With the re-emergence of Andy Burnham as a Westminster politician, people have become fascinated by his backstory. The most recent episode is his time as Mayor of Manchester – responsible not just for the city of Manchester but also towns like Bolton and Rochdale and Manchester’s immediate neighbour, the City of Salford. One idea Burnham mentions frequently in connection with his time as Mayor is what he calls the politics of place – the idea that politics must concentrate on meeting local needs.
One reason why I find this so fascinating is because of the years I spent studying and working in both Manchester and Salford. For some of the time I lived in Manchester, and the rest in a Salford tower block that used to appear in the opening credits of Coronation Street.
Much of the old Salford I knew has gone. The docks have been turned into Salford Quays with the Lowry Centre there paying homage to the painter who made recording industrial Salford his personal vocation. Row upon row of houses have been lost and old communities with them. Some things stay the same, though. Poverty is still visible but in post-industrial Salford there are different employers.
It’s not only politicians but faith groups too who have to think about meeting local needs in conventional or different ways. Salford Roman Catholic Cathedral, where I used to worship on Sundays and has just reopened after a three year restoration, was built in the 1850s. It served a huge, mostly Irish, migrant community attracted to jobs in the north west. Catholic bishops then were criticised for being triumphalist as they were restored to Britain but Cardinal Wiseman riposted that all he wanted was to serve the poor, living in squalor, wretchedness and disease. Yet for all that the Catholic Church wanted to make buildings beautiful for God. There was a tension there between serving the poor and honouring God.
Nowadays there’s another tension as somewhere like Salford Cathedral seeks to work out its future role. Should it restore past glory or reinvent new ways of doing things? Churches have to do this to survive. There’s a new, vital requirement to focus on safeguarding to protect children. At Salford, the cathedral continues to serve the poor but nowadays that means a foodbank.
Now, as well as the traditional parishioners living alongside the cathedral there are more office workers . The cathedral still has Mass on Sunday but now there are daily lunch time services for the local workforce. It’s a simple way of showing that even when life changes, churches and cathedrals can still find a way to inspire, welcome and console those who pass their doors – a kind of theology of place.
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