Introduction: social policy and religion
Religion has not been a topic of major concern within British social policy scholarship. Mention of it tends to occur within the context of brief historical references to the origins of certain social policy sectors such as education or healthcare provision; and significant intellectual currents such as nineteenth-century Christian Socialism which some scholars argue helped bring momentum for the establishment of a universal welfare state. Mainstream social policy textbooks tend to classify religion in terms of ethnic minority and charitable organisations as part of the broader framework of the mixed economy of welfare paradigm (for a full review, see Jawad, Reference Jawad2012).
The UK (and England in particular) represents one of three types of church−state relations in Europe, this being where close ties are maintained between both entities (Minkenberg, Reference Minkenberg, Madeley and Enyedi2003). The other two types are: strict separation between state and church, such as in France; and church−state separation, but with discretionary privileges for the main churches, such as in Germany (Minkenberg, Reference Minkenberg, Madeley and Enyedi2003). This institutional perspective on church−state relations means that there is a real impact on public policy, since the relations between church and state are not just a reflection of other political or social factors such as class relations, but are a structural arrangement that ‘provides “opportunity structure” for religious interests in the political process’ (Minkenberg, Reference Minkenberg, Madeley and Enyedi2003: 196). Minkenberg (Reference Minkenberg, Madeley and Enyedi2003: 206) argues further that in Western societies, the churches act as ‘para-public institutions’ due to their special social and political status, and their regular pronouncements on public policy issues such as education, family policy and social welfare. The outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, falls into this mould.
This article offers a critical overview of the role of religion in British social policy using analytical perspectives from within the subject of social policy which has deep attachments to liberal secular ideals of egalitarianism (Offer, Reference Offer2006; van Kersbergen and Manow, Reference van Kersbergen, Manow, Castles, Liebfried, Lewis, Obinger and Pierson2011). Thus, it asks key questions such as is there more to religion than the mixed economy of welfare, and how does a religious perspective impact on our conceptualisation of wellbeing and social welfare? This line of enquiry forms a key contribution of this article since the main thrust of the current literature on religious welfare is based in disciplines such as social work, governance and the sociology of religion (Dinham and Lowndes, Reference Dinham, Lowndes, Dinham, Furbey and Lowndes2009; Bäckström and Davie, Reference Bäckström, Davie, Edgardh and Pettersson2010; Bäckström et al., Reference Bäckström, Davie, Edgardh and Pettersson2011; Furness and Gilligan, Reference Furness and Gilligan2010). Thus, the argument that religion matters not just at the level of cultural heritage and ideas, but also acts as an important demographic variable for the formulation and evaluation of public policies, is a key axis of the argument presented here (Aspinall, Reference Aspinall2000; Francis, Reference Francis, Spalek and Imtoual2008).
The article is divided into two parts. First it examines the ways in which religious welfare organisations are active in key social policy areas such as health, poverty reduction, housing and urban regeneration. This offers empirical examples of religious welfare organisations based on the research conducted for this article, but also discusses the broader debates and implications thereof, surrounding the involvement of religion in social welfare. The second main section considers how the arguments of the article can lead to a rethinking of social policy, most notably in terms of how human wellbeing is conceptualised, hence the proposal that religious welfare challenges Utilitarian notions of welfare will be discussed. The section introduces the concept of ‘ways of being’, in order to bring the analysis in the article together. This is more fully discussed in Jawad (Reference Jawad2012). The conclusion summarises the key arguments of the article.
Thinking about religious welfare: some key dimensions of provision
Religious welfare organisations in the UK fulfil a variety of roles that may be described in part as ‘scratching the surface’ of social deprivation (Taylor, Reference Taylor, Davie, Heelas and Woodhead2003), and in another sense as bringing about more fundamental impact on the societies they serve. This section reviews some of the key accomplishments of these organisations based on new and existing empirical research in the key social policy areas, namely education, health, poverty reduction and urban regeneration. For clarity, the organisations that were involved in the research are registered with the Charity Commission and comprise of both paid staff and volunteers. The organisations were, therefore, not congregations of worshippers, even though most of them were physically located on the same premises as their place of worship. They were drawn from the nine major religious faiths namely: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Baha'i, Zoroastrianism and Jainism. However, due to space restrictions, this article will not give empirical examples from every one of these faiths.
