One of the many perils and pitfalls of social media is that you have to suffer the company of self-important know-all know-nothing bigots who daily posture and pose as they take big radical stands in the abstract. They are opinionated, dull-witted, humourless, and interminably boring. And that’s just people I count among my ‘friends.’ I’ve been moving a few on recently. If you can’t learn from someone, if they don’t cheer you up or enlighten you in some way, merely sap your energies and annoy, then why have them around? The key to surviving social media, if indeed you really must enter that realm of the damned, is not to take any of it seriously. Unfortunately, I lack that facility. I see the stupidities and prejudices of people and know them to be real and damaging.
A demand I have seen constantly repeated on social media is that the churches should be made to open their doors to house the homeless. It is just a cheap and easy radicalism and nothing more. Apart from being stupid, it also serves as a reminder of the extent to which many of those on the progressive side of politics are infantile and clueless (many are not, and are working on practical solutions to problems. I give all praise to them).
The demand is wrong on so many levels that, when issued by people I know to be educated and intelligent, I can’t credit stupidity on their part and am therefore driven to conclude bigotry. What else could it be? The financial and organisational problems involved in converting churches into shelters are such that the people making the demands cannot have given the idea any thought. They are simply using the problem of homelessness to criticize the churches. Which is a bit rich. We live in a post-religious, post-Christian age. If the secular order is so wonderful, then why are so many homeless? Where is the much vaunted humanism that was promised? And why demand that the forms of a former common life be pressed into service to fill the gaps of the present?
I'm done with stupidity and bigotry, particularly from ‘humanists,’ atheists and secularists, who feel they have the right to tell churches how to act as tools and functions of their secular order, a rational and humanist order so wonderful that it is overrun with homeless.
Anyone who thinks that providing housing for the homeless is a simply a matter of commandeering existing buildings, opening their doors, and inviting one and all is just plain dumb, delusional, and dangerous. It betrays a peevish and destructive mentality. And it also betrays a taste to use force to expropriate property and resources that belong to others. The simple truth is that they are just spoiling to accuse churches of hypocrisy, blaming the churches for the existence of social problems caused by their wonderful secularist order. They are consumed by resentment at the fact that, their promises of science and technology dispelling illusion and yielding the triumph of knowledge and power, religion retains a tenacious grip on the hearts and minds of people. So they would like it extirpated, undermined, destabilized, ridiculed, destroyed.
Note the blind faith in the forces of progress. Note that it was the progressives, armed with science, who advanced eugenics militantly from the late nineteenth century onwards. Note that it was religious folk who led the opposition. For a meticulous take-down of progressives advancing science in politics, try Dennis Sewell’s The Political Gene: How Darwin’s Ideas Changed Politics (2009). Whether progressives are idealistic, naïve, or bigoted, they are invariably blinkered, and somewhat lacking in human understanding. They score A’s in ‘things,’ only to flunk at persons.
Let me say at this point that I am well aware that churches can be converted into social and affordable housing. It has been done and it is being done. Properly. That is, with planning, consent, and organisation and not as a simple expropriation. If that is the demand, then make the rational argument in those terms.
Do you think people who post militant demands that churches be opened immediately to house the homeless are really concerned by the plight of the homeless? If we were to frame this in political terms, then try to imagine what stripe of politics would be happy to see forces and organisations in the private realm addressing the problem of homelessness as opposed to the public realm? Charity in place of a properly funded public programme.
It would appear that the loathing of religion and churches is much stronger than commitment to socialist principle. Which tells me that we are not in the presence of socialists at all, merely passive bourgeois radicals still fighting the crusade of liberal enlightenment.
There is a way of ordering the world. Coming to the churches for help is a package deal, and not a pick-and-mix 'pragmatism.'
What really concerns me about this issue is the extent to which many who advance this demand identify as leftist. If that's an example of their economics at work, then Heaven help us. It’s a crude resource grab based on coercion, with precious little organisational or systems thought. There is zero thought given to consent.
I have learned that people like this - utterly convinced of their superior intelligence - never learn. They really are blinkered, dull-witted, and actually rather stupid. Because they see only through the filters of their own prejudices. They don't learn because they don't listen, and they don't listen because they already think they know best. And they don’t know best at all. In fact, they know precious little. They are rather gutless, too. They are genuinely frightened that they may find out that their prejudices are wrong. So they assert dogmatically and impose. With legal force behind them, such people are a menace to civic peace and order.
Providing housing for the homeless is a whole lot more complex than taking existing buildings - buildings designed for other purposes and still in use - and opening their doors to one and all. If I was to say that such a policy would reduce churches to being squats, it wouldn't worry these people at all - to them, the church is just a building that is currently serving no useful purpose. They don't recognize what a church is, have no respect for what a church is, and would happily see it trashed, looted, destroyed. Unless they naively believe that the churches would suddenly turn into hippie communes of peace and love. I can’t credit that intelligent people could be so naïve. Which leaves us searching for other motivations.
