A report by think tank ResPublica is recommending that the Church Commissioners and other church institutions allocate part of their portfolios to church-based social investments.

Holistic Mission: Social action and the Church of England insists that “the Church must become an enabling institution focused on holistic, interpersonal and local social action”.

The report was launched by the Archbishop of Canterbury  Justin Welby and the minister for civil society Nick Hurd at Lambeth Palace this week.

One of its key recommendations is that the Church Commissioners, Church of England Pensions Board and faith-focused investment manager CCLA set aside a certain percentage of the returns on their investment to invest in church-based social ventures.

The Church Commissioners manages a £5.5bn investment portfolio, while CCLA manages £3.9bn of charity funds (as of June 2012).

The church can fill institutional vacuum

The report’s overall conclusion is that institutions are crucial to the progress and future of the country, but unfortunately the UK is “at a point of institutional miscarriage – both state and market have failed us”. The authors (Phillip Blond, director of ResPublica, and James Noyes, who has a PhD in the social study of religion) specifically point to scandals in the NHS and the erosion of public trust in the banking system.

“The church can help to meet this need and fill this gap,” the authors assert. “It has the people.”

To back up this statement, the authors point to their findings. They say levels of social action are considerably higher amongst church attendees than the general population: 79 per cent of church congregations engage in some formal voluntary action compared to just 40 per cent of the general population, with the figures 90 per cent and 54 per cent for informal volunteering.

Holistic public service delivery

As well as encouraging social investment, the report also recommends the following:

• The Cabinet Office brings forward a new white paper to investigate a holistic and personalised vision of public service.
• The Cabinet Office creates a unit to help involve the church in public service delivery, and to help explore alternative models of delivery.
• The church sets up a social action unit to co-ordinate social action across dioceses and between church and government.
• This unit should in turn oversee the creation of diocesan social action teams to work with community groups and local government to tackle local problems and deliver services.
• Local churches should make use of the ‘community right to buy’ and the Public Services (Social Value) Act to help communities retain and expand their assets.

The full report can be downloaded from the ResPublica website here.