My daughter and I have just got back from WLM’s Sleep Out held last night in the grounds of St James’ Church, Piccadilly.
It was an uplifting evening. 82 supporters gave up their bed for the night to sleep out and (so far) we have raised £35,000 for our work to bring rough sleepers in from the cold.
A platform for change
Michael was one of our formerly homeless clients who spoke to everyone last night at the start of the evening. He talked about how WLM gave homeless people ‘a platform to help people like him come off the streets’.
A platform to help. It’s a good phrase to describe our work.
Charities like WLM provide support, stability, consistency and resources for people in need. And these are vital ingredients that help homeless people make the steps they need to make.
But it’s wrong to think that any person or agency can sort someone else out. No one can take the steps of change on behalf of someone else – there is always a journey that is needed to be taken by the individual concerned. However much social injustice has led to someone’s homelessness, their steps of transformation will always be irreducibly personal.
Sad and sobering
As I left the church this morning after the sleep out, I got chatting with a homeless man who asked me for change as I walked along Piccadilly to the tube. As we spoke, I thought I recognised him and we worked out that he had lived in the emergency shelter I managed back in 1999/2000 when I worked for the youth homeless charity Centrepoint.
Eighteen years later and he was still on the street.
We shared the names of many other residents we both remembered from that hostel. It was sad and sobering to realise how many had since died, almost all due to addictions. As I traveled home it was a sad reminder of the stark reality of street life.
Hard road of recovery
This week at WLM’s centre for rough sleepers on Seymour Place, my friend Chris Ward came to speak to the Spirituality Group which meets every Tuesday lunchtime. I have known Chris for around 6 years since we met at the Greenbelt festival (see this post for more). Later we would go on to co-write a booklet ‘Homelessness: grace, truth and transformation’ together.
Chris was on the streets for over 3 years and almost died due to his addictions to drugs and alcohol. He spoke powerfully about the hard road of recovery that he has gone on since his days on the street.
Over the last year, Chris has been in intensive therapy after finally getting a proper diagnosis for his mental health issues. Through having good quality support, he has found the resources and courage to face up the reality of what he has been through and the trauma that he suffered when young. Importantly, it has also helped him be honest about the pain he has caused to others too. I am so proud of the progress he has made.
Grace to embrace truth
Belief in God and direct spiritual experiences have been at the core of Chris’ recovery journey. Instead of being an escape from reality, faith has helped him engage with reality and to be truly honest with himself. Grace has enabled him to accept truth.
Chris spoke with a power and directness that only addicts can. He challenged everyone to be honest and take the steps that only they could take. And he inspired us with stories and pictures from his recent pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago in Portugal and Spain. His talk was a great example of how pilgrimage is both an outward, physical journey but also an inward, spiritual one.
Hope and reality
Chris and Michael’s stories are ones of hope. They have both been able to use the platforms available to walk the hard road of recovery. But we need to be real about the damage that homelessness, addictions and trauma have on people and lose any romantic notions we may have about homelessness.
Its never too late for someone to change and to turn their life around. And, whilst we cannot change anyone else, we can be resolute to be there for those in need, offering the platform and the opportunity for change.
If anyone wants to donate to Jenna and Jon’s Sleep Out, then please see our Just Giving page. All the funds go directly towards the costs of WLM’s emergency centre for rough sleepers in central London.
You can listen to the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Beyond Belief’ on Begging, featuring myself and Chris Ward. (Chris’s section is at 12.42)
I’ve been doing Harvest assemblies and celebrations for 22 years. I think they’re much richer and more authentic now, and 
Guns in America: religion is part of the problem but faith will be part of the answer
Whilst its good to be inspired by the great faith-inspired social movements – like the battles against the slave trade, the civil rights movement or the fight against apartheid in South Africa – we cannot forget that Christianity has been deployed on both sides of these battles. As well as being a key driver for change it has also the upholder of the status quo.
Sure, leaders such as William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King and Desmond Tutu inspired movements for social change through their faith. But many others used Christian theology to defend slavery and to provide a spiritual justification for racism and discrimination.
Hands full of blood
And of course this is shown in the Bible too. A major theme in the Hebrew prophets is the hypocrisy of being outwardly religious whilst perpetuating violence and injustice. The prophet Isaiah directly attacks pious devotion which is detached from the struggle for justice:
And this is what we are seeing in modern-day America. There is no shortage of outward Christian commitment in the US. Virtually all candidates to be President have to claim an allegiance to Christ. As is widely reported, 81% of white Evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump. As a Presidential candidate he professed his Christian faith, declared the Bible to be his favourite book and also went to the National Rifle Association (NRA) and vowed never to restrict the right to bear arms.
When you consider the havoc that Trump’s action and behaviour is causing and could cause, you could easily make the case that Evangelical Christianity is currently the most dangerous movement on the planet.
The church and guns
Two years ago I wrote a post about my friend who went to a church service in Mississippi and heard the Pastor stand up and talk about a competition they were running to see who could invite the most new people along to the church in one month.
And what was the prize for the winner? An AR-15 assault rifle – plus a 100 rounds of ammo for good measure. My friend could not believe it as he watched the Pastor hold the gun up and enthusiastically announce ‘This is a killing machine’:
There was a good ending to the story because my friend’s concerns led to a genuine dialogue which resulted in the church graciously withdrawing the prize. Instead, my friend, who is a carpenter, offered to donate a coffee table he had made which was awarded instead of the gun. He was inspired by the passages in Isaiah about ‘beating swords into ploughshares’ (2:4) and rather than just condemning the church wanted to help find a more creative and redemptive way forward.
#hashtag prayers
The terrible events of Las Vegas this week will see predictable re-runs of the arguments between proponents and opponents of gun control. We will also see plenty of hashtags and trite appeals to #prayforlasvegas. I believe God is wearied by these prayers, especially from people who are so opposed to taking any steps which will produce real change.
Many people are saying that after Sandy Hook, where 20 children were killed by a gunman, that there is no longer any hope for meaningful gun reform. Perhaps they are right.
A mass movement for change?
But could we dream about what would happen if gun-owning Christians, led and inspired by church leaders, decided to make the first step, lay down their guns as part of a mass movement and hand them in. It could be a ‘Gun Jubilee’ inspired by the cancellation of debts instructed in Deuteronomy 15.
It may sound naive but I think history tells us the only hope for radical change lies in some form of coordinated, faith-inspired, mass movement. Faith may be easily misdirected or corrupted but it is also the only force which can provide the sufficient bandwidth of public vision and spiritual energy to create change. At its best, authentic Christianity is personal, practical, public and political.
On December 1st 1955, Rosa Parks refused to move from her seat on the bus and sparked a critical phase in the civil rights movement. Who will be prepared to make a costly stand on this issue?
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