“Growth” is the mantra of the present government. We need to grow the economy to remedy the ills of society, from an NHS on its knees, to schools in desperate need of repair, to a grossly deficient housing stock.

Economic growth however has its downside. We are already beginning to see evidence of this in threats to the green belt and in the exhaustion of natural resources. Many would say that we need to live more simply so that we, along with the other inhabitants of the planet, may simply live.

Do all forms of economic growth come with an environmental price tag? If investment is in cleaner and more sustainable forms of energy, then this may not be so. However, without growth worldwide financial institutions would stumble towards collapse, but with economic growth we intensify and hasten ecological collapse.

From a Christian point-of-view we need to see everything in the widest (the divine) context. Here, growth is not just a matter of economics or of the FTSE index, but is about personal and inter-personal possibilities. The industrial revolution was a period of unprecedented economic growth but its initial effects on very many people was exploitation, slum housing, diseases, and inhuman working conditions. It was not until later that reformers and subsequent legislation sought to rectify all this.

Growth in the personal sense may in some degree depend on increasing societal wealth, but it is a far wider concept than that. We need to grow our public goods, our neighbourhood resources, all that makes for the common good.

Churches and other religious bodies can play a vital role in furthering neighbourliness and helping each other grow to our full potential. The term salvation means making whole, which is as much a question of repairing a damaged society and damaged lives, as pursuing material growth.

• Question: Are we in thrall to a particular idea of growth which may yield short-term benefits but long-term cost?
• Question: What alternative ways are available to embrace growth without destroying the planet?
• Question: Is growing profitability always good? Is the growth of the number of billionaires a good thing? Is a major increase in taxes always bad?

We are still treated to fantasies of unlimited growth, together with dreams of guaranteed happy endings, delusions of power and fables about inevitable progress. Once upon a time the churches aided and abetted this way of thinking -“Thy  kingdom stands and grows for ever until all thy creatures own thy sway’. But things have changed, at least in the West. The decline of the church demands  a new humility and complete re-think (repentance). There is evidence all over the place of church communities which are discovering and living out liberating stories culled from the Bible and the Christian tradition which inspire new growth from the bottom up. These are not fixated on numerical growth  -“bums on seats”-  but on spiritual growth, in wisdom, kindness, character, interdependence, courage and agility,

• Question: How can we effectively bring the wisdom of God to our populist short-term world of misinformation?
• Question: How can we in practical terms bring kindness and compassion to the world round us?
• Question: How can we locally deepen and realize our interdependence in our increasingly fragmented society?
• Question: How should our educational system promote growth in wisdom?
   

About the Public Square Group

Towards the end of 2020 a group of us, mostly from the organisation ‘Modern Church’, expressed a deep concern about the breaking down of relationships at a number of different levels and also a sense of anger and frustration at the amount of injustice that nobody seemed to be addressing. We decided to write a manifesto which mentioned issues such as the breakdown of unity, nationally and globally, the strong economic challenges that lay ahead and the need to avoid placing the burden on the poorest sections of society, the need to work internationally to fight against climate change, greater integrity in politics and the media, and the provision of generous hospitality of welcome towards refugees and asylum seekers. The Public Square Group has held a number of zoom meetings, and has created subgroups to address these issues.   

Further details at https://www.crconline.org.uk/resources/articles/public-square-group

From the New Testament

Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour.                             (Luke 2:52)

And he said to them, ‘Pay attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. For to those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.’

He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’

He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’                                                  (Mark 4:24–32, NRSV)

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food; for everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.                (Hebrews 5:12–14)

All Scriptural quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (Anglicized Version), copyright 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.