Did Jesus invent the big society?

At an Easter reception in Downing Street on Wednesday night, UK Prime Minister David Cameron made a bizarre claim: “Jesus invented the Big Society 2,000 years ago. I just want to see more of it”.

In case you’ve forgotten, the Big Society was one of the buzzwords of the Conservative party’s 2010 general election campaign. The policy put a renewed focus on community action, giving local governments more power, supporting community groups and encouraging volunteering. The aim was to create a “Big Society” that takes power from the hands of politicians into the hands of people.

So did Jesus invent the Big Society?

We don’t know what Jesus thought about the ideology of a big state vs a small state, but he did make some catchy policy statements that somebody at Conservative HQ wishes they had: “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31); “Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you” (Matthew 5:42); and, most famously: “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Mark 12:21). (Although that last one’s been around even longer).

But I suspect David Cameron’s statements tells us more about what he thinks about Jesus than what Jesus thinks about the Big Society.

To be fair, many churches do look like the Big Society in action—they run toddler groups and foodbanks and Christmas fairs. And by and large these are all great things! Lots of churches are good at building bridges with local people and gaining credibility in the community; they love and serve people in their area in a way that Jesus commends. In fact, to our shame, most of us would admit that we don’t take these radical commands of Jesus seriously enough.

But the problem comes when churches only look like the Big Society, and don’t look like the thing that Jesus really did “invent”: the church itself.

The church that Jesus started is more than a group of people doing good things in their community. It’s a group of people for whom Christ himself died to make his own: “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Ephesians 5:25-27).

And God gave his church a purpose: “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known” (Ephesians 3:10). A few verses earlier Paul describes the “mystery” of “the boundless riches of Christ” that are credited to us through faith in the gospel (v 8)—when all we really deserve is judgement because we fail so desperately at loving our neighbour as ourselves.

So yes, let’s be the Big Society inasmuch as it means loving those around us, meeting practical and spiritual needs. But it’s ironic that Mr. Cameron should make such a statement at his Easter reception: if we ever come to think that Jesus only came to invent the “Big Society”, we make little of his death on the cross and we miss out on “the boundless riches of Christ” that he offers.