Snippet
Care
Comment
Community
Mental Health
2 min read

Who holds the vital ingredient as healthcare shifts from hospital to community?

The trusted anchor institutions that can provide pastoral care and more.

Esther works as a Senior Consultant for the Good Faith Partnership. She sits in the secretariat for the ChurchWorks Commission.

A social prescribing project in full swing.
A social prescribing project in full swing.
Theos.

On 11 November, the Good Faith Partnership, the National Academy of Social Prescribing (NASP) and the Bishop of London convened a roundtable discussion in the House of Lords to call for a collaborative relationship between faith groups and NHS social prescribing providers. 

Faith leaders from the major religions in the UK gathered alongside senior officials such as from the Department for Health and Social Care, NHS England and arm’s length bodies.  

‘There are lots of exciting opportunities with a new government in place,’ said Charlotte Osborn-Forde, CEO of NASP, adding that as part of her desire to see social prescribing available in NHS services beyond GP surgeries ‘there are huge and untapped assets in communities.’  

Marianne Rozario from Theos, the lead researcher on a groundbreaking new report on faith and social prescribing, elaborated, saying that faith groups are trusted anchor institutions in local communities that are well networked, offer resources in the form of buildings and volunteers, and have expertise in pastoral and spiritual care.  

Mark Joannides, Deputy Director for Community Health in the Department of Health and Social Care, added that: ‘Faith groups are going to have to be part of this,’ when referring to the government’s health mission and the three big shifts from hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention.  

The conversation focused on how this integration could take place, particularly through securing shared investment funds for faith groups, co-locating healthcare services into faith buildings, and integrating faith groups into the NHS 10-year healthcare plan. 

A range of ideas were shared by those present including the importance of investing in faith groups to provide palliative care, focusing on reducing health inequalities, and investing in local infrastructure.  

On 30 January, Good Faith Partnership and Theos will publish the first ever report into the role of faith communities in the social prescribing system. This timely report collates research into the role of faith groups in social prescribing and aims to facilitate further discussion on how collaboration between faith groups and the NHS can support the needs of the most vulnerable in our society. Alongside the report, two ‘How To’ guides will be published, providing faith leaders and social prescribing link workers with a step-by-step process for building relationships with one another.  

To hear more about the research recommendations, explore next steps and to access the practical ‘how-to’ guides register for a free hour-long webinar on 30 January using this link: 

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Article
America
Comment
Nationalism
Politics
3 min read

The dangerous prayer that Donald Trump is about to pray

What it really means to call on God in an age of messianic mimicry.

Jared holds a Theological Ethics PhD from the University of Aberdeen. His research focuses conspiracy theory, politics, and evangelicalism.

The US Capitol, where Donald trump will be inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States

The most important moment in the inauguration will occur in a blink of an eye. A matter of seconds. As President-elect Trump takes the oath of office, hell voice a prayer spanning four simple words, so help me God.”

This isn’t the first prayer we’ve heard from these steps. Trump echoes prayers offered by a mob of his supporters ascending those very Capitol steps just a few years ago. The possibility of pardons confronts this administration from Day One. Perhaps, in a few years’ time, a statue to a J6er will stand in the Capitol Rotunda. I remember reading that prediction from a journalist in the days immediately following, and couldn’t imagine it. Now? I can.

The party platform has become the communion table. Our prayers are filled with content of ideology and theology. We have shown ourselves to be captive to the zeitgeist of our time, consuming propaganda and debating the truth” about January 6, 2021 in ways that betray our own capitulation, justifying an ascendant administration casting the shadow of authoritarianism with its aspirational populism and tech oligarchs.

 

To invoke the God of the Christian faith is to invite dispossession and disillusionment with all we once counted necessary” and took for granted

We cannot consider what it is to be Christian before American. This collusion makes it clear why and how Trump assumes the Presidency as a convicted felon without losing much of his Christian” base. Why? Because we failed to pay attention to the prayers of January 6th. To the god they revealed in our midst, and the militant devotion this god demands. A god who is a paranoiac, split between ideology and theology, whose spirit bears the name Jesus” only in messianic mimicry.

How might we regain our footing and our faith? It begins with taking prayer seriously. If the Christian life is—ever and always—a life of calling upon God” (as the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth put it) then our attention must be placed upon this small little prayer packaged in the Oath. Perhaps we pray this prayer ourselves: So help us God.”

Because it is a dangerous prayer. We have forgotten: it is dangerous to call on God. This presidential prayer invokes divine aid to preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution, but to invoke the God of the Christian faith is to invite dispossession and disillusionment with all we once counted necessary” and took for granted, all as the consequence of encountering the Crucified One.

Some see in Trump the advent of revival in America. Some see in Trump democracys executioner. But to invoke the name of God in America is to make us radically free and thus responsible to Gods command of peace and justice.

The Dutch Reformed pastor, K.H. Miskotte, whose ministry took place in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, saw it clearly: this God is a saboteur. To invoke this God invites sabotage, and grants us a dissenting faith, one marked by abject denial and disbelief in all other claims to totality and authority and power.

Might we dare to believe such power operates in and through a prayer that cynics count as propaganda?

If the rogue word became Trump and rages among us; then it is the responsibility of Christians to remember as well the Word once for all delivered to the Saints. And the surest sign of this remembrance is not activism first, but the renewal of our prayers.

There is then, a powerful reality at work in this four word prayer. To pray to the God of Jesus Christ is to invoke and provoke sabotage of all our schemes, our slogans, our rogue words. And even in this, we can be confident that this triumph of God is for our good. It was Walter Wink who, with an eye on the earliest Christians, came to ask

What happens when the State executes those who are praying for it? Even as the lions lapped the blood of the saints in the Roman Colosseum, Caesar was stripped of his arms and led captive in Christs triumphal procession.”

Might we dare to believe such power operates in and through a prayer that cynics count as propaganda?

In the renewal of our prayers, perhaps a truly Christian resistance can emerge in our days. A resistance grounded in confession, a witness in word and work to the risen Jesus who lives against all messianic mimicry, who promises us a Spirit of malice towards none and charity for all”—as Lincoln recognized, in his own inaugural address to the American people in 1864.

May we continue to pray, so help us, God,” unafraid of where this God leads us in freedom.