In this week’s New Statesman, the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, argues that society can learn a lot from faith communities.
To read the piece in full, pick up the magazine on news-stands from tomorrow. In the meantime, here are some highlights.
Looking at new research by the Harvard sociologist Robert Puttnam, Sacks writes that places of worship still bring people together in “mutual responsibility”:
The evidence shows that religious people — defined by regular attendance at a place of worship — actually do make better neighbours.
The research shows that this willingness to give time to volunteering is directly tied to the frequency with which they attend a place of worship. Sacks suggests a reason for this:
Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good… There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious community that makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighbourliness.
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“If we’re searching for the big society, this is where we will find it,” writes Sacks. However, he is not romantic about this, and expresses some reservations about the big society agenda:
Does this mean that we are about to become more religious as a society, or that charity is an adequate substitute for government spending, or that faith communities are our only source of altruism? No. Britain, relative to the US, is a highly secular society. Philanthropy alone cannot fill the gap left by government cutbacks. And the sources of altruism go deep into our evolutionary past.
To read the piece in full, pick up a copy of the magazine on news-stands in London from today or subscribe.
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