‘Social repair is church work’

Press, 9 December 1976, Page 5

‘Social repair is church work’

Many of the. ills of Western society had been caused by the breakdovm of communities, the re-establishment of which was one of the major responsibilities of the modem church, said the Rev. Douglas Brown, an Anglican priest who has had a long involvement in socieil work.

Father Douglas, who is a member of the Anglican religious order of the Society of the Sacrejd Mission, is on a three-day visit to Christchurch. He was president until Lt year of the Australian Capital Territory’s Council of Social Service. He is now a tutor at a theological college in Adelaide.

Fr Douglas said that people no longer belonged to natural communities, but lived in suburbs as individuals.

Aunts, tincles, brothers, and sisters lived in separate suburbs, and grandparents were institutionalised, so the individual had no-one to turn

to with his or her problem. Society now had to cope with the problems of the individual, Fr Douglas said. This job was made all the more difficult because people now had trouble communicating with each other.

“All sorts of gaps have resulted through this general cultural breakdown, for example the generation gap, where two groups even speak different languages,” Fr Douglas said. Communities had once been based around churches, and the churches should now build communities from the suburbs around them, he said. “This will mean the involvement of Christian people, not necessarily church bodies.” The church would have to become involved in many community issues, such as town planning, which inevitably meant political involvement, Fr Douglas said. “You cannot separate the

church from these issues,” he said.

“For too long the church has tried to keep out of t'.j muck of the market place.” Father Douglas has become particularly interested in ways of opening communication channels between governing bodies and the church. “There is a need for more of this activity in Australia, and perhaps also in New Zealand,” he said.

“The church should pay people to study what the Government is doing, and relate the work of the church to it.

“There are politicians who wish to perform their work with a Christian conscience.” Because of their faith in God, Christian people should be able to emphasise to governments and the community in general the dignity and freedom of man, and a concern for the created world and the environment, Fr Douglas said.

He said that church membership would probably continue to shrink, but those who remained with the church would probably be stronger in their conviction. "I hope we get to the stage of dealing with young people who know nothing of the church,” Fr Douglas said. Such young people would come to the church with open minds. “At the moment the church lacks relevant things to say about the major issues in people’s lives,” he said. Fr Douglas was ordained in 1954, and became a tutor at St Michael’s in Adelaide. He then spent some time as a tutor and chaplain at the Mother House of the Society of the Sacred Mission, at Kelham, England. It was there that he began his involvement with social work, when he was asked to tutor student ministers in the subject. This course was one of the first formal courses in social work for student ministers.