Break down the walls: can we, the working class, have oor church back please?
Paul Thomson : UK [09.09]

I used to love seeing masel as part of the emerging church until about 4 years ago. However, three things, began to crack and slowly dislodge my identification with all things emerging - in both church and the wider uk society, and propel me back out into scotland. The resulting relationship between me, christianity and the land around me here has changed beyond all recognition.. my faith, my trust has returned again, not just in God but in my roots; the estates I grew up with, the place itself, the land, the people; its colourful mix of natives and newcomers, industries, even creation itself - lost friends regained - all of it is my church now..

the walls in my head may have broken down, broken down enough to feel trust, contentment, dignity, happiness and freedom here and a warm security in God in this land, that I've not felt for a very long time - but what about other walls: the ones that enclose housing estates and the even harder granite ones inside christian heeds ?

For me, the cracks started here:
1. In November 2003 in the 2nd issue of www.emergingchurch.info - I wrote the short article: The E in emerging church - about putting housing Estates (E) at the heart of Emerging church. Plenty of encouraging words ensued but little or no action and no evidence of it being a top of an emerging checklist anywhere.

2. Once it began to swell and the conversations multiplied, and coffee bars and websites began to echo with emerging this and that, I asked friends and family in some estates I know of in scotland: have ever heard of 'emerging church'? - answer: wha'? - nae me mate!

3. After years of involvement with just about every fad of christendom - from pentecostalism to church planting to wimber healing stuff to alternative club worship to partner projects with major church institutions like church of england and church of scotland. I had a breakdown. My body and mind completely knackedered, exhausted - a huge chunk of my past in estates and care hit me as if they were unleashed from the dungeons of hell. A past that I switched off and hid away - partly so that I could fit in with my new friends at university and 'church' - right up until the emerging church scene. I also came to the puzzling realisation that: none on my estates or working class chums neither wanted church OR wanted any of these new movements - I realised, to my shame, in that moment that I too swallowed the lie - this next new one was gonna reach em! like Judas I'd sold out my friends and family of origin after the following dawned on me:

1. emerging church is completely irrelevent to the working class and the poorest in scotland...

even worse came an even more shocking realisation No. 2 in the depths of my being that...

I am schemie AND I'm in love wi a Christ here at work in this bonnie scotland of ours - but I am painfully aware now that:

2. powerful vested interests as yet unchecked within the middle and upper classes have colonised and stolen the church from us in the uk:

Today 'they' are busy making church FOR us - why? It is because it no longer belongs to us.. maybe it hasn't for very a long time - every revival, every eruption of God in the land was fired from working people. In ancient times: christianity around Rome was reviled as a religion of: women and slaves - and around cottage industries and guilds - in earlier in the last century, men and women at the grassroots, fishing boats, cooperages, mines, crofts, obscure schools and estates - people you rarely hear of, have spearheaded eruptions of God throughout history: of Spirit ravishing experiences, desperate prayer, acts of justice, words of mercy and healing and transformation in places and among people often forgotten.

Even the sally army sparked off as a working class eruption coming out of sheer desperation and cries of the poorest that energised them to grapple with some of biggest things killing their freinds and families and kids: drink, industrialised poverty and domestic violence. It was eventually colonised by their 'betters' who flocked to 'help'. Today the 'powers that be' continue (as in all christian organisations) to feed off the nativity birth of its working class roots. Today they still raise money for 'serving the poor' (and attact some terrific saints and activists to its dream -again, to 'help') - yet they are the richest christian organisation in the uk and - their massive accumulation of land and money and use of power is beyond criticism in the uk - why?

I think it is because they are a white symbol of 'middle class' charity - it's biggest golden calf, its myth - in uniform (and in funky clothes among its new generation) - but few sallyers would admit that it was nicked from our foreparents, that the schemies were righteous and well capable of hosting God on their patch! the middle class vested interests stole their righteous garments to clothe themselves and to this day they have become amazingly good at it - if the sally army stumbles on to this myth about itself- it will crack one of the biggest myths driving this country, it goes something like this:

societies (vested interests) - teaches that - we govern the country, we the professionals, activists and thinkers, artists, bosses, leaders, landlords - we are your betters, we own the land, you are the tenants, claiments and charity cases - you need us!

church's (vested interests) - teaches the same - we, the leaders, thinkers, activists, artists, creators, the spiritual landlords, govern christianity - we are your betters, you are the tenants, claiments and charity cases -you need us!

in the empire - and of the empire, has in the 21st century become highly disguised, and, become: not in the empire - but of the empire

They lie to themselves about this and yet they are really puzzled why we don't go to their churches and christian organisations - it matters not if its traditional or funky or Spirit zappingly good or its latest coalitions of middle class bohemian sainthood: emerging church.. who cares, its still not 'ours'

There are loads of christians - both trad and radical, doing stuff with housing estate folks - I've heard argue.. let them eat that cake baby!

True, there are a growing number of smashing people, christian groups and initiatives in estates yes - but look hard and you nearly always find middle class folks somewhere at the heart of it running things, talking, praying, talking, dreaming, talking, curating worship, sacrificially 'serving the poor' to exhaustion and then more talking - never local schemies, they can't do these things y ken - Oh and its always: we are just doing this temporarily until they 'learn' how to run things for themselves. This is a serious blindness: they seem to have no idea that their misguided uncritical idealism - fired by this 'middle class myth' - this middle class golden calf in the camp- is in danger of keeping the whole dependancy cycle going for yet another generation... them and us, christians and the poor, leader and led.. landlords and their needy tenants -

and the WALL - gets to stay up!! yet for another century

Q. why don't poor folks like church?
because it doesnae belong to them! it doesn't come from their dreams, it 'isn't shaped by their priorities and isn't led by their hands and hearts

and come even closer so i can whisper britain's biggest secret:
schemies can do church without you - its you that need us more than we need you

what the heck do we saints of white middle scotland do then - I hear you cry?
if you want to help bonnie saint - redistribute some of the massive resources stored up in your townie church budgets and shockingly expensive buildings and wasteful use of land - we'll use just a tiny fraction of them very well to dig ourselves out of our 'slavery' in no time! and push some of these estate walls down from the inside - if you want to do something really helpful with your energy from the Spirit - attach chains to a thousand tractors and pull from the other side - I think there's a new round of demonising and scapegoating from politicians and media on its way.. since the credit crunch kicked in..

In that sense we do need you and you need us: we can fill in that aching hole of shame that sits at the heart of middle class modern britain in the 21st century and give a whole new colour, energy and lease of life to a whole landscape of christianity that it has grown and nourished and woven around itself - like some psychic ontological security blanket of righteousness - that is choking and paralysing it to death.

You pull, we push!, as lynsey hanley encourages at the end of her book: estates. Crack the myth, crack the wall! And when those old walls, constructed to hold up a british empire, come crashing doon - we will all get to finally see each other for the first time in centuries.

And all of us- all the bonnie body of christ, and noone knows who we all are, most are hidden - will SEE, that 'together', and only together -we ARE the fantastic patchwork multicoloured tartan body of Christ on this wee island.. arms legs, hands feet, doin some healing and loving on its country's ass - woohoo!...together.

so, in light of all this, can we have oor church back please...

This story first appeared on Pauls blog weebeautifulpict.typepad.com