The Archbishop of Canterbury’s
recent pronouncement that he wanted to see payday lenders such as Wonga put out
of business should be cheered to the rafters. At last we have one Christian
leader who is an exception. Why ?....... because he is prepared to take a
public stand for the values of the Gospel.
We should not allow the fact
that his church’s investment arm had previously invested a small amount of its
funds in one of Wonga’s backers, detract from the potential benefits of his
plan.
Interviewed by Total Politics
magazine, the Archbishop said: “I’ve met the head of Wonga and we had a very
good conversation and I said to him quite bluntly ‘we’re not in the business of
trying to legislate you out of existence, we’re trying to compete you out of
existence.’ He’s a businessman, he took that well..........
We’ve got to have credit
unions that are both engaged in their communities and much more professional,
and the third thing is people have got to know about them. It’s a decade-long
process.
We’re putting our money
where our mouth is, we’re starting a Church of England staff credit union.
You’ve got to have a corporate interest body to identify who’s members of the
credit union. We’re starting one of those so we’re actually getting involved
ourselves. We’re working steadily with the main trade bodies for the credit
unions.”
The Archbishop wants the
Church to open up its network of 15,000 church premises to existing credit
unions and offer volunteers to assist with their promotion and operation. A
former business executive who has been fiercely critical of the banking industry,
the Archbishop wants to help expand the credit union movement as an ethical
alternative to an industry which many ordinary Christians consider to be
morally bankrupt.
The Revd Dr Peter Mullen,
writing on the Archbishop Cranmer blog has hailed Archbishop Welby for his
plain speaking: “We should be thankful for that we have for Archbishop no
Regius Professor of Obfuscation but a man who speaks as we speak in the street.”
Dr Mullen is right. Justin
Welby by speaking plainly about the issues that really matter to ordinary
people might just have found a way of helping the church reconnect with
society.
Christian leaders at local
level could take a leaf out of Welby’s book if they really want to be taken seriously
by ordinary people. Plain speaking in the public square works. After all, that’s
what Jesus did.
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