Account of practice E: Housing Justice
Project time frame: February 2008-March 2010
Introductory narrative
Housing Justice1 is an ecumenical charity that supports local churches and church-based projects that want to take action on homelessness. It campaigns for affordable housing, raises awareness about homelessness and inadequate housing, seeks to represent the voice of the churches to government and within the voluntary sector and promotes innovative Christian responses. One aspect of the charity’s work concerns working with groups on the ground to secure night shelter accommodation for homeless people, especially during the winter months. In particular, the ‘rolling church model’ has become widely used as a way for a group of churches in a locality to provide shelter seven nights. Seven churches in a local area co-ordinate the work, with each opening up their facilities for one night a week. This is a particular church-based outreach as well as an ecumenical effort across Christian communities in one place. Researching with volunteers working with this model gave the ARCS team the opportunity to explore with practitioners themselves the theological significance of this grounded, practical and ecumenical work. This was a particularly fruitful example of working with a practitioner group over two cycles of theological action research (winter 2008 and winter 2009).
The theological action research process was aided by the fact that the charity itself had a long-standing interest in and some experience of theological reflection and was looking for a project that would enable it to fulfil that interest. When the opportunity to take part in ARCS came along, they were eager to participate, and, unusually, initiated the research collaboration. Two warm-up meetings took place in late 2007 between ARCS team members and representatives from Housing Justice, from which it was agreed that the action research could be rooted in the work of a cold weather shelter in one London borough (Islington), where - following the rolling church model - seven churches in the same locality each provided a night’s food and accommodation for people sleeping rough in the months of January to March.
The identification of a research question involved both Housing Justice and the particular Cold Weather Shelter. In the first cycle, the question that arose concerned how participation in the shelter scheme affected the theological outlook of the churches concerned, as well as a secondary concern as to how such an integration of ad extra practice and ecclesial identity might be enabled:
- • How does the parishes’ involvement in the Cold Weather Shelter influence the theological outlook of the churches and the faith practice of individuals involved?
- • How might ways be developed of enabling the churches to reflect theologically on the impact of their involvement with the Winter Shelter?
- (Remit Document)
To work with the ARCS team, an insider team of reflectors was drawn from members of Housing Justice and the coordinator of Islington Churches Cold Weather Shelter. The first cycle of research involved recording conversations from focus groups of volunteers, in two groups, one from a Catholic, one from an Anglican parish; and ’guests’ (those sleeping and eating at the night shelters) in another. In addition, there were interviews with church leaders and the night shelter co-ordinator. The data was shared for reflection by both the ARCS team and Housing Justice team - a practice by this time established as part of the theological action research process -and the two teams fed back to each other on their reflections. This material from Cycle One was rich in a number of ways, as illustrated below, but it raised a particular question about the use of religious language, or the naming of faith, which whilst prevalent among the guests, was shied away from by the volunteers. It seemed that the guests generally took a more explicitly Christian understanding of the work of the Shelter than did the volunteers. This led to a Cycle Two of the process, in which excerpts from the original guests’ focus group were discussed in focus groups of Volunteers, so as to explore further their motivations and their relating of faith with their practices as volunteers. There were also additional interviews with clergy from the participating churches at this stage.
This project was an especially rich one for deepening our theological understanding of the theological and ecclesiological significance of ad extra church work. Not only were Housing Justice familiar with theological reflection and so more immediately in tune with theological action research but it also became clear that there were particular advantages in working with a small, entrepreneurial, faith-based agency because of the flexibility and creativity of the organisation. More of this is said below. Learning from this ARCS project helped to improve training programmes and hospitality practices at borough shelters across London, as Housing Justice developed their approach in response to the theological action research process. At the same time, this was a project that led to a significant publication,2 as well as a highly successful piece of post-graduate research form the ARCS Fieldworker.5