Education
The role of religious organisations around the world, particularly in terms of offering formal schooling for children, is a defining feature of religious engagement in the public sphere (Parker-Jenkins et al., Reference Parker-Jenkins, Hartas and Irving2005). In the UK, the national Churches played a fundamental role in the introduction of mass education in the nineteenth century as well as the provision of Ragged schools and Sunday schools for children from poor backgrounds. Liberal political leaders of this era saw education as key to the creation of a national British identity and thereby modified the role of the Anglican Church in education accordingly. Thus, Judge (Reference Judge2001) argues that there is a privileged, though at times ambivalent, role for the Church in the British education system. This is reflected in the dual mission of the Church of England as having a general ‘public’ purpose which is to educate the population at large into a shared system of common values and national culture, but also as a ‘domestic’ mission which is to inculcate the Anglican faith in the new generations (Judge, Reference Judge2001: 466). The nineteenth-century Christian Socialists, who played a fundamental role in developing new thinking around social welfare in the British context, considered education and awareness raising to be key pillars of human wellbeing because of their adherence to values such as personal responsibility, the work ethos and self-help (Jawad, Reference Jawad2012). This legacy has survived among faith schools and religious welfare organisations offering social welfare support today.
The close association of the Church of England with the British education system has resulted in a system of state-funded faith-based education in England and Wales. Altogether, around 36 per cent of the UK's school age children attend faith-based schools. Private fee-paying faith schools do not receive the same kind of public scrutiny as state-funded ones for the obvious reason that, in the case of the latter, public funds within a secular liberal democratic nation need to be justified if they are to be spent on a religious establishment.
Indeed, religious involvement in education often comes under scrutiny with respect to its impact on social cohesion and civic values (Judge, Reference Judge2001). Most notably in 2001, riots in the North West of England prompted a government enquiry, the Cantle report, which argued that British society was becoming socially and geographically segregated and that the educational system had a part to play this. Yet research evidence suggests that faith-based schools provide standard mainstream education similar to, and in some cases better than, their secular counterparts (Parker-Jenkins et al., Reference Parker-Jenkins, Hartas and Irving2005; Tinker, Reference Tinker2006; Flint, Reference Flint, Dinham, Furbey and Lowndes2009). They also perform better in certain cases in strengthening community ties and civic education. A further argument is that rather than religious divisions, it is socio-economic and class divisions which are translated geographically in the UK, and which pose a much bigger challenge to social integration.
Jackson (Reference Jackson2004) presents some of the arguments for and against state-funded faith schools: on the positive side, in the interest of justice and fairness, including the right of parents to educate their children as they wish, faith schools should be funded; faith schools also have high academic achievement rates and often play a very positive role in promoting social cohesion. On the negative side, faith schools may undermine personal autonomy by teaching a particular religious world view as superior to others; faith schools may also undermine social cohesion when they are tightly focused on a single faith, especially if the local community is predominantly of that faith, and the admissions policies of faith schools often give preference to children of their own faiths. Researchers further argue that it is family life and not the school environment which has a greater impact on issues of religious tolerance and social cohesion. To this end, Tinker (Reference Tinker2006) cites Barabara Lal's ‘ethnicity paradox’ hypothesis, which is that being confident about one's ethnic identity would help them become active and productive citizens. Conversely, other researchers have argued that family and ethnic ties are less important for school children than peer group relations in their classrooms at school even when these are not faith–based schools (Flint, Reference Flint, Dinham, Furbey and Lowndes2009).
