Circling Around

New Street looking west in downtown Birmingham

My stay in the UK to this point has been fairly, well, “protected?” Most of it was spent within the rarified atmosphere of an academic city and that within a theological college. Some time was spent on pilgrimage to religious sites of significance taking in the experience of the pilgrims’ way by staying in hostels rather than plush hotels. Other days were in more posh locations like London’s Kensington and Notting Hill neighborhoods attending meetings of canonists and jurists and more academics.

Upon completion of my time in Cambridge, I took a trip to Birmingham, England’s “Second City.” Birmingham is an industrial center in the west midlands of England – more Pittsburg or Chicago than London or Boston. Hardscrabble in areas, very diverse in language, ethnicity, religion, and politics, Birmingham probably reflects more of what today’s Britain is like than what one sees on YouTube travelogues and vacation brochures. As large and influential as it is, even my tourist “bible” (anything by Rick Steves) didn’t even have an entry for the city.

I think that’s what made it intriguing for me. Birmingham lacks the medieval walls of York. Its churches are large, and some are notable, but few make the impression of, say, York Minster the Cathedrals of Ely or Lincoln. Birmingham is populated by second and third generation descendants of Commonwealth transplants from Pakistan, India, the polyglot nations of Africa, and the far East. Victorian era Anglican churches, built primarily to care for the spiritual and often the physical needs of factory workers, stand next to twentieth-century mosques, and Sikh temples. Hillel grocers are on nearly every street corner – or at least most green grocers offer Hillel products.

Modern middle-class grade high rise apartment complexes dot the suburban landscape around the Olympic style arenas where the Commonwealth Games are held periodically, and older housing is being rehabbed and updated with high-tech and high-end appointments. All this evident from the number of DYI and big box tech stores along the major access highways and the empty boxes and dumpster rentals at the entrances to the older developments along the way.

It is an area of contrasts. Along with this sense that it is an area “on the move” the marks of a darker side still manifest themselves. Gang graffiti tags overpasses and industrial buildings. Carcasses of cast-off vehicles and long neglected retail spaces litter other, clearly forgotten neighborhoods.

A newspaper recently carried the headline that economic stats indicated that the UK would avoid the forecasted recession. All this sounds vaguely familiar. What is interesting to me is that in the UK credit for that accomplishment is being taken by a conservative government. In the US, it is being touted by an administration that is professedly left leaning. In the end, it seems, it may not matter who is in charge. Maybe the 18th and 19th century economic philosophers who speculated about the “invisible hand of market forces” were correct after all. If that is true, what is important is what we do with the wealth we derive from these forces.

As Anglicans, we may need to revisit the social ethics of thinkers like those of the Oxford Movement, who saw within the gospel message proper correctives to the excessive drive toward the accumulation of wealth and power. Perhaps we need to get our religious values reoriented away from the priorities of the “prosperity gospel” and toward a “preferential option for the poor.” Just perhaps, it’s time for a rethink about what Jesus had to say about whose kingdom we pray for each day.