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WORKING TOGETHER FOR GREATER SOCIAL JUSTICE

Canon Jeremy Davies, Precentor (Wednesday 23rd March 2005)

It has probably filtered down to the Cathedral community at large that, over the last few months, the Chapter and the senior management team have been working together at a programme of reappraisal – looking at our vision, objectives, purpose and aspirations – and ways of implementing these. Implementation of course includes how we all work together and communicate, and already some staff, volunteers and congregation members have been involved in this redefining exercise. It’s a fascinating and revealing process which raises difficult questions requiring both imaginative and practical answers. We are being helped in this programme of redefinition by a consultancy team called Telos (the Greek for ‘goal’).

Recently, during a 24 hour session, the whole group with our Telos consultants were having a convivial supper. In the course of conversation at our end of the table, a question was asked about one of the Cathedral’s aspirations, namely “working together for greater social justice”.
“What does that really mean?”
“How does the Cathedral do it?”
“Should the phrase be removed since it sounds more like a gesture than a reality?”
“It has to be a central Christian aspiration, you can’t just abandon it.”
“Yes but what do we do about it?”
Another of the group illustrated the point.
“The Canons are all governors of schools in Salisbury, but they are all fee paying independent schools. We’re not governors of schools in the maintained sector where educational standards, resources and facilities have to be struggled for.”
The discussion continued. “Yes”, it was agreed, “we do support the Salisbury Trust for the Homeless and Amnesty, we help those in need and trouble when asked and pray for the Sudan. Perhaps most important, members of the Cathedral community do give sacrificially of their time, money and effort to support good causes, including involvement in Salisbury schools.”

“But”, said one of our members, “the Cathedral spends more money on cutting the grass in the Close than on issues of social justice.” It was a revealing conversation.

Things are happening to move aspirations off the paper on which they are written into the lifeblood of the Cathedral community. Easter is all about resurrections.

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