Theos Report on the Cost of Living Crisis

A new-ish report from Theos was published a while back, but I am late in catching up:

Hannah Rich, A Torn Safety Net: How the cost of living crisis threatens its own last line of defence (London: Theos, 2022).

Here are some paragraphs from the Theos website:

‘While the cost of living crisis has made life acutely less secure for many people, this level of chronic insecurity has been growing over the longer term…

‘This report is the culmination of a year-long project exploring how insecurity, both economic and social, is affecting churches, faith groups and local communities…

‘The report details the scale and scope of this issue, which we argue constitutes an emerging “social recession”. We argue also that there is a strong theological rationale for taking insecurity seriously as a socio-economic issue, distinct from poverty, rooted in the Old Testament.

‘It is critical that community and faith groups are supported and secured both during and beyond the current crisis, and to this end we offer policy recommendations which focus on systemic as well as individual insecurity.’

More information can be found here, and a pdf of the full report is available here.

Jonathan Tame and Luke Tame on Reimagining Social Welfare

The latest Cambridge Paper from the Jubilee Centre is available online (here, from where a pdf can be downloaded), this one by Jonathan Tame and Luke Tame:

Jonathan Tame and Luke Tame, ‘Reimagining Social Welfare: Lessons from Geneva’s Transformation’, Cambridge Papers 26, 4 (December 2017).

Here is the summary:

‘Britain’s social welfare system is facing a long-term crisis in sustainability, particularly due to the size of the government’s unfunded pension liabilities. On the 500th anniversary of the Reformation we look to Geneva as a case study in an approach to social welfare shaped by Christian principles. We examine how Calvin and the city-state set up an integrated system for welfare provision through the General Hospital, and poverty prevention by strengthening families and education. Five main themes are drawn out, which provide some historical distance to our own challenges regarding social welfare. The paper then considers how marriage and extended families could be strengthened, and local churches and Christian organisations can become welfare advocates in their communities.’

Theos Report on the Future of Welfare

Nick Spencer (ed.), The Future of Welfare: A Theos Collection (London: Theos, 2014).

The wonderful, energetic – and generous – team at Theos have produced and made available another report, this one a collection of essays around the topic of welfare, seeking to address the key underlying issue: what is welfare for? ‘Without thinking through the purpose of welfare, the volume argues, we are unlikely to reform it in anything more than a piecemeal and pragmatic way.’

‘Theos invited some of the country’s leading thinkers on welfare to explore the moral logic of, and future hopes for, the welfare state. With a wide range of contributions from politics, think tanks and academia, a foreword from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and an afterword from Tony Blair’s former Head of the No. 10 Policy Unit, The Future of Welfare is a uniquely broad and important contribution to one of the biggest domestic political debates of the early 21st century.’

More information is available here, and the full report is available for download here.