Clergy and laity differ sharply in their attitude to poverty, new research from the C of E’s Church Urban Fund (CUF) suggests.
The Church Times reports that the research, which combines data from the British Social Attitudes Survey, an annual survey of about 3000 people carried out by the National Centre for Social Research, and a survey of about 100 clerics carried out by CUF this year, found that three-quarters of these clergy said that poverty was caused by “social injustice”, compared with just one fifth of churchgoers.
Seventy-one per cent of the clergy said that large income-differences were “morally wrong”; 36 per cent of churchgoers agreed. Clergy and laity also differed in how much poverty they thought existed: 76 per cent of the clergy said that there was “quite a lot” of child poverty; 37 per cent of churchgoers thought the same.
The chief executive of the CUF, Tim Bissett, said that he found the findings “shocking and surprising”, and that there was “a clear need for churches to be better informed about the human impact of poverty in this country. . .
“Our hope and vision is that every church, in every community, will get involved in tackling poverty in this country, but for this to happen there needs to be much greater awareness of what it means to be poor.”
On Monday, the Association of Christian Financial Advisers (ACFA) issued a statement warning people “not to take out short-term, high-interest pay-day loans” to meet Christmas expenses. The organisation said that each year about four million people in the UK “spend beyond their means to pay for Christmas”, and that the average British family spent between £530 and £682 on gifts, much of it using credit cards.
The ACFA also called for a maximum rate of interest on payday loans, “as more are turning to short-term loans to help them make it through to pay day”.
A survey published last week of about 2000 people, commissioned by the insolvency trade body R3, and carried out by ComRes, found that 45 per cent were struggling “to make it to ‘pay day’”. R3 said in a statement that “3.5 million adults are considering taking out a pay-day loan over the next six months.”