Articles - Miscellaneous

One City Project

"The Christian Gospel demands a preferential option for the poor."

"Jesus is a liberator and a bringer of justice, not merely a source of divine redemption."

"If we are passive participants in a society that creates and perpetuates the sin of poverty then we are standing in the way of the full expression of the Gospel".

"For the church in any country to retreat from politics is nothing short of heresy. Christianity is political or it is not Christianity."

These quotes, including the last, from Desmond Tutu sketch out the main ideas behind a style of Christian thought which developed in the 1960's in Latin America and became known as liberation theology. A group of Christians from Roundhay has been exploring the relationship between this theology and social justice and human rights for those living on the margins of society in contemporary Leeds. We used an approach called the One City Project - OCP.

The marginalised in Leeds today are not the same as those in Latin America 40 years ago where many countries had no free press, were run by dictators and where extreme poverty was rife. Here, today the marginalised are the homeless, young victims of sexual exploitation, asylum seekers and refugees, drug addicts and women working as prostitutes. With the help of the OCP worker Nigel Greenwood, we engaged with six organisations:

Leeds Simon Community provides practical and emotional support to rough sleepers.
CROP is working to end the sexual exploitation of children and young people by pimps and traffickers.
St George's Crypt provides services for vulnerable, disadvantaged and homeless people.
Multiple Choice is a safe and friendly place to help people to make changes to their substance use.
Emmaus Leeds is a community where previously homeless people live and work.
Genesis offers a city-wide service for all women and young people involved in, at risk of becoming involved in or exiting from prostitution.

(In addition we had two talks on asylum seekers/refugees and mental health, both of which concentrated on the distortion of media coverage of these issues. The project closed with a talk on poverty from the chair of the Church Action on Poverty and two videos contrasting the two faces of Leeds - the city's rightly praised successes and the sometimes forgotten deprivation of council estate life.)

It was very powerful and sometimes disturbing to hear first hand about work in these areas, which many of us have no experience of at all. Being able to question and discuss issues with those working directly with such challenging client groups gave us all greater insight into their problems.

OCP is at heart an experiential activity with a Walk of Awareness in the Harehills area and a day's Retreat on the Streets of Leeds providing a less focussed engagement with the city. I was unable to do the walk but will write about my retreat for next month's magazine.

David Everett

31 July, 2005