Different normativities and their potential

One over-arching question for the ARCS team, as we developed our research methodology and learning, was the place and effect of what might be considered 'normative’ within a particular church group. This normativity would usually be identified in scripture, liturgical practice or ecclesial teaching. In fact, this has proved a problematic question, and it has often been difficult to find explicit discussion of the tradition and its effect on practice. It is as if that belongs to a language of theology that is not accessible - or, better perhaps, desirable - to ordinary church participants. This Housing Justice project, for all its fruitfulness for all concerned, was also characterised by a resistance to explicit faith or theological language relating to practice, as we have seen.

However, one advantage of turning speech in research into text is that it is possible to revisit it and ask fresh questions as thinking and sensitivities develop. In a meta-analysis session, when the outsider team were preparing the materials for this book, we revisited the following off-the-cuff exchange at the end of a volunteer focus group in Cycle Two of research.

BILL (QUAKER): I just wanted to say before we end that when I came up earlier this evening I thought, this is silly, you shouldn’t do this now, but actually it felt a little bit to be like a worship sharing space and I didn’t expect it to be like that at all, but people were quite open, so thank you for that; that’s a sense of where spirituality is, just a little bit, and there was a moment there where people were talking quite honestly and people were listening quite honestly. It was great.

JAMES (ANGLICAN): You are probably more used to this from a Quaker tradition, you know, this sort of set up. We all tend to sit in rows in church! (Laughter)

(Focus Group Two)

After the research with Housing Justice took place, we became more aware that disclosures are often present in laughter or interruptions or at points when the session isn’t ‘official’. This conversation, just as a focus group session is closed, is such a moment of disclosure. On one level, what we are seeing here is how the Christian tradition is transmitted in two different communities - Quaker and Anglican. What is striking is how it becomes clear that these different normativities affect the volunteers’ reading and experience of participating in the research. Bill discerns the focus group as being like a meeting for worship and so having the potential to disclose what is of God in everyone. The focus group is a kind of spiritual experience. The Anglican response is to refer back to the liturgy as the point of normativity; for James, it is in this more formal, ritual setting that God might be expected to make himself known. As researchers and reflectors, our normative experience shapes the very ways in which we participate and converse.

What is especially notable here is that it is the expression of the ‘outsider’s’ normativity that highlights the learning. As a Quaker, Bill is the outsider in this largely Anglican group, and it is precisely from this place that he is able to articulate something of what they have shared together. For the ARCS team, this insight mirrored our sense that the guests as outsiders were more easily able to articulate the theological significance of sleeping in a church than were their hosts.

An agency working ecumenically

A final significant aspect of this project was its intentionally ecumenical nature. The deliberate selection of an ecumenical project enabled both Anglican and Roman Catholic views to be included in a single case study. Something of the fruitfulness of this can be seen in the disclosures already described in this chapter. However, a further significant feature of Housing Justice was that it was an agency that, as ecumenical, worked in a particular way across local churches. In particular, access to the parishes involved seemed more straightforward than when we were working with dioceses and their agencies. Reflecting on this, we surmised that the Shelter coordinator, as an agency worker, had less complicated relationships with the parish clergy than if he had been a part of their respective hierarchies. Furthermore, there was a sense of parishes having a real pride in the work that was being done and so an eagerness to share it through research and reflection.

The final evaluation interview with Housing Justice also suggested that it may be that ecumenical settings create the expectation of difference and therefore better enable reflective learning. Such a culture within the agency opened people up to the possibility the research process:

A couple of years ago, when HJ was involved with the national Justice and Peace conference on migration, we wanted to give everyone an experience of being a stranger, so we deliberately gave everyone an experience of different worship - and 60 people came to the Quaker meeting and the only Quaker there was the guy leading the meeting and we’d laid out maybe 12 chairs, 8am before breakfast, thinking not many people would come, but they kept arriving and we increased the size of the circle until, in the end, people were spilling over into the pews behind the circle - the nuns loved it, they were ministering, we couldn’t shut them up!! It ends with everyone shaking hands.

(Final Evaluation Interview)