Church of England bishops were instrumental in torpedoing Government plans for a £26,000 limit on welfare handouts – an amount which is apparently higher than the average national salary. They voiced concern over the impact such a cap might have on children.

As a British citizen who has spent most of his life living and working in some of the most impoverished parts of Africa, I observe with interest the beliefs of the Church and perhaps the bulk of the British population about the welfare state. Its institution as far back as 1948 means that most of today’s generation have no experience of any other lifestyle except state provided security from the cradle to the grave – a benefit that can only be envied by the populations of almost every other country in the world.

As a consequence, the question which rarely seems to be addressed either in public forums or in the Church is the extent to which these benefits are a right or a privilege. For the hard-nosed taxpayer it’s probably a no-brainer – “I pay my taxes, therefore I have a right to the benefits”. But there are, of course, many of our citizens who do not pay taxes, and for whom many of these benefits are designed to assist. But the danger sets in when such privileges begin to be viewed as rights.

From a Christian perspective, the biblical message seems to me to point the Church in the direction of serving and assisting the poor and vulnerable ourselves rather than accusing the State of not shouldering that responsibility. In Luke 14, Jesus said, “When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous”.

Similarly, Jesus told the rich young ruler to “Go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (Matthew 19:21). Clearly, throughout the whole of Scripture, God is the champion of the poor. The Christian Gospel is emasculated when the social dimension is ignored, but the Bible always seems to place the onus for this on the followers of Christ themselves.

There’s no question, therefore, that Church of England bishops should be concerned about the welfare of the poor and vulnerable in society. And certainly, the fact that 76% of voters may be in favour of the Government’s proposals does not in itself make the proposals right. Being overwhelmingly popular does not establish the rightness or wrongness of the cause.

Whilst the Church may rightly see itself as “the conscience of the nation”, if the onus is on us to minister to the needy, then is it not time for the Church to get its own house in order and remove the log from its own eye before it points out the speck in the Government’s eye?

That is not to imply that the Church of England itself is doing nothing for the poor and marginalised. Projects such as “Faith in the City”, the Church Urban Fund and the commendable emphasis espoused by the late Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Rev David Sheppard in his book “Bias to the Poor” are testimony to that. Nonetheless, the Church of England, with all its landed assets, still seems preoccupied with sinking its funds into preserving its old and scarcely used buildings and perpetuating a huge bureaucratic machine that consumes large portions of its annual budget. The annual figures of the expense accounts of the bishops themselves make eyebrow-raising reading.

Undoubtedly, in the current debate, the government could justifiably argue that it is itself following a biblical principle in seeking to eliminate fraud, laziness and cheating: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). However, identifying the truly needy is generally something the local Church community can do with much greater accuracy than government departments, and the Church should be exercising a much greater role in compassionate social action. But it is the individual example of godly Christians exercising a personal lifestyle of involvement, generosity and compassion to those with genuine need that surely has a greater impact for the Kingdom of God than faceless Church projects, commissions, programmes and committees.

The issue of the extent to which helping the poor should be a government responsibility will continue to be debated by those on the Left and Right of the political divide. But the de facto existence of the welfare state should not lead to a situation where the Church simply becomes a political pressure group in the face of government policy, and avoids the cost of sacrificially committing its own time, energy and resources to the socially disadvantaged.

Isaiah the prophet’s challenge is still applicable to the Church today: “If you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday” (Isaiah 58:10). In that regard, as I frequently witnessed in Africa, the Church of Jesus Christ is always better placed to demonstrate mercy than any government ever will.



Tony Ward is a Bible teacher and evangelist who was ordained in Zimbabwe. He currently lives and ministers in Bristol