How about take a more organised, long-term, strategic approach? If you really are interested in addressing homelessness, as against merely scoring cheap points against the churches.
In point of fact, churches do help with providing shelter for the homeless. Churches run and help run shelters. They also run food banks. My own church does both of these things. Churches are also involved in training and education. I’ve been involved in churches which offer certain facilities for the unemployed, advice, CV’s, IT literacy. The church is the centre-point around which a number of activities and efforts coordinate. To suppress all of this activity into the one issue is to invite collapse. Which might well be the intention.
Given that the liberal/left leaning persons who peddle this nonsense are also into science and technology, I suspect that they do actually understand basic organisation principles. In which case I can safely convict them of flat-out bigotry - they merely want to accuse the churches of hypocrisy. They know nothing of the churches involvement in addressing social problems, and don't want to know.
I called them out flat - if you are so concerned about homelessness, open your own houses up, you take the homeless in. See if the solution is that easy.
To say that to open the church up to the homeless can be 'problematic' is something of an understatement.
Have the people who make this demand ever seen what it takes to run a church? Clean it? Keep it in repair? More to the point, do they care? There is much more than ignorance going on here.
There are problems of overcrowding, damage, even vandalism and theft. Four or five years ago, violence between rival gangs broke out in a St Helens church, even as mass was being said.
Do people know what churches are for? Church services? Weddings, funerals, baptisms, masses? Of course, such people could care less, it is all meaningless to them. But they can’t leave it alone, like a scab they can’t resist scratching to re-open and make raw. Instead of doing something constructive and building their own places, they prefer to take something that already exists and destroy it.
The churches have been around a long time on social questions, and were in the field long before the existence of the welfare state, giving out alms to the poor in the Middle Ages. The immediate thing that strikes me is how politically anomalous the demand is coming from left/liberal voices – it is tantamount to a reversion from public welfare, funded by the taxes of the rich, to charity. They are so blinded by their anti-religious bigotry that they cannot see the extent to which they contradict their own politics. It reveals an implicit pessimism on the part of critics, a lack of confidence in their public principles.
What about bathroom facilities? Food, showers, sanitation?
Many churches run a food bank, with that food being distributed across the neighbourhood to those in need. Will people help themselves directly? Will there be any food left? Are we running a commune? Is it a free-for-all? Who is running it? Does the church have the financial resources to provide staff to ensure the safety of the people and protection of the church? The church seemed to be running short of money to pay for constant cleaning after every service in the midst of covid.
Who will pay the additional insurance that would be required to protect the property against the inevitable damage? And damage would be inevitable. It has always happened in the past. But some people just don't care. It's just a church full of dumb stupid people who believe in dumb stupid things, and we are sooo clever as to be able to see through it all. Such people are so clever, in fact, as to indulge in constantly mean and spiteful posting on FB. Gee, haven't they got a supermarket to visit or television to watch, something much more productive of one’s time like that? I know this much - the revolution ain't gonna happen on FB. The fact that this demand keeps being raised indicates that we are in the presence of silly gesture politics and fake radicalism. It’s the kind of statement that sounds radical but is the very opposite. It’s a passive radicalism at best, making demands for others to enact. It’s really just an exercise in church bating and church hating. It’s not company to be keeping.
Whenever you come across anyone who insists that “somebody must do something,” point out to them immediately that they are that “somebody,” and get them to be more precise on what that “something” is – and insist they act to carry it out.
A question that interests me, having learned the hard way as to what it takes to clean a church - who will do the cleaning up? Who will prepare the church before services? Who will control proceedings? I found it hard being a steward with an incredibly sedate bunch of believers. I hated the complexities of cleaning afterwards. I tell you what, clever atheist folks - open a ‘church’ of your own and you can do all the staffing, organising, stewarding, cleaning. And you can put your hands in your pockets and show some hard cash, too. Being so principled and all that. If you are that clever and that concerned, why aren’t you doing it? Anyone would think that such people were just hypocrities paying lipservice to their principles and wanting to take a free hit against people they despise.
What about last minute or seasonal changes to the use of the building by the congregation?
Do you understand what that means?
If you have opened the doors to the homeless and the church is needed for a wedding or a funeral? Is everyone going to join in? How about compulsory attendance of mass? A few confessions wouldn’t go amiss.
Or in the middle of winter, and people need to be inside and it is the Christmas season when the church is usually very busy with church activities?
Church activities off? Season cancelled? It’s just a building now, and not a Church.
