Dignity: an introduction

Poverty is not entertainment, it’s not noble or romantic. Poverty is … heavy. It’s heavy hearts and heavy legs. It’s sore skin and hollow eyes. It’s upset and downhearted. It’s hunger. Malnourishment. It’s always thinking about the next meal. Poverty is bailiffs, it’s food banks, it’s queues and lists, it’s never being told what you’re entitled to but always being told. Poverty is being shown up then put down.

The opening lines of Tony Walsh’s poem ‘Poverty’, written over a weekend workshop with a group of people who shared and reflected on their own personal experiences of poverty, reveals something of the indignity of living in poverty in the midst of a supposedly affluent society.

Poverty is not only deprivation of economic or material resources but also, according to the United Nations, fundamentally a violation of human dignity.

In the UK, poverty is strongly associated with public attitudes of stigma and blaming individuals for their own poverty. Professor Ruth Lister describes this in terms of the ‘othering’ of people living in poverty. Over many decades, this attitude has been embedded not just in the welfare system, but in the way many professional agencies exercise moral judgements and highly intrusive methods of controlling the behaviour of people living in poverty. These attitudes have also been internalised by people in poverty themselves, to the extent that they describe a sense of shame, or in the words of Wayne Green, who spoke at our first National Poverty Hearing in 1996:

“What is poverty? Poverty is a battle of invisibility, a lack of resources, exclusion, powerlessness … being blamed for society’s problems.”

The Churches have not been immune from these attitudes, too often treating poverty as a problem to be addressed through individual behaviour change, or in more theological language ‘saving’ people from their selfinflicted poverty. This is the context in which poverty – and even many

conventional attempts to tackle it – rob people of their dignity, agency or power over their lives.

In spite of this, Church Action on Poverty affirms the belief in the transformational possibilities of people coming together to reclaim their dignity, agency and power.

As Duncan Forrester has written, “human beings are entitled to be treated with respect because they are of equal worth, independently of their ability, contribution, success, work or desert. That is the bottom line” (On Human Worth: A Christian Vindication of Equality, SCM Press, 2001).

For Christians, the centrality of human dignity is based on the foundational theological principle that all human beings are created in the image and likeness of God.

In On Human Worth, Forrester explores this theme in some detail:

“All human beings are created in the image of God, they all share equally in this crucial, definitive characteristic. There is no question of some being more and others less involved in the imago Dei as the created order is concerned. The imago Dei speaks both of the importance of equal relationships and of the need to give equal respect, treatment and indeed reverence to all, for all bear the image even if now only in partial and broken form. The image of God is thus a way of affirming and interpreting human dignity.” (On Human Worth, SCM Press, 2001)

This approach to placing human dignity – and human rights – at the centre of a Christian response to poverty is also reflected in Pope Francis’ recent encyclical, Fratelli Tutti. As Maria Power has reflected, this “offers a new vision of society in which human dignity and the human rights of all are respected … He has always wanted to make it clear that his papacy is one of action – placing the needs of the poor, marginalised and disenfranchised at the centre of his ministry” (From Fratelli Tutti, by Maria Power, The Conversation website, 5 October 2020).

God’s ‘preferential option for the poor’ is not some idea concocted by liberation theologians in Latin America in the 1970s, but a core element of Jesus’ life and ministry. In this section, Kate Brumby, Jimi Calhoun and Hazel Palmer reflect on different biblical passages which explore the same

themes that elsewhere Aidan Donaldson has described in terms of ‘encountering God in the margins’:

“The sense of fear, isolation, loneliness and rejection experienced by people living in the margins was no doubt experienced by many of those whom Jesus encountered. Throughout the Gospels we are told not only that there were numerous groups of people who were marginalised by society and whose human dignity was not recognised – including lepers, women, sinners and the poor – but also that Jesus actively sought out these people and brought them back into the community. What is remarkable, indeed revolutionary, about the way Jesus approached those who were social outcasts is that he preferentially reached out to them.” (Encountering God in the Margins: Reflections of a Justice Volunteer, Veritas Publications, 2010)

Many of the worship resources in this chapter reflect on the same theme: that God is frequently to be found on the margins, and in many ways turns upside down our conventional thinking about the importance of ‘the margins’ and ‘the centre’.

As Anna Ruddick has said,

“Our tradition reminds us that God kind of likes the margins. God isn’t a very ‘centre of power’ type God. God is a ‘create a world and entrust it to humanity, choose a people and follow them through their mistakes, prefer prophets over kings, choose a teenage virgin from Nazareth and become human, hang out with social outcasts and annoy the establishment, refuse to become their Che Guevara and instead wash people’s feet, die on a cross’ type of God. So God seems to be a marginal God, and God’s not the only one for whom marginal space is generative.” (In the Thick of It: Stories, Experiences and Reflections on God’s Kingdom in the Margins, United Reformed Church, 2020)

Equally, human dignity is not just a theological concept or a way of being church: It has real-life consequences for how we engage with poverty – and with people who experience it – in the here and now.

In this section, Stef Benstead and Sandra Rice reflect in different ways from personal experience on the ways in which poverty undermines dignity. Josh Seligman reflects the hopes of many, in yearning for the day when no one will have to visit their church needing food.

In 2016, the Independent Working Group on Food Poverty in Scotland placed the idea of dignity at the very centre of its plan for addressing food poverty:

“A truly dignified system would be one where everyone is food secure, with access to adequate, nutritious and culturally appropriate food, without the need of emergency food aid. It is one where the right to food is understood as a matter of justice rather than charity.”

The group – which crucially included people with lived experience of poverty – identified four principles which should guide a dignified response to food insecurity, but are of equal relevance to each and every attempt to tackle poverty: Involve people with direct experience of poverty in decision-making; recognise the social value of food in building community; provide opportunities to contribute; and leave people with the power to choose for themselves (Dignity, Ending Hunger Together in Scotland: The Report of the Independent Working Group on Food Poverty, 2016).

Amongst the anguish of many, there are stories of hope. We share movement stories of Self-Reliant Groups and Local Pantries, reflecting on concrete ways in which Church Action on Poverty has enabled different groups of people experiencing poverty to come together to reclaim their own dignity.

Niall Cooper