In October 2011 Occupy London set up its camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral in London, following other such occupations in capital cities across the world. Though not directly related to issues of housing and homelessness, this protest nevertheless illustrated and responded to some of the same ideas highlighted here. What seems to have galvanised people is the juxtaposition of the many who are paying economic and social costs for the errors (greed?) of the few: this is summarised in the slogan of 99 per cent versus 1 per cent. Church of England bishops have also been at the forefront of objections to reform of welfare benefits, particularly those that cap total household incomes, believing that this will disproportionately affect families and children.
However, the protests in London also demonstrated the kind of tensions referred to here, in which the Churches and particularly the established Church are deeply enmeshed in national structures. This enables bishops’ voices to be heard, but also places the Church as landowners on the opposite side to demonstrators when evictions are contemplated. This complexity of values became uncomfortably focused for St Paul’s when a plan to move the camp forcibly was not supported by all its senior staff, resulting in the resignation of the dean, a canon and a minor canon.1 In the South West, Occupy sites were established in Exeter also next to the cathedral, in Bristol on land jointly managed by cathedral and city, and in Plymouth in a disused benefits office. At the start of 2012, Exeter Cathedral was in negotiations to move the camp with a resort to law a distinct possibility, Occupy Bristol had decided to move, the Plymouth camp was evicted before Christmas and may well return to tents in front of the university building. Another sort of tension is revealed by a recent report from the Church Urban Fund which suggests that ‘three quarters of clergy said they think poverty is mainly due to social injustice, but only one fifth of regular churchgoers agree’; indeed there is little difference in attitudes to poverty between those who attend church and those who do not.2
It is interesting that cathedrals have featured in such protests. Perhaps it is simply the availability of open land in a city centre, or the reckoning that objections will be more muted or disorganised, or the high-profile contrast between the tents and ecclesial towers; more positively, perhaps there is some recognition that the Church as an organisation and the cathedral as its symbol represent an alternative world view: the city for people not for profit. The staff changes at St Paul’s suggest that the Church’s stance is more problematic. At least it seems that other cathedrals have learnt from St Paul’s and perhaps have spent more time genuinely listening and negotiating.
If this is the case, that marks an important step. Otherwise my concern remains about the failure to listen to and value the stories of people on the margins, exemplified here by the narratives of homeless people; it is as if they could have no worthwhile insights into their own lives, their society or the faith they practise. There exists a similar failure to ask the structural questions demanded by both Christian faith and social reality. If these stories are not heard, and then retold within a new frame which provides hope and meaning, they risk festering in the storybag of society.3 This book began with a reference to Waiting for Godot, recalling Vladimir and Estragon as they pass the time. My fear is that the homeless of our own day will continue to wait for change with diminishing expectation; my hope is that if only our listening informs our theology and social policy, then the heroic desperation with which Beckett’s play ends may give way to an enlarged vision of the Kingdom of God.
1 Peter Walker and Riazat Butt, ‘St Paul’s may seek injunction to move Occupy London activists’ (2011). Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/23/st-pauls-occupy-london-protest (accessed 24 October 2011).
2 Church Urban Fund, ‘Tackling homelessness together: A study of nine faith-based housing projects’ (2011). Available at: http://www.cuf.org.uk/research/tackling-homelessness-together (accessed 26 January 2012).
3 Alida Gersie recounts a Korean folk tale in which the refusal to re-tell stories means that they are trapped and corrupted in a ‘storybag’, eventually seeking revenge on the man who refuses to let them out and be heard. Earthtales: Storytelling in Times of Change (London: Green Print, 1992), pp. 11–13.