After ten years of austerity the Life on the Breadline team are exploring Christian responses to poverty. It is the first theological project to explore Christian action on poverty since the global financial crash. The team want our research to make a real difference.
Life on the Breadline lead researcher, Chris Shannahan, has been reflecting on transforming structural injustice ahead of the workshop on this theme on 13 September 2019. (Quoted from an original post on the Church Action on Poverty blog. Click here to read in full)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously suggested that: The Church is not simply called to bandage up the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice but to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.
In our three year ESRC funded Life on the Breadline project, we are asking ourselves whether Christian action on poverty during the age of austerity is bandaging up its victims wounds or moving beyond this to challenge structural injustice and drive a spoke into the wheel of unjust structures and systems. The Church is better placed than almost any other institution to challenge grassroots poverty in a coherent and sustained way because it is deeply rooted in local neighbourhoods across the UK. What does the Church do with this power?
The Life on the Breadline team are hosting a participatory one-day workshop entitled Transforming Structural Injustice on Friday 13 September 2019 at the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University to explore some of the ways in which the Church can live up to its calling to tackle the root causes of poverty, build a just society and begin to identify ways in which we can transform structural injustice in breadline Britain.