Anglican Communion News Service - Digest News

Archbishop Robin Eames addressed the Friends of the Salvation Army N.I. in Hillsborough Castle, Co Down.

A Call for Debate on our Future

"The Salvation Army is often the cutting-edge of society's social conscience. Its consistent, organised and transparent work takes it to places and in ways the institutionalised social conscience fails to reach. Its work for the most vulnerable of our society is the true embodiment of the Christian response for 'the cup of cold water' for the thirsty respectable society often passes on the other side of the road.

While most publicity attaches to their work at time of community crisis such as bombings in London, our own troubles here and the provision of practical assistance through the likes of soup and tea kitchens to those caught up in the aftermath of disasters, insufficient attention is given to the on-going community work for the young, the elderly and the unwanted.

In a consumer-orientated society there is a great danger that the gulf between the haves and the have-nots will widen and in ways that are subtle and not always recognised. On one side we have an Ireland which indicates economic growth and a growing number of the rich. On the other increasing numbers are becoming captives of the poverty trap and not always of their own making. I am increasingly concerned about the forgotten of our society - children being captured in poverty. I do not believe Irish society is as aware of this statistic as it ought to be. Next month I hope to emphasise this fact in a Forum on Child Poverty to which we will welcome among the contributions that of the Salvation Army. It is here, among those who face the hopelessness of poverty, real poverty, that the social witness of the Salvation Army means so much.

But there is a wider issue for which the Salvation Army social work cries out to be recognised. There is now in Northern Ireland an urgent need to debate fundamental questions about the sort of society we are creating for the future - and the sort of society we should be creating.

The society of paramilitary violence is changing, the political scene is changing, the economic picture may need new confidence, but it too is changing. But what standards, what principles, what practices do we want for the most important picture of all - the nature of life for all ages, all outlooks, all hopes and all fears, for the Northern Ireland of the future?

This is a debate whose time has come ...

It is not a debate dependant on political aspirations. It is not a debate dependant on the views of one section of society rather than another. It is about rights and obligations, about level playing fields of equality, it is about self-esteem and it is about how we value the individual. The real worth of the individual has been a major casualty of our troubled past. Life has become so cheap. Too many feel marginalised even alienated from the privileges they see others enjoying. There is deep anger and resentment among those who feel society has let them down.

Northern Ireland is a society of contradictions. Those contradictions pose their own questions about the sort of society we need to build. On the one hand we are generous and compassionate in our response to appeals. On the other we are a violent society where life is so cheap. On the one hand there are many so comfortably off - on the other in working-class areas there is so much evidence of economic and cultural alienation.

Christianity through the Churches must engage and encourage this debate. The work of the Salvation Army must touch our consciences and ask its own questions.

But that debate must begin - and begin in earnest.

What sort of society do we want for our children and grand-children?

The question cannot be left to legislation, to politics alone, to economists alone - it must concern us all if we are to build the truly just and compassionate society in our hearts we want."