The Ezekiel of the East End: Lord Mawson's take on the Social Gospel

[...] Casting around for a blueprint for how he might begin to play a role in the community, he [Rev (now Lord) Andrew Mawson] picks up the Church of England's Faith in the City report, much admired at the time in liberal circles, not least because it incurred the displeasure of Mrs Thatcher, who regarded it as a sign the church had gone socialist.

Mawson gives it short shrift: "To me it seemed to be a document full of pious academic theory about the poor, thrashed out in senior common rooms of theological colleges and British Universities by people who had never built or changed anything in their lives ... I threw it in the bin."

Mawson gets his "bolt out the blue" during a meeting at religious retreat in Kent. A fellow East End Methodist minister "dares" to suggest that socialism doesn't actually work, and is in fact "the engine of poverty". Mawson is never the same again: "It was time to face up to the hypocrisy of my own liberal religion - and dump it."

Later on he meets Peter Thomson, an Anglican priest best known for a time as Tony Blair's religous "guru," who becomes Mawson's mentor. He takes Thomson on a tour of the East End to show him "what the public and voluntary sectors were up to", and is intensely gratified by Thomson's blunt Aussie reaction: "Shit, mate, what are these liberals on about?"

Business, which he had been brought up to be suspicious of, forms the core of Mawson's new secular belief system. He finds inspiration at Tesco and McDonalds, and oppressive hypocrisy at [sic: and] the town hall and hospital. He sees salvation for socially-excluded individuals through enterprise, not welfare systems or philanthropy. Read more
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