The inverse of this debate, which is highlighted by researchers, is that non-denominational community schools may not provide an environment which is tolerant of the religious needs of children coming from religious backgrounds, and, more importantly, they do not perform better in terms of social harmony and social cohesion. The key argument here is that social divisions are more likely to be exacerbated by social and geographical divisions based on class or wealth inequalities (Tinker, Reference Tinker2006; Flint, Reference Flint, Dinham, Furbey and Lowndes2009).
Religious organisations involved in the research upon which this article is based were involved in a wide variety of education-related services, such as running City Academies and providing English language and citizenship training for asylum seekers and new immigrants. Youth activities, be they leisure-related or academic and vocational training, are also a central plank of the work that faith-based organisations do in the UK. For these organisations, focus on training and education is a way of developing a sense of being a productive citizen and of integrating populations particularly if they are of immigrant background and have poor language skills. This is the focus of Faith Regen, an Islamic organisation working in London which provides education and training opportunities for women from ethnic minority and Muslim backgrounds.
Healthcare provision
In the field of healthcare, increasing recognition, by health professionals and health researchers alike, of the social and psychological aspects of physical wellbeing has gained greater force in the last decade (Swinton, Reference Swinton2001; White, Reference White2006). This has helped to factor religion into wellbeing not just in order to provide better patient care, but also to better understand health inequalities (Mir and Sheikh, Reference Mir and Sheikh2010). Mir and Sheikh (Reference Mir and Sheikh2010) report on a variety of ways in which health risks can be left undiscussed, or treatment delayed, due to problems of communication about religious faith.
Such issues highlight the importance of holistic approaches in healthcare that can respond better to patients’ ‘moral and biographical needs’ (Kellehear, Reference Kellehear and Rumbold2002) and point to the redundancy of the traditional biomedical approach in healthcare which gives precedence to clinical treatment of isolated physiological symptoms (Stewart, Reference Stewart, Nash and Stewart2002). The holistic view echoes the various religious traditions which are fundamentally concerned with the nature of disease and wellness: in Hinduism, there is a well-known medical system for the promotion of health and longevity called Ayurveda, entailing a holistic overview of health based on a balance of mental, physical, spiritual, social and environmental wellbeing (Shah and Sorajjakool, Reference Shah, Sorajjakool, Sorajjakook, Carr and Nam2010: 40). In Judaism and Islam, physical cleanliness goes a step further with the practice of circumcision on male new-borns (Mavani, Reference Mavani, Sorajjakook, Carr and Nam2010).
In the UK, the Department of Health Patient's Charter stipulates ‘respect for privacy, dignity and religious and cultural beliefs’ (cited in Gilliat-Ray, Reference Gillliat-Ray2003: 335). Yet in practice discussion of a patient's religious or spiritual values or concerns remain confined to the hospital chaplains who are far from being integrated into the core health care teams looking after the patient's physical health. Health chaplaincy can have a real impact on patients’ decision-making regarding medical treatment, and on how they deal with both illness and treatment. To this end, White (Reference White2006: 56) advocates a ‘multi-professional and whole-team approach’ which creates opportunities for talking, learning and sharing ideas about spirituality in the team but at the same time. This approach views discussion of spirituality as a core part of health-care provision with implications for the most mundane tasks, for example how staff are dealing with a particularly bad death or if they are struggling with diagnosis.
One English NHS Trust which has sought to implement a more holistic approach is The Sussex Partnership Trust, using a ‘Spirituality Strategy’ with the aim of adding spiritual care into ‘every care worker's skill mix’ (Harlow, Reference Harlow2010: 621). Key to the success of the strategy has been identifying and resourcing ‘spirituality advocates’ (Harlow, Reference Harlow2010: 615). Existing members of staff who already have direct contact with patients, such as nursing or therapy staff, tend to take on this role. Chaplains also actively support the care workers, and are expected to train local members of the community to offer spiritual care support. Additionally, the Trust holds an annual conference on spirituality. Activities such as mediation, Yoga and Reiki now form part of clinical psychology care services (Harlow, Reference Harlow2010). The strategy ‘uses the word “spirit” to describe the inner life of human beings – their emotions, intuitions, values, desires, and creativity’ (Harlow, Reference Harlow2010) and is now in its tenth year.
