality’. He supports approaches which favour hearing the voices of the victims of poverty, and which privilege feelings and emotions as ‘vital ingredients of meaning alongside the statistics and sharp social analysis’. His précis of what inequality means on a human scale foreshadows what is revealed by interviews with homeless people. ‘The human meaning of inequality is thus often experienced as oppression and exploitation, powerlessness and the destruction of relationships. It is often an experience of shame and humiliation’.29 By contrast, a Christian commitment to equality derives from God’s affirmation of each human being as of infinite and therefore equal worth, irrespective of differences of colour, gender, social class and so on. His battle cry is for a theology which is less elegant than people centred, more able to hear the stories of the poor than represent the interests of the powerful:
Theology has a responsibility to represent Munuswamy to the intellectual and political ‘powers’, to speak for him in situations where his voice is not heard, where he cannot as yet speak for himself. Munuswamy should haunt these powers as he haunts me. This kind of theology is rooted in the real world and its issues and its suffering. It is intended to arouse conviction and lead to action. It cares for people more than for intellectual coherence, or literary elegance, or academic respectability.30
The trajectory of this interrogatory theology follows two paths; the first is to repudiate the pacts to which Myers refers and insist that theology re-enters the public realm. The image of Jesus as the man who asks questions about society is emphasised. The second is to understand that theology needs to move from the centre to the periphery, just as the ministry of Jesus, was for the most part not at the metropolitan centre of Israel, but at its margins, both geographically and anthropologically. Myers pursues these ideas via the image of the Temple, God’s House, at which the disciples marvel, but Jesus intends to deconstruct (13: 1f). The metaphor of a house needing to be built afresh stands for the difficult desire of First World Christians to bridge the gulf which separates them from their Third World neighbours.31
The architecture of entitlement prevents us from encountering what is ‘on the other side’. Yet if we are ever to be motivated to join Jesus in the deconstructive struggle, it will be because we have seen and been moved by the human faces of those condemned by the locus imperii to live on the other side of those walls.32
Such separation risks being compounded by two further factors. For the First World Christian, the systems of oppression which operate against poor people are invisible, but they are only too obvious for poor people themselves (see, for example, Danni’s experience of trying to gain a tenancy). Secondly, witness the irony that many churches spend more time, money, and energy with poor overseas communities than with the communities in their own locality.33 Like Rayan’s imperative to follow Jesus ‘outside the camp’, Myers likens crossing this divide to the journey made by Jesus across the sea of Galilee, going ‘to the other side’ in Mark 4: 35. As I attempt to demonstrate my own vulnerability as one of the life histories included here, so Myers talks of his drawing closer to the poor as merely an ‘ap-proximation’ since he can never be wholly identified as poor. He charts his own journey from the comfortable Los Angeles of childhood to the ‘Latino barrio’ of committed adulthood, only a few miles away, via a number of expeditions overseas. He remarks that ‘I had to travel a long way to overcome four miles of distance’.34 The motif of journey is continued via the image of the empty tomb – Jesus has already gone ahead of them to Galilee where the disciples are to follow. The ‘site and strategy’ for doing theology is firmly returned to our own location, providing the same short/long journey is undertaken in the company of Jesus.
Liberation theology in the UK remains, however, in the shadows. Explanations for this include a virtual absence of popular consciousness among poorer people because of their minority status (perhaps 15 per cent) and their fragmentation into smaller, almost independent groups (for example poor whites, single parents, redundant workers, Afro-Caribbeans, and so on). Poor people tend not read the Bible, which is seen as the province of the middle classes and divorced from the concept of human freedom. There is little popular movement for liberation where political parties, even of the left, are largely middle-class and participation is expensive. Lastly, there is no specific church of the poor, since ‘the Christian story is appropriated by the ruling powers’ and effectively policed by the denominations. John Vincent hopes that ‘there is a submerged history of popular Christianity somewhere: but its relics are hardly visible today’.35 The evidence of these stories will be seen to support such an analysis. Popular Christianity is also reflected in these texts, but the extent to which it is in fact helpful to those who profess such beliefs and ideas is discussed later. Vincent concludes that British liberation theology is ‘from the poor’ inasmuch as it touches their situations, even though they are rarely its main advocates; and ‘alongside the poor’ when those who do create this theology are middle-class theologians who live and work with poor people, particularly in the inner cities. More recently, the Church of England’s disagreements about women’s ordination to the episcopate and the place in the Church of gay and lesbian people have tended to focus energy internally, while at the same time exacerbating external issues of credibility and relevance. There has been less room for issues of social justice, especially concerning social marginalisation. A renewed emphasis on the concept of mission is welcome, but this is often constructed around church attendance and financial survival; the link between mission and social justice has been weakened, and God’s mission to the world (and especially to the poor) has been decentred by the role of the Church in and of itself.
