Faith and Volunteering in the UK: Towards a Virtuous Cycle for the Accumulation of Social, Religious and Spiritual Capital?
In the context of a communitarian discourse under the New Labour government (1997-2010), the theoretical concept of social capital as developed by Putnam1 was influential on policy in welfare and community development. Faith communities, particularly those in ethnically and religiously diverse urban...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
[2011]
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| In: |
Diaconia
Year: 2011, Volume: 2, Issue: 2, Pages: 175-209 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | In the context of a communitarian discourse under the New Labour government (1997-2010), the theoretical concept of social capital as developed by Putnam1 was influential on policy in welfare and community development. Faith communities, particularly those in ethnically and religiously diverse urban areas, were recognised as banks of social capital which could, as it were, be invested for the public good in areas such as urban regeneration, social welfare and - especially after September 2001 - in community cohesion and national security. Since 2010, under the coalition government headed by David Cameron, the notion of 'the Big Society' has been central in policy discourse. Under both governments, voluntary groups, including faithbased congregations and charities, have been urged to play a more significant role in community work and social welfare, and the 'volunteer' is portrayed as the archetypal good citizen. Debates continue as to whether this offers a genuine space for religion to make a contribution in the public sphere and/or whether it is the state seeking to control and exploit the voluntary and faith sectors, in part as a cynical cost-cutting exercise.2 In developing the debate on the relationship between faith and social capital, Baker and colleagues at the William Temple Foundation, drawing on Bourdieu's3 work on different forms of capital, have introduced the notions of 'religious capital' and 'spiritual capital'. In this article it is argued that when considering volunteering in such a theoretical framework, it is essential to examine the relationship of labour to the different forms of capital. One must recognise that volunteers, in supplying unpaid labour to churches and other religious or not-for-profit organisations, are among other things involved in an economic transaction. To what degree is the Marxist view that the accumulation of capital depends on the exploitation of labour relevant in this context? This article considers some of the empirical evidence from recent UK surveys and reports which cover faith and volunteering and which highlight their limitations in exploring the relationships between the different forms of capital. It then draws on qualitative reflections on the author's recent role as manager of a community centre attached to a Christian church building in a city in the north of England. In delivering a 'diaconal' programme of social care and community service activities reaching homeless and elderly people, the centre relied heavily on volunteers from the local community beyond the committed faithful members of the local church. Volunteers ranged from those whose motivations were religious or largely altruistic to those with instrumental motives and those whose unpaid labour was to some extent coerced by statutory agencies. Not only does this stretch the definition of the term 'volunteering', but it also raises some ethical and theological issues for a church espousing Christian values of justice, truth and human dignity while seeking to operate in the secular space of the public sphere. |
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| ISSN: | 2196-9027 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Diaconia
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.13109/diac.2011.2.2.175 |