ECG - Living and Working Together

I spent last October near port cities of similar size- New Orleans and Gothenburg: ports however with very different histories. The American Deep South has along history of displaced, poor and enslaved people – in whose plight Europe was deeply implicated. West-facing Gothenburg was founded in the16th century and heavily influenced by the seafaring Dutch. It grew in importance for foreign trade in the next century largely through the Swedish East India Company. Today it is the home of well known firms like SKF and Volvo. Like most European port cities, jobs in traditional heavy industry like ship-building are being replaced by retail, high tech, banking, financial and educational establishments. There is considerable unemployment. Molnycke, in the parish of Rada which hosted the General meeting, grew up to supply labour for the local paper mill which has become a victim in the decline of this most traditional of Swedish of industries.

Gothenburg is also a meeting place, where flows of people have come, seeking shelter and prosperity. Like many European cities, they are coming from South to North and East to West and from the villages. Here is where the world meets and seeks to live and work together in mutual dignity and respect. My own otherwise fairly unremarkable city has a large, now British- born population of South Asian origin with their distinctive culture, dress and faith-places and also a growing number of refugees from poverty and war-torn regions along with seekers of safety from tyranny and persecution. In Derby we also have large numbers of migrants, able now to come and seek work from the newer member countries of the European Union. (A recent British newspaper carried a desperate advertisement in Polish for workers to return for the growing number of unfilled vacancies).

At the same time, competing manufacturers are moving in the opposite direction – from West to East where labour is cheaper and profits are higher. In the European city, they leave behind many unskilled and excluded workers. In the European countryside, there are long working hours, unsustainably low income and progressive loss of amenities on the farm and in the village. In Britain and elsewhere young people born and raised there cannot afford village house prices as much wealthier suburban city dwellers, finding their rural idyll, displace them into the city. For the first time, essential farming jobs are being taken by transient migrant labour. Britain is participating in the shaping of a new Europe. All in November: London at last joined the rapidly expanding European high-speed rail network. (It is now as quick to travel from London to Paris as from London to Manchester- quicker to Brussels);German Railways bought the English Welsh and Scottish rail freight company and young people of immigrant origin protested their exclusion in the barren suburbs of Paris. I was impressed by the efforts of the now disestablished Church of Sweden to gather together all the resources of parishes across Gothenburg and to re-deploy them to target the areas if greatest poverty and exclusion in the city.

It is for the support of those of us across this fast-changing and mutually dependent continent who work in rural/urban/industrial mission that we need the kind of learning and sharing network that the European Contact Group provides. We need more groups and Churches from Britain to participate actively in the movement. The ECG hopes to appoint a network developer in the next two years. I believe the future programmes agreed at Gothenburg are relevant to the IMA and its membership.

The programmes to be pursued cover five areas. Engagement with the World of Work and the Economy is the core of our activity as industrial chaplains. It is about the re-engagement of the churches with the world of work. Work Integration and Religion in Europe promises to address the relevance of faith in secular institutions, multi-faith issues and the spirituality of work. Women’s Issues include unequal pay and the exploitation if sweatshop and home workers especially amongst migrant women and those from some ethnic groups. Women are also often the key to multi-cultural understanding. Training is much more than learning how to perform tasks. It starts with the experience of being with people in specific living and working places, and leads to the development of skills in the processes of analysis, empowerment, transformation and theological reflection. Hope for the Villages deals with the issues rural and village life and the critical state of the rural economy which affects the whole of Europe and beyond.

Sharing a few days with ecumenical friends from 10 countries of our fast-changing continent – with a little help from Southern Africa - was always going to be a very valuable learning experience to bring home – if home is not now Europe. The hospitality of our Swedish Lutheran hosts was excellent in their superbly equipped parish centre and delightful mediaeval wooden church. I have not set out to give a blow by blow record of the ECG General Meeting, but to try briefly to show how I believe the ECG movement and its life is more and more relevant to the work of the Kingdom in Britain and in a continent of new social and economic structures, new population flows and unprecedented cultural diversity. I wonder how far we in Britain’s churches are spiritually ready and able to participate in the life of this new Europe.

A Reflection on the ECG General Meeting in Gothenburg