Religious welfare organisations provide a variety of services, often tailor-made to meet the specific needs of particular religious communities, be they strict Orthodox Jews, Christians following the example of Christ's healing ministry or Sikhs seeking to enhance the health of their local community. A noteworthy example is The Hansy Josovic Maternity Trust (HJMT) at Homerton Hospital in Hackney, East London. This was initiated by the local (Jewish) Hassidic umbrella NGO called Interlink which is based in Stamford Hill. In this strict Orthodox Jewish community, new mothers-to-be or women with no family support make use of a birthing companion or ‘doula’, alongside the midwife. HJMT collaborated with the City and Hackney Primary Care Trust to introduce a similar programme called ‘Birth Buddies’. Funded directly from mainstream PCT funds, the programme is now commissioned to HJMT and has helped the hospital reduce the number of caesarean operations and provide better health outcomes for mothers and new born babies. For Interlink, this is the Big Society in action.
Poverty reduction
Poverty reduction and economic justice also figure strongly in the work and discourses of religious organisations in the UK. Poverty may be understood in three different ways from a religious perspective, having material, spiritual and civic dimensions (Wallis, Reference Wallis2002). Whilst all religious traditions have injunctions to help the poor, and religious welfare organisations in the UK actively see themselves as helping individuals and communities living in need, it is the Church of England and other smaller Church groups that have been most outspoken in this regard. They have produced various reports which have sought to engage directly with analyses of the causes of poverty in the UK and the policy options to combat them, with a key theme being work and employment. Thus, a key concern to the Church of England is that all people should access ‘good work’ and that work should be seen as primarily vocational.
In terms of religious welfare organisations, a full appreciation of the extent and impact of their poverty-reduction services is difficult to achieve due to a lack of systematic research in this area. The Northwest Development Agency, the Faith-based Regeneration Network and the various Faiths Forums have produced various reports that seek to categorise these activities. For present purposes, these services are split into three main strands as follows, based on the empirical research conducted by the author:
1. In-cash assistance: charity collections are an important part of the work of both religious places of worship and faith communities in the UK, especially during religious occasions such as Christmas or Ramadan. This is often a congregation-based activity that asserts religious identity and revolves around religious worship. For Muslims, it is the principle of Zakat, which involves an act of money transfer symbolising solidarity, but also a religious purification of a person's wealth (Jawad, Reference Jawad2009). For Jews, it is the principle of tzadekah. Religious welfare organisations also give one-off financial assistance, such as for covering emergency expenses or daily activities such as getting a bus pass. Admittedly, the number of people involved is small and the sums of money are also small. More organised methods of cash assistance involve credit unions such as the gemach in the Hassidic community of North London.
2. In-kind assistance: food and clothing banks, as well as soup kitchens, are a very common and widespread way among religious organisations of delivering vital emergency supplies to people in need. Typically food offerings from harvest festivals and Christmas may be divided into parcels and given to families in need or used in communal meals. Some organisations, such as the Trussell Trust, a Christian-inspired organisation, operate as food banks sending out thousands of food parcels to families around the UK. According to the Trust, foodbanks help prevent crime, housing loss, family breakdown and mental health problems. Vouchers are issued to public sector care professionals such as doctors, the local police, social workers and Citizens Advice Bureau. They identify people in need and give them the food vouchers to go and collect food and other vital housing needs from their local foodbank.
