Last Thursday I attended the dialogue held in the memory of RH Tawney. Tawney was an academic who along with Temple and Beveridge believed there was a role for the state in creating a welfare society. Furthermore, his own personal faith informed this perspective.
This year the Tawney dialogue covered the issues of the credit crunch from a faith based perspective. Examples include how a principle of Islamic finance is that there should be a link between the borrower and the lender. This has broken down in the creation of derivatives that packaged debts. Others might consider how the incentives offered by city bonus culture led to reckless or greedy behaviour. This might imply possible financial market reforms. In any case the recession following the credit crunch has turned a financial market problem into a social problem. Social institutions such as churches and all people of goodwill will be called upon to respond to this.
Unitarians have a history of being on the side of social reform. In the modern era the church as an institution has had to deal with the question of how far concern for a fairer society is the responsibility of the private citizen or the state. Now more than ever, this is a debate that cannot be ignored.
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