Centres for people without homes in South West England are exactly the right location, therefore, from which to discover and create theology. This chapter seeks to draw attention to the personal, political, economic and theological context which lies behind the specific life histories which now follow. Homelessness and housing policy in the UK is perceived as primarily focused around capitalist markets rather than individual or societal needs, apart from a restricted social rented sector. Recent US experience suggests what is possible if commodification is taken a stage further, and how the implosion of this market has global repercussions. Moral hazards and moral deficits require further theological explication. Theologies of place highlight the constructed and contested nature of place, and the particular fate of those deemed by others as placeless or out of place. Nevertheless it is the stories told by and of these people, and their re-interpretation of both city and scripture which may enliven understanding of God. Forrester and his espousal of Christian equality reclaims some of the public domain which Myers accuses the Church and theology of having sold. In doing so he answers in part the ethical question of ‘armchair liberation theology’. Vincent, too, while describing certain characteristics of Third World theology now present in Britain, also gives to the theologian the task of enunciating creative thinking on behalf of the poor. Nowhere is this more true than in suggesting renewed images of Jesus which accompany us from the centre to the periphery, asking awkward questions about where our real commitment lies. Lastly, it is the vehicle of story again which inspires: the sight of Munuswamy begging at a railway bridge or Myers’ short journey across the city to another socioeconomic culture. The anonymous poem from St Piran’s at the start of this chapter reminds us of society’s inadequate response to the homeless person: armchair theology gives way before the cardboard box.
1 See R. Burrows, N. Pleace and D. Quilgars (eds), Homelessness and Social Policy (London and New York: Routledge, 1997).
2 George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987), p. 127. First published by Gollancz, 1933.
3 Bryan Glastonbury, Homeless Near a Thousand Homes (London: Allen & Unwin, 1971), p. 28.
4 By the 1985 Act the following persons are defined as having a priority need:
A person with a dependent child or [who] is pregnant.
A person who may be vulnerable on account of their age, mental illness, handicap, physical disability or other special reasons.
Homeless in an emergency, for example fire, flood, and so on.
5 Burrows, Pleace and Quilgars, Homelessness, p. 34.
6 Gerald Daly, Homeless, Policies, and Lives on the Street (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 85.
7 Cumbria Action for Social Support (CASS), ‘A Guide to the Homelessness Act, 2002’ (2011). Available at: http://www.cass-cumbria.co.uk/guide-homelessness-act-2002 (accessed 26 January 2012).
8 Shelter. Available at: http://england.shelter.org.uk/news/march_2012/homelessness_up_18 (accessed 2 April 2012).
9 Peter Malpas, Housing and the Welfare State (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 110.
10 Malpas, Housing, p. 183.
11 Plymouth Access to Housing. Available at: www.plymouthpath.org (accessed 28 May 2012).
12 Joseph Stiglitz, Freefall Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy (London: Penguin, 2010), p. 292.
13 Stiglitz, Freefall, p. 279.
14 Daly, Homeless, p. 5.
15 Ibid., p. 8.
16 John Inge, A Christian Theology of Place (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2003), p. 13.
17 Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (English translation. London/New York: Verso, 1997).
18 Tim Creswell, Place: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), p. 111.
19 Ibid., p. 113.
20 Paul Cloke, Jon May and Sarah Johnsen, ‘Performativity and Affect in the Homeless City’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26 (2008): 241–63.
21 Cloke, ‘Performativity’, p. 245.
22 T.J. Gorringe, A Theology of the Built Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 9.
23 Philip Sheldrake, Spaces for the Sacred (London: SCM Press, 2001), p. 19.
24 Louise Lawrence, The Word in Place: Reading the New Testament in Contemporary Contexts (London: SCM, 2009), p. 122.
26 David Brown, God and Enchantment of Place (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
27 Ched Myers, Who Will Roll Away the Stone? (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994), p. 11.
28 Myers, Stone, p. 29.
29 Duncan Forrester, On Human Worth (London: SCM Press, 2001), p. 20.
30 Forrester, Human Worth, p. 72.
31 In a footnote on p. 39 Myers clarifies his terms. The First World contains all those characterised by ‘entitlement’ so will exclude, for example, poor whites. The Third World (whether situated in the USA or Africa) contains those who are structurally marginalised, but excludes elites of colour.
32 Myers, Stone, p. 202.
33 Myers calls this ‘hypermetropic solidarity’ and explains it by suggesting that abroad is exotic and help is appreciated, by contrast with home which is suspicious and more challenging of our own preconceptions. I remember a teacher at a girls’ independent school in Plymouth being very pleased with an overseas charity collection. The school was situated in the same inner city parish as The Victory and Aubyn House housing projects referred to here, though there seemed to be little contact between the school and the local area.
34 Myers, Stone, p. 224.
35 John Vincent, ‘Liberation Theology in Britain, 1970–1995’ in Christopher Rowland and John Vincent (eds), Liberation Theology UK (Sheffield: Urban Theology Unit, 1995), pp. 24–5.