3. Retraining and employment services: the larger and more professional religious welfare organisations, such as the Salvation Army and the Faith Regen Foundation, take on government-funded contracts within the Work Programme to find training and work placements for unemployed people. These organisations are sometimes allocated people from ethnic minority backgrounds or ‘difficult cases’ such as people in long-term unemployment. The Salvation Army has an Employment Plus Programme which employs staff who are not religious or Salvation Army members. A similar situation exists at Faith Regen, which is a Muslim organisation. The service-users in these programmes are also from a wide variety of backgrounds and know hardly anything about the religious character of the organisation. Members of staff involved directly with clients speak of the culture of ‘humanity’ within the organisation, which means that clients are properly listened to and the members of staff enjoy a good work rapport. Being able to get involved in such programmes gives a chance for minority religious organisations to prove that they are able to act in dynamic and responsible ways as citizens in the UK.
Housing and urban regeneration
The subject of urban regeneration is vast in the religious welfare literature, so this section can only highlight some of the key issues. The UK government has increasingly begun to take into account the needs of religious communities and also what part they play in the development of harmonious and socially cohesive communities (Flint, Reference Flint2010). In addition, religious organisations offering social welfare services in Britain have themselves catered to the housing and social needs of deprived people, in informal long-established ways such as soup runs and night shelters, or more formalised temporary housing provision such as the paid-for accommodation in the Salvation Army's life houses. So the core idea is that where we live matters a great deal for how we live, and therefore our wellbeing (Holloway and Moss, Reference Holloway and Moss2010). This is not a new idea for social policy – it raises concerns about geographical localities that lose out in the process of economic urbanisation, the particular association of poverty to urbanisation and the inner-city and, thus, the geographical segregation of poverty in advanced capitalist societies such as the UK (Beaumont, Reference Beaumont2008). This is symbolised by the idea of the ‘city’ as a shared space for living which is especially poignant in Christian thought. Indeed, a Christian focus is not coincidental in the discussion of urban regeneration.
This sees religious groups moving beyond social service provision to more socially transformational forms of political mobilisation, such as in the example of the Citizens UK movement which was begun by a Quaker. As Smith (Reference Smith2004) notes, church groups, and the Church of England have significant geographical spread and politico-economic clout in order to engage with government-funded community regeneration projects on a large scale. This is also evidenced in various Church of England publications, such as Faith in the City, and the formal establishment of the Church Urban Fund which works closely with government to oversee resolution of inner-city deprivation (Taylor, Reference Taylor, Davie, Heelas and Woodhead2003). Here, we briefly review two cases, one looking at the role and impact of religious housing associations (Flint, Reference Flint2010) and the second looking at more traditional emergency relief services by religious groups such as soup runs and night shelters (Cloke et al., Reference Cloke, May and Johnsen2010).
1. Religious Housing Associations: Flint (Reference Flint2010) offers some insightful research on religious housing associations in England: most of these have Anglican, Roman Catholic, Methodist and Evangelical associations, but, since the 1970s, more non-Christian associations have come into being, particularly Jewish and Muslim ones. Flint (Reference Flint2010) notes that the presence of religious housing associations in England is part of a longer tradition of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) housing associations from the 1970s, with very few international parallels anywhere else in the world. These associations are funded directly from mainstream government budgets. In Flint's (Reference Flint2010) view, religious housing associations do not lead to urban segregation, although their contribution to promoting cohesion is not conclusive. For example, the government's national priorities in relation to community cohesion are not necessarily communicated to or shared by local organisations. Thus, Flint (Reference Flint2010) argues that the greatest contribution that faith-based housing providers may make to cohesion is through advising other landlords about accommodating the diverse needs of their tenants in relation to faith. This could facilitate ethno-religious diversity within urban spaces of social housing.
