The New Christendom? Churches, Big Society, and the Temptation of Relevance

When David Cameron launched the “Big Society” agenda back in 2010, it was heralded as a chance for citizens, communities, and voluntary groups to step into the space left by a retreating state. Churches, it was implied, would be “empowered” to do what they do best: serve the poor, feed the hungry, care for the vulnerable.

Fifteen years on, we can see how this has played out. Food banks, once rare and shocking, have become a normal feature of the landscape. Churches up and down the country are running night shelters, offering English classes for migrants, and hosting projects for those left behind by austerity. On one level this is inspiring: communities of faith rolling up their sleeves, loving their neighbours, and embodying compassion.

But there is a darker side too. As churches have stepped up, the state has stepped back. The “Big Society” has functioned less as empowerment and more as outsourcing. And in many cases, the church has become a subcontractor of the state’s social agenda. We are doing the work that government has chosen not to fund.

In practice, this is a quiet reinvention of Christendom. Not the grand, throne-and-altar version of Constantine, but a subtler contract: the state grants the church renewed relevance and a pat on the back, provided we deliver its preferred form of social care. It is a bargain that looks like power but is in fact dependency. We gain visibility, but at the cost of being drawn into propping up an unjust economic settlement.

The danger is that our food banks and night shelters allow the government to wash its hands. We become part of the safety net that makes austerity politically viable. In exchange, we feel “useful” again in a society that often treats the church as irrelevant.

As a Baptist, I am wary of this Christendom-shaped temptation. Our tradition has valued the painful but liberating break between church and state. Early Baptists understood that true faith cannot be coerced by law, nor co-opted by government. We do not exist to deliver the state’s agenda, however noble it may sound. Our calling is to witness to the reign of God, a reign that critiques all earthly powers.

This does not mean withdrawing from social action. Far from it. Feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and welcoming the stranger are at the heart of the gospel. But the question is how and why we do these things. Are we service-providers for the state, or are we communities of resistance? Are we filling the gaps left by austerity, or are we organising with our neighbours to challenge the systems that produce such gaps in the first place?

Here is where I see hope. Across the country, churches are discovering the power of organising. Rather than standing alone, we are joining hands with mosques, synagogues, schools, and unions. We are finding common ground across difference, not in order to make ourselves “useful” to government, but to hold government to account. Together, we can press for structural change: a real living wage, affordable housing, a humane migration system, fair energy costs, and a properly resourced NHS.

This is the hopeful future of the church: not subcontractors of the Big Society, but citizens of the New Jerusalem. Not grasping for scraps of relevance, but building communities of solidarity that embody God’s justice here and now.

The gospel is not an add-on to the welfare state. It is good news to the poor because it declares that the kingdoms of this world are under notice, and another world is possible.