Even if Occupy LSX had not found its way to St Paul’s Churchyard, it would be of obvious interest to Christians. In its early days, the camp captured a moment of otherwise inchoate public anger: a feeling that something needed to change the economic system. While it's presence at St Paul’s was unplanned, the resonances with the message of the Bible were striking. The globalised financial system has become increasingly unaccountable to any notion of the common good. This detachment of money-making from the flourishing of the poor angered Amos and Jeremiah, St John the Baptist and St James. It should anger us today.
There has been much debate about how Christians should respond to the camp – and debate which will only intensify as proceedings move towards eviction.
Some Christians are proposing a ‘ring of prayer’ to surround the Occupy camp if the courts rule that it should be disbanded, and the Corporation of London chooses a forcible eviction. On Twitter, they have adopted the hashtag #Mark1115, likening the proposed ‘ring of prayer’ to Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple.
Reading Mark 11, it is clear that Jesus is willing to engage in dramatic symbolic action. But the Gospels show Jesus choosing the terrain for such confrontations with immense thought and care. He walks away from conflict when the time is not right – and urges his followers to be ‘wise as serpents’ as well as ‘gentle as doves’ (Matthew 10.16).
Ten years ago, a group of East End nuns used another symbolic action to challenge London’s bankers. As part of the London Citizens alliance, they brought business in the Oxford Street branch of HSBC to a standstill – paying in the church’s collection money coin by coin in the full glare of the media. This persuaded a previously indifferent management to open discussions on the pay rate of their cleaners and security staff. A decade later, London Citizens’ Living Wage campaign has secured £70 million for the capital’s low-income households.
This is an example of symbolic protest being used wisely: in a way that develops relationships, builds alliances, and makes change happen. The symbolic action by the nuns was not an end in itself. It was part of a well-planned process, where conflict led on to genuine, constructive negotiation – and has now generated real and tangible change.
The danger facing Occupy is that the camp becomes an end in itself. There are signs that this is happening: we are being drawn into a debate on the extent to which the right to protest is also a right to permanent encampment. This is no doubt a fascinating topic. But it is a long way from the enormous and urgent issues the camp was set up to address.
Occupy has chosen its slogan wisely: ‘We are the 99%.’ It has recognised this is a time for building an alliance for change that goes far beyond the ‘usual suspects’ of political protest. Allowing a violent endgame to be played out on the steps of the Cathedral would be a destructive and divisive mistake. Christians who are serious about achieving real change need to be wiser than to encourage that.
Guest writer: Canon Dr Angus Ritchie is Director of the Contextual Theology Centre in East London. With the Church Urban Fund, the Centre has just launched calltochange.org to equip Christians to pray, listen and act for social justice this Lent.