To cut the sarcasm - and realism - and state a simple fact (and a simple fact will always slay the bigots), most churches located in areas which have high homeless populations already provide services of many kinds. It is the existence of the church as a properly run organisation – with faith and its celebration at its centre – that enables these social activities to be sustained in the long run. A policy of ‘opening the church doors to the homeless’ is not a policy at all, it is rank stupidity born of bigotry. And utterly self-destructive.
It may seem tempting to see the homeless on the one hand and see a big church building on the other and conclude that the solution to the problem is to move the former into the latter. Tempting in the sense of unthinking and facile. And ignorant. This is to see the obvious and nothing more, as if the issue is merely one of people and buildings.
The churches are smarter than this, and have long experience of the problem. Homelessness is not a physical problem but a social problem. It is far more complex and complicated than the moving of matter from A to B. The church knows how to organize its resources to address the societal issues that create the foundation of homelessness. These issues are many: economic injustice, jobs, skills, and training, family support, access to physical and mental healthcare, the need for affordable housing, financial advice, literacy and education, budget management, and life skills classes. And ministering to spiritual needs. Addressing homelessness requires going beyond the obvious physical manifestation of the problem to address its root causes. That approach is far more effective than the policy of turning a sanctuary into a shelter. But, of course, the people who make that demand in all probability know all this – they are simply non-plussed that churches still exist, people still believe in God, and want to destroy.
They’d be happy to see churches reduced to shambolic buildings. I dread to think how these people would run society. There’s nothing stopping them now from opening up shelters and food banks. The churches do it. Why can’t they? Being so clever and all?
The people who indulge in this kind of demand on social media are neither serious nor credible. It’s just silly FB posturing. We could, at that level, just ignore it. But what is irritating about it is the knowledge that the people who do this consider themselves superior to and smarter than people of a religious persuasion. It’s an invitation to like-minded people to pleasure themselves in an orgy of mutual congratulations of themselves and contempt for others.
So let’s push them a little on money, resources, and competence.
—/ Criminality /—
Housing the homeless is not simply a matter of providing a roof over the head. The homeless come in many shapes and sizes. There are stories of church-based organisations providing shelter for the homeless coming quickly to grief through naivity and idealism. Once you allow a lot of people in together, with their personal belongings, you have a mini-society on your hands. And people don’t always behave as they ought. People bring their belongings, other people take them. And take them from outside and bring them inside, hiding them away before selling them on. The police raids come, and all manner of thievery is exposed. It is as easy as that for well-meaning idealism to implode. It is hard to credit that the people who issue this ‘open doors to the homeless’ are not aware of the problems of stolen goods. Are church people expected to be able to deal with the issues arising from such criminality? Or are they expected to simply to hand church property and buildings over to external organisers? Is this simply a demand to abolish the churches? A kind of insidious and underhand continuation of the old Bolshevik policy of blowing churches up?
Or is it just silly pointless rebels parading on social media trying to make themselves feel relevant?
—/ Sex and Drugs and Rock’n’Roll /—
Is it at all unlikely that some of those rushing through the doors would be drug dealers, dealing drugs in their new haven? Drunks tend to be predictable. They may get aggressive and start fights, but can just fall over. And go to sleep. Evading the punches of a drunk is not too difficult. The same cannot be said of those abusing drugs. Who is going to be dealing with this? Church people, themselves often quite elderly and/or infirm, often female. It is a recipe for violence, of all kinds. This would not be a safe environment.
—/ Hygiene /—
Bringing the outdoors indoors. Garbage and worse. Who does the cleaning? Why should they? The behaviour is the result of lack of personal care and mental illness. The places where such people should exist have been closed down, hence the large number of mentally ill people among the homeless. What utter rank hypocrisy for secular atheists to insist that the churches be used to solve a problem of the very selfish society that they have done the most to bring about. This problem is self-authored – own it! That is what is involved in ‘humanity’ taking morality into its own hands, putting an end to God. The problem is that this appropriation tends to be selfish rather than social, for the reason that there is no ‘humanity’ to act as a moral agent, only a number of discrete individuals within asymmetrical social relations. The weak go to the wall.
What evasion! It is for the churches to mop up those left behind!
Do your own dirty work! This is your society: clean up after yourselves. This is an attempt to return to the old alms system, only without the belief system. It allows the rich to discard their social burdens, diminish social welfare, and expand charity. That’s what is striking about these radical postures – they are thoroughly selfish and reactionary. The assault on the church and on religion is a mere mask for a thoroughly reactionary politics.
—/ Money/—
Where is the money going to come from? Are the churches expected to finance this ambitious social programme? Because that is what it will be. Churches are strapped for money. Day-by-day they are involved in raising money for their upkeep. Lighting, let alone heating, a large church costs a small fortune. That income is for the normal operation of the church, and is barely enough as it is.
