Faithful Cities - Cricket in Kew

This is, I am afraid, a shameless plug for my own parish, St Anne's in Kew, which is organising a celebrity cricket match on the coming Bank Holiday Monday to raise funds for its tercentenary restoration appeal and for React, a charity that helps terminally-ill children and their families. Vicar Fr Nigel Worn is pictured here with the actress Samantha Bond, who will open the tournament. She is currently starring in Michael Frayn's comedy Donkey's Years in the West End. One of the four adult teams will be made up of staff and friends of the Royal Botanical Gardens next door, led by RBG director Sir Peter Crane. (Note to Kew and Richmond residents: here's your chance to have a 'word' with him about Heathrow...the consultation on plans to end runway alternation has been delayed until autumn.)

St Anne's is the kind of parish I always dreamed of belonging to, through a peripatetic childhood and education and through frequent moves around different parts of London. Sunday after Sunday, it is packed, with worship that is traditionally Anglican-Catholic, (to the extent of being a Res A&B parish). The link with the local Queen's School goes nowhere near to explaining this, as most members of the congregation do not have primary school age children. The sense of community is wonderful, and events such as the cricket match are not infrequent.

St Anne's needs large sums spending on it, as do most churches of that age and older. But I cannot pretend that fundraising for such a church is not easier and more enjoyable than trying to resolve some of the problems of our country's deprived areas. The latest wheeze by the treasurer is to peruade members of the congregation to cough up £150 or more to have their names put on a bricks to form part of a new wall, a sublimely prescient appeal to our egos.

On Monday, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York will be in north London launching the latest follow up to Faith in the City, Faithful Cities. Here is my report on it in Saturday's paper. The new report will describe communities which may be prospering but may also be 'hurting', new prosperity that fails to reach the streets where there is real poverty and the growing gap between rich and poor. These are the kinds of communities where signed brickes go through the stained glass windows, not in the walls. Parishes where the frustrated desire to destroy must somehow be replaced by the desire to build.

The Bishop of Southwark, our bishop, was on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning, discussing the new report. His diocese has some of the most deprived areas of the country within it. Kew rightly pays a whopping quota, but no-one ever complains.

We don't see the bishop in our part of the world too often, he understandably has other priorities. But in places where material deprivation appears minimal, it is just worth speaking up occasionally for parishioners who are as faithful as any, in ways that remain effective if unsung, to the Christian mandate to help the poor.

ruth gledhill

Comments

[James]

Here in America, the biggest predictor of poverty is having no father present. Hence, the best way to help families in the poorest areas is to help families form properly and to stay intact. Christianity is certainly about that.

The next greatest thing you can do to help poor families is to force them to work (rather than to rely on the government to meet all their needs) - and to develop the desire to better ones lot in life. The government (or churches) can provide the basics - but should not roll over into providing comfort (for that drains away the incentive to work to improve ones lot).

Finally, kids of poor families should have a good and decent education.

With father present (and mom and dad married), with an incentive to work, and with a good education, poverty rapidly vanishes.

Here in America, most poor immigrants which meet those conditions are doing very well for themselves in the span of just one generation.

James