On Friday, St. Paul's Cathedral re-opened after a week's closure, blamed on health and safety issues related to the OccupyLSX (Occupy London Stock Exchange) tent village outside the iconic London tourist spot. While it was a significant seven days for Occupy London, with a second camp established at Finsbury Square and the printing of their own newspaper The Occupied Times, but the week was dominated by the public relations battle that has erupted around the proper role of the Church of England in social justice movements.
Let's not sugarcoat the outcome. This has been a disastrous week for not only the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's Cathedral but for the Church of England as a whole, as an institution that claims to have any relevance in the modern world. There are two main charges against the Church, but both revolve around that eternal question "What Would Jesus Do?"
The leadership at St. Paul's is suspected of placing monetary interests, and its relationship with the City of London, before support of the anti-corporate greed message outside their Cathedral. This may be a harsh assessment, but the words from St. Paul's --- and the corresponding silence of the Archbishop of Canterbury --- have made it an easy accusation to make
The most contentious aspect of last week's closure of St. Paul's was this: Who decided the occupylsx camp was a health and safety risk? Spokesmen for St. Paul's argue they received an independent report from advisers telling them that they were legally obliged to shut the Cathedral for liability reasons. However, it appears the Fire Brigade, the logical choice for conducting a risk assessment of the tents, was not consulted.
After the closure of the Cathedral, the protesters were quick to point out that the Fire Brigade, as well as the City of London Health and Safety Manager, had no substantive concerns with the camp's risk to life and limb. David Allen Green, legal correspondent of the New Statesman, has covered this point in detail, but the question remains of who conducted the initial assessment, and at whose behest. St Paul's are not saying despite repeated requests --- as Green quite comically relates --- and neither are the protesters, if in fact they know.
So the unsubstantiated source for the "independent advice" and the close ties between St. Paul's and the City of London raise suspicions. The Occupied Times examines the 1% background of the trustees of St. Paul's and concludes with a call to “the Good Christians of all stripes to throw the moneylenders out of the temple!”
The general concern is not that the members of the Church have no sympathy for the protesters, but that they are bowing to pressures placed upon them by their corporate friends in the City. As David Allen Green more gracefully implied:
The revealing back story to these decisions is that before Thursday last week the Cathedral was in fact dealing with the protesters directly, and on the Wednesday there was a wide-ranging meeting where variety of health and safety concerns were discussed, and constructive solutions agreed. Attending the meeting were those directly charged with maintenance and safety of the building. It was only after what appeared to be this successful and practical exercise in identifying and managing risks that the Dean and Chapter then moved to close down the Cathedral completely and to break off further engagement with the protesters. It seemed the mood of the Cathedral changed overnight on Wednesday and Thursday of last week.
This concern over association between St. Paul's and the corporate nabobs of the City of London was not assuaged by the news that they were beginning legal procedures to evict the protesters or the resignation of Canon Giles Fraser on Thursday. The Church has been tainted by the suspicion that it places concerns with its material interests over concerns about injustices.
This leads to the second indictment of the Church as a means of leading calls for social justice in the modern world. In Thursday's Evening Standard, the Bishop of London made some farcical comments about the Church's importance in leading demands for a more equitable global economy. I do not doubt his sincerity, but the following statement shows that the clergy, like the politicians who live in their own bubbles in Westminster and Washington, suffer from short-sightedness:
If the protesters will disband peacefully, I will join the Dean and Chapter in organising a St Paul's Institute debate on the real issues here under the Dome. We will convene a panel from across the political and business spectrum and will invite the protesters to be represented.
To be fair to the Bishop, St. Paul's Institute, with Canon Giles Fraser a leading contributor, has been calling for a more responsible corporate system over the last year. But the influence of that message, if indeed there were even any listeners, became apparent yesterday with the news that over the last year Directors' pay had risen by an average of 49%.
There is a slow revolution in people's perceptions of their democratic rights, and how to protest against the entrenched political system. Debates that change nothing, mass meetings that are ignored, and a vote every five years are no longer considered sufficient to break the influence corporate interests hold over our everyday lives. That is the lesson of the worldwide Occupy movement, almost as important as the grievances they have with corporate greed. It is a democratic upheaval of the "unheard", and if the Church wishes to remain the authentic voice of the dispossessed it needs to come down from its whited sephulcre and stand shoulder to shoulder with the protesters in its Courtyard.
The Church has a historic opportunity to remain relevant. The protesters on their doorstep have now issued their first concrete demands, calling for a democratisation of the City of London.
(For those who like a bit of historical irony, it was the City of London Common Council whoused St. Paul's Cross as their meeting place in the 18th century for agitating for democratic reform of “rotten boroughs." Thankfully for the City, the Occupy protests decry the "riotous" behaviour City radicalism inspired, most notably the "Wilkes and Liberty" Riots of 1768.)
For that relevance, the Church and its leaders need to recognise that new methods of communication have led to a change in the method and function of protests. Polite debates among the elites are no longer enough. The condescension in the Bishop of London's statement, "We will convene a panel from across the political and business spectrum and will invite the protesters to be represented,” leaps off the page. The point to occupylsx is not that they are fighting for the right to be “invited” to be heard; they are demanding to be heard.
St Paul's did not ask to become the centre of this controversy. Nor did the protesters plan for it to happen when they pitched their tents in the only space available to them after they were kettled in St Paul's Courtyard a fortnight ago. But the question of the Church's commitment, from the St Paul's Institute mission statement to fostering “an informed Christian response to the most urgent ethical and spiritual issues of our times: financial integrity, economic theory, and the meaning of the common good”, has now become the headline issue.
As the Independent notes, the debate has become "God vs. Mammon: Britain takes sides". And, in a country where the Church is largely regarded as a benevolent institution that reminds usall that a Christian concern for the “meek” is still the mark of a civilised nation, St. Paul's have been seen, rightly or wrongly, to take the side of Mammon.
In the words of a qualified authority on the Church of England: “The former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, described the situation as a 'debacle' which threatened to damage the reputation of Christianity.”