2. Emergency Relief Services for the Homeless: Cloke et al. (Reference Cloke, May and Johnsen2010) highlight the key role of religious organisations in more traditional emergency or outdoor relief homelessness services, such as night shelters, soup kitchens, hostels and day centres. Cloke et al. (Reference Cloke, May and Johnsen2010) argue that these form alternative, informal and less well documented spaces of urban activism whereby services to the homeless are provided on the basis of a logic of ‘compassion and care’, in contrast to the conventional logic in urban policy of social control, containment or punishment. Key to Cloke et al.'s (Reference Cloke, May and Johnsen2010) argument is that religious groups offering services to the homeless are not exclusive to religious people but very often incorporate people of no faith, and activities that have no religious character. Cloke et al. (Reference Cloke, May and Johnsen2010) see in this a ‘rapprochement between public secularism and private religion’ and ‘a new form of ethical citizenship’ which promotes the agency and autonomy of homeless citizens. Ironically, Cloke et al. (Reference Cloke, May and Johnsen2010) note that soup runs face a challenging existence due to hostility from both government and other homelessness agencies who accuse them of condoning street life and addiction by making food and basic supplies available to people on the streets. Moreover, they are accused of not distinguishing between deserving and undeserving street sleepers and squatters.
Rethinking social policy: wellbeing as ways of being
Is there more to religious welfare then than the mixed economy of welfare, and what rethinking might religious welfare prompt of how we understand human wellbeing? The extent to which liberal democracies can accommodate free religious expression and action in the public sphere has haunted Western European society for a long time (Herbert, Reference Herbert2003). Concerns surround not only the appropriateness of public funds going to organisations that have religious missions but also the risk that religious organisations are working undercover through the provision of social services. But where does this leave arguments about the common good being a matter for all segments of society to have a say in, and the state not being dominated by any one particular group? Surely, the main priority for a democratic society is to give an opportunity for all voices to be aired (Trigg, Reference Trigg2007)?
The examples of religious welfare provision discussed in this article may thus be viewed in two ways: they may praised as tailor-made services that respond to specific needs among specific people. It is difficult to escape the fact that members of the same religious faith will flock together; in the end, religion is about a system of shared beliefs. A senior and well-informed observer of the religious welfare sector argued during the research for this article that if religious communities are serving the needs of their members without discriminating against outsiders or instilling a sense of exclusiveness in their services, then this is a valid social welfare function. Yet an alternative view might be that for the same reason, faith groups are isolationist and threaten the principles of social citizenship.
It is possible to argue therefore, that religious welfare goes beyond the mixed economy of welfare paradigm within which it is classified under the voluntary or third sectors. Religion has informed the institutional development of the welfare state in Britain historically (as also argued in the review article of this themed section). Moreover, the phenomenon of religiously based welfare can imply a qualitative shift in thinking about social welfare, based on the argument that people are more than just individual citizens with rights and obligations in relation to a welfare state − they are conscious meaning-making purpose-seeking social agents. The article thus proposes the concept of ways of being (see Jawad, Reference Jawad2012, for a full discussion of this concept) which emphasises that the good society is not one based on individual material outcomes that are deemed as good and desirable for the majority population, as in the Utilitarian definition, but one where an individual's whole approach to living is the yardstick by which social welfare is measured. This is not far removed from ideas about religion itself being a way of life and an all-encompassing worldview.
Wellbeing in this view is fundamentally related to human nature and morality, as already argued by some social policy scholars (Jordan, Reference Jordan2008; Spicker, Reference Spicker2011). This lays a premium on morality and duty as the main axes of social action, and not happiness as a transient form of pleasure (Kenny and Kenny, Reference Kenny and Kenny2006). This argument requires moving beyond Utilitarian assumptions about the maximisation of individual pleasures and is more akin to Aristotle's notion of eudaimonia, which points to deeper senses of meaning and personal fulfilment that amount to the literal translation of this term as ‘a worthwhile life’ (Kenny and Kenny, Reference Kenny and Kenny2006: 14). To a certain extent, this idea is encapsulated by the holistic and personalised approach to social service and community engagement which animates religious actors and organisations as highlighted in some of the empirical research reviewed in the previous section. Both Christian and ethnic minority religious groups are tightly connected to the communities in which they operate. The act of living among the people they represent and work with is one of social and personal transformation that goes far beyond a view of social welfare as an output or an outcome. As an example, the Evangelical youth organisation, the Mission, which works among deprived housing estates in South Manchester, requires its youth support workers to live within the community and share in its daily struggles. This process of self-identification is more complex than the notions of compassion or empathy or altruism. Such forms of personalised or community engagement would be difficult to re-enact on the much larger institutional scale of the welfare state, but they do help to emphasise recurring questions among social policy scholars about the capacity of the welfare state to continue to foster social solidarity and wellbeing.
