1. What are the most burning issues you are facing regarding the role of the churches in your society?

 Our public issues team is a joint activity with the Methodist and United Reformed Churches.  Whereas our Anglican colleagues, as the established Church have inside routes to political and social influence (through, for instance, the bishops who sit in the House of Lords), the free churches mostly do not. Our influence, therefore, is from the outside – lobbying, responding to consultations, helping shape opinion.  We do not want to change that.

The Union’s concern for society has to be seen in terms of the Union’s five core values: to be 

• A Prophetic Community

• An Inclusive Community

• A Sacrificial Community

• A Missionary Community

• A Worshipping Community

 Among issues on the immediate agenda are:

 a)    Resisting extreme right-wing opinions, particularly as expressed through the British National Party. The BNP sees itself as defending the interests of the white working class. Only white people may join, and its policies are strongly anti-immigrant. Many of its leaders have origins in groups that were more overtly fascist. At the recent elections to the European Parliament, two members of the BNP won seats. All Churches have united in opposition to the BNP. Their approach, however, raises questions of when church engagement is counter-productive: there are few church members in the social groups likely to support the BNP, so the Churches can appear to be confirming the prejudice against “the establishment”. On the other hand, the BNP presents itself as a party defending Christian civilisation, so the churches cannot remain silent.

b)    Also high on the Baptist Union’s agenda is the general area of racial justice, in our case focused particularly on the BU Council’s unanimous decision to issue an apology for the extent to which our present prosperity is based on the history of the slave trade, and the need to follow that up in terms of working out what it means to put right historic wrongs.

c)    While not one of the historic peace churches, the Baptist Union sets its face against violence means of solving society’s issues. It responded more actively than most British denominations to the Decade to Overcome Violence. At present the renewal of Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons is a key issue.

d)    At a less specific level, concern about the commercialised values of our present society – given a knock but not destroyed by the recent economic down-turn – would feature strongly. Pressures on marriage and partnerships, on welfare services, on personal relationships are often related to this overall commodification of everything. The Baptist tradition of covenant relationships, where the relationship is not defined in terms of one a participant gets out of it, is an important element in the denominational response.  

e)    Our Methodist colleagues have led us in taking a strong stand against the rapid expansion of gambling in our society.

2. How can the fellowship of member churches support the churches in the situation you are facing?

• Churches in the global South can challenge us on racial justice and the need to follow up in terms of working out what it means to put right historic wrongs.

• We can coordinate with other EU churches in responding to the different forms of extreme right-wing opinion that is seen across member states of the EU.

• We can work together on disarmament issues.

• We can share with other European churches in seeking to maintain a spirituality in Europe that is based on intrinsic worth, not monetary value, and the spirituality of sacrifice, not self-satisfaction.

3. In which regard and how can your experience enrich and be of relevance to the fellowship?

As a minority church, we have always seen our task as providing salt and light within a wider community, and have never sought the levers of power. We feel that that history makes us better able to help others for whom being a minority is a new experience – the situation for most of the former state or established churches in Europe.