Driven by Purpose: Charities that make a difference
by Stephen Judd, Anne Robinson and Felicity Errington
Published by Hammond Press
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Driven By Purpose has been shortlisted for Australian Christian Book of the Year in 2013. View the shortlist here.

In the first part of this book the authors  trace the particular way in which charitable services in Australia evolved, which resulted in Christian charities dominating the social service landscape in a manner not seen elsewhere in the Western world. 

Given this dominance, the lack of acknowledgement of the role of faith in the charity scene is remarkable.

In the recent academic and political literature on not-for-profits and the distinctiveness of the Third Sector, the ‘faith factor’ – arguably one of the Sector’s most distinctive characteristics – is largely ignored, bypassed or dismissed. It is often noted in passing or flagged as mildly interesting, a quirk of Australian history, but is rarely addressed head-on.

Why is this so? The primary reason for the lack of exploration of the nature of Christian charities is a lack of understanding of any form of belief-driven action in the public sphere.

To illustrate, take the analogy of a football club, say, Collingwood. It is more than simply a club: Collingwood is a community of people.

For the players, playing for their team is more than a job. For fans and members, supporting Collingwood is more than the occasional light entertainment. There is a lot more going on than earning salaries and being entertained. Think about the swathes of black and white at the games; the unwavering loyalty of the membership: over 45,000 men and women, from all generations; the clubhouse; the song; the newsletter and players’ blogs; even the Collingwood Community Choir.

Academics Ann Capling and Tim Majoribanks have called this commitment a ‘common unity’, a collective action that “is endowedwith meaning and cannot be reduced to cost-benefit calculations.” Those outside the club who don’t care much about football might not understand the passionate commitment, but they can certainly see it as a formative expression of collective identity, as a powerful force that shapes the way the AFL industry and community operate. Also, they can agree that employing a coach or a president who neither knows nor cares about football would be a ludicrous idea.

However, if we apply this logic of ‘action motivated by belief’ to Christian charities for whom engaging in charitable work is an expression of their identity as the people of God, it is little understood. Why? Setting aside the obvious differences between AFL clubs and Christian charities (the role of the media in the promotion of the sport and a distinctive uniform for starters), there are clearly other forces at play.

Firstly, there is little space in the public sphere for collective action motivated by religious belief. One reason for this, is a secular public sphere and culture of relativism that consigns belief to the sphere of the private individual. While it might be acceptable for the language of faith to be buried somewhere in a Christian charity’s annual report or mission statement, hidden in fine print on their website, once it creeps into a communal space, into public debate, into actual operational policies, or even into recruitment and employment criteria, the presence of faith and belief becomes a violation of the secular space.

Secondly, another reason that the ‘faith factor’ for Christian charities is bypassed or remains largely unexplored is that often it is played down or is the subject of much confusion on the part of Christian charities themselves. What the Christian foundation of the charity means for its current activities, or the role that faith plays in its operations can become, if you like, its own elephant in the room.

During a series of interviews with CEOs in 2006, most church-based organisations confided that while technical ownership was with a synod or the like, the ownership relationship was in fact blurred or very distant. In some cases, the charity had deliberately distanced itself from the parent church body, both legally and by name.

A tell-tale sign of this distancing is the re-branding exercise of recent years. In the aged care sector, examples of this abound.

Anglican Homes for the Aged in Melbourne is now called Benetas and has become legally separate from the Melbourne Anglican Diocese. In Perth, WA Churches of Christ Care is now called Bethanie. In Queensland, St Luke’s and Anglican Homes is now called Spiritus (In late 2011 Spiritus announced it was changing its name back to Anglicare). Is all this re-branding with no reference to the denomination simply an accident? Is it a case of a growing disconnect between church and charity? Too often we believe these branding developments are because charities are uncomfortably apologetic about their Christian links.

Motivation, and the role of faith within Christian charities, do matter for the following reasons. Motivation is intimately entwined with identity and purpose, and when it is eroded the result is the emasculation of what the charity does. This process may be brutally quick or so gradual as to be almost unnoticeable until it is too late.

Motivation matters because it will determine whether a charity remains ‘charitable’ or not. It matters because if motivation is not clearly articulated and understood, then it is wide open to being radically misrepresented.

A pervasive belief and teaching in many churches, in Australia and beyond, asserts a ‘pie in the sky when we die’, intrinsically individualistic notion of salvation. If Christians and others (incorrectly) see the Christian hope as solely that of escaping this world, that is, of only having a personal relationship with Jesus in order to ‘get to heaven when we die’, they will not quite know what to do with charitable work that seeks to bring justice and healing to this world now. As the former Bishop of Durham Or N.T. Wright phrases it, “Why try to improve the present prison if release is at hand? Why oil the wheels of a machine that will soon plunge over a cliff?”

If charities are so predominantly Christian in origin and character, then it is important for all readers, Christian and non Christian alike, to have at least some idea of the motivation driving them. In short, why do Christian charities engage in the work of social justice, in looking to change the world?

Christians believe that the answer is expressed in the prayer that Jesus taught his followers: “Your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven”, a powerful and revolutionary prayer that communicated that the message of the Kingdom of God is about proclaiming this good news or Gospel by word and deed; that is, by living as citizens of the Kingdom of God, by bringing real and effective signs of God’s renewed creation here and now.

Announcing that God’s Kingdom has arrived, albeit partially, means putting God’s will into practice here and now, on earth as in heaven; it means welcoming in a physical reality in which forgiveness and justice reign and where the hungry are fed, the orphaned, the widowed and the weak are cared for, the lonely placed in families and the sick healed.

It is this motivation that lies behind the establishment of many of the world’s charities, as the faithful live in obedience to God, doing charitable work in all its forms, not to ‘earn salvation’, but in response to God’s gift of salvation, of restoration of a relationship with God, with neighbour and with the world.

But if a lack of clarity about identity and purpose reigns internally, then undoubtedly that confusion will flow through to a charity’s external relationships. Here is a real life example. A state government department wants a ‘service provider’ to run a program for socially disadvantaged women in a regional setting. A Christian charity already working in the region wins the contract. The contract requires that the government department must have a representative on the interviewing panel for the appointment of a senior manager to run this program. The forceful departmental representative insists that the right person for the job is an openly anti-Christian person. The CEO of the charity disagrees and says this is unacceptable. The result is a stand-off, which can only be resolved in one of three ways: either the Christian charity dilutes its organisational integrity and gives in; or it withdraws from providing the service (having presumably won the contract because it was the best organisation to run it); or the department backs off.

Therefore, as Christian charities continue to negotiate their relationship with Australian governments, it is critical that they retain a firm sense of their identity: who they are and why they exist.

While the ‘faith factor’ and the dominance of religious charities in Australia has become the proverbial ‘elephant in the room’, it need not be this way.

Christian charities need to clearly understand and then effectively articulate and communicate their identity and purpose. In so doing they will be better placed to counter destructive misunderstandings of motive, promote an inclusive public sphere in which religious motives can be discussed, and speak from a clear Christian perspective on the role of charities in the here and now.