This means that religious welfare organisations may contribute positively to civic life and personal wellbeing. As Herbert (Reference Herbert2003) notes, the major theorists of our times, such as Kymlicka, who have debated the compatibility of liberal societies with religious views, argue that identity and culture are fundamental to an articulation of human rights. This parallels the argument made by the Church Urban Fund, that questioning the means of economic production and exchange is only scratching at the surface − what is required is a deeper questioning of the purpose of economic life itself. These are inevitably moral debates that social policy has begun to show renewed appetite for (Jordan, Reference Jordan2008; Rowlingson and Connor, Reference Rowlingson and Connor2011; Spicker, Reference Spicker2011). A religious perspective shares in these moral debates in that measures of welfare outcomes inevitably reflect the normative values of the policies that have underpinned them. Clarke (Reference Clarke2004) aptly argued that social policy is deeply about the identity of a nation and the political order that structures and produces social relations. This argument is expressed well by Deacon and Mann (Reference Deacon and Mann1999: 433) as follows:
Welfare policy is either about enabling people to make responsible choices or it is a form of social engineering. If it is the former, then it must engage with behaviour and the moral decisions that people make. If it is the latter, then the debate is about what sort of society it wants to engineer and which set of moral codes it wishes to impose. The tension between these options cannot be resolved; policy will either treat the poor as moral defectives or as moral agents.
Conclusion
This article has sought to achieve two purposes: first is has brought together primary and secondary research to offer a broad-brush overview of how religion is interacting with social welfare provision in the UK at both state and non-state levels. It has focused on the key social policy areas of education, healthcare provision, poverty reduction, housing and urban regeneration. This review has illustrated how religion has increasingly become intertwined with statutory welfare settings such as the NHS or the education system, and also how religious organisations operate as independent charities. It has shown that on the one hand religious organisations are able to meet key human needs related to poverty and social deprivation in the areas of education, health support and housing, and that they do this in a way which emphasises the role of human identity and social relationships in the social welfare process. On the other hand, religious welfare organisations respond to key cultural needs and indeed social deficits inherent in particular religious communities. This is a double-edged sword since it may be seen as promoting social cohesion in some respects and social segregation in others. Thus, the article has sought to prompt new thinking on religious welfare using the analytical parameters of social policy. The argument has been proposed that religious welfare goes beyond the mixed economy of welfare and prompts a rethinking of the meaning of wellbeing beyond Utilitarian understandings of individual outcomes to an emphasis on the moral and ethical dimension of human life, the focus on social relationships and the importance of human identity in understanding processes of wellbeing. A religious perspective on social welfare emphasises the deeply moral nature of social policy and may potentially open up new avenues for exploring new meanings of wellbeing. To this end, the article has proposed the concept of ways of being as a broader and more ethically laden term which suggests that the good society should aim to abide by standards of social ethics and not happiness as defined in Utilitarian thinking.
Acknowledgement
This article is based on a monograph by the author entitled Religion and Faith-Based Welfare in the UK: From Wellbeing to Ways of Being which is published by The Policy Press in September 2012. Readers may also find the review article in this themed section useful in supplementing the arguments provided in the article.
