By Terry Drummond and Joseph Forde, CEN.
Faith in the City is one of the most substantial documents on welfare provision and urban mission and ministry in England, to have been published in the post-war period. Issued in the autumn of 1985, it was highly critical of the negative effects its authors believed the policies being pursued by Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative government were having on the poorest members of British society.
Robert Runcie’s Commission on Urban Priority Areas began the review in 1983. The concern was that the government’s deregulatory economic policies, may have contributed to bringing about the inner-city riots that had broken out in some of Britain’s poorest areas in 1981.
Unemployment, in part the consequence of increased deindustrialisation had reached a level not seen since the interwar depression, topping three million in January1982. This was putting a strain on the welfare state and causing significant financial hardship for those who had lost their jobs.
Runcie was keen to know how the Church of England could best contribute to meeting some of the social challenges that the country now faced, as well as how to advise appropriate bodies on the most appropriate ways of tackling them. Accordingly, the Commission’s core terms of reference were: “To examine the strengths, insights, problems and needs of the Church’s life and mission in Urban Priority Areas and, as a result, to reflect on the challenge which God may be making to Church and Nation: and to make recommendations to appropriate bodies.”