Again, the demand is a call for the ending of the normal functioning of the church. Because the people making the demands simply want an end to the churches. They hate that they even exist, contradicting their prejudices. As for heating, has any of these critics even been in a church. They are not the warmest of places! They seem to think they are all fully heated luxury hotels. I’ve frozen my extremities off in many a church. I couldn’t wait to get out and get warm walking home.
Churches help the poor in their communities and help the poor around the world. Open the doors, and this would be cut in order to serve those who come on through. Helping the needy has to be properly managed. There has to be a plan and a policy. A proper system.
As solutions to complex and complicated problems like homelessness go, ‘open the church doors’ is either pathetically naïve, utterly stupid, or plain destructive. Whichever one of these things it is, it reflects poorly on the politics of the people who make the demand.
Politically, such people pose as radical but are thoroughly reactionary. These are the humanists, the people who love all humankind. So where are your ambitious social programmes? Where is your own time and money? It is a typically right-wing attitude to argue that someone or something else, other than ‘government,’ should look after the poor and the needy. Instead of spending tax dollars on the ‘unworthy’ and ‘undeserving’ poor, there should be a reliance on charity. The use of the church as an arm of social welfare fits that mentality like a glove.
The fact is that many churches do already care for and offer food and shelter for the poor, needy, and homeless, but the scale of the problem far exceeds the capacities of church organisation. It is neither fair nor reasonable nor remotely practical to shift such social responsibility upon the churches, leaving the rich with their money in their pockets. That people who issue this demand identify with the liberal/left indicates how incredibly weak socialistic principles are at the level of practice. In their haste to indulge prejudice, they have effectively ended up in the embrace of their political enemies. Bigotry blinds.
Even if this complicated question was reduced to a simple matter of sheltering the homeless, the problem is that not all churches are of the same size, with the same facilities, and the homeless are not evenly distributed. Most of the homeless are concentrated in urban areas.
Do churches have adequate facilities? No. Do they have adequate resources? No. We are really talking about a social raid on church property and finance, dissipation and abolition. Churches bankrupted, homelessness returns. Now what? What genius economics. Is that what these left liberal/humanist critics thinks economics is? We need to know, just to avoid sending our votes in that direction, inviting the bankruptcy of the national economy.
Churches do not operate at a profit. They survive by donations and revenues from functions and services, from weddings, christenings and such like. All that would be lost if they were converted to organisations serving the homeless population on a full-time basis. Sooner or later they would cease to be able to afford their buildings, and one and all would be homeless.
It’s such errant nonsense that it is clear that the demand is merely a piece of false radicalism aimed against the church and religion.
A substantial number of the homeless have mental health problems, a substantial number have problems with alcohol and substance abuse. Then there are questions of violence and criminality.
If you are naïve and idealistic, then it’s time to get real; if you are a bigot who simply wants to have a go at the churches, then you are just weaponising a serious issue to serve your prejudices.
Less than ten years ago, a brawl broke out during a mass at Holy Cross St Helens. It was a brawl between feuding factions of travellers. As parishioners fled for safety, candlesticks were used as weapons.
Get out of your pampered, privileged, wendy-house middle class world and come and enter the real world. Anything that involves great numbers of people, particularly needy and vulnerable people, involves significant management issues, even problems of control. It also involves competence and expense. There can be damage, there can be violence. This is basically a demand for churches to cease functioning as they are meant to function and become an arm of the state, a means of the rich shuffling off their responsibilities to charity. For the liberal/left to be indulging their anti-religious bigotry in this way is pathetic, revealing how little socio-economic substance and practical purchase – not to mention popularity – such people have. They have turned the left in politics into a middle class glee club. Another electoral defeat in store for the left, but don’t worry, they’ll never lose the high opinion they have of themselves.
Churches are called to other missions than the physical – feeding and sheltering are important, but the business of the churches is to minister to spiritual needs. But there’s the real problem – the critics reduce everything to the physical and dismiss the spiritual as a fiction and a fantasy. The problem is this, we have found that whilst modern society has reduced human beings to their physical needs, they can’t even satisfy them, not even the most basic. What a genius form of humanism this is! No wonder that the humanists are so peeved as to try to revenge themselves on the churches, trying to draw the religious order into the mire. It is your problem, you own it, you solve it.
Church congregations are involved in a range of charitable ministries, that’s where the resources go. The demand amounts to a demand that all these commitments – which include feeding and clothing the needy – would be ended if all resources went on housing the homeless. The churches would cease to exist as churches, they would no longer be able to continue with their spiritual mission, they would cease their social and educational activities – they would be destroyed. And the truth is, that is precisely what these characters want. They don’t give a damn about the homeless, they simply use homelessness as a stick to beat the churches with.
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