The Ethics of Child Sponsorship
The BBC has a report today under the title ‘Is child sponsorship ethical?’ highlighting Wydick, Glewwe & Rutledge’s recent study in the JPE on the effects of child sponsorship, specifically through Compassion International, on adult outcomes. The headline is surprising: Wydick et al. investigated the effectiveness of child sponsorship, not its ethics – and found that it is a remarkably effective form of intervention when compared to other types of aid programme. They propose that a (demonstrable) raising of the aspirations of the children sponsored is the key causal factor, although they acknowledge that this causation has not been established (this is my summary of the conclusion of the paper). So the research the BBC report highlights asks ‘does it work?’ and answers ‘yes – surprisingly well’; the question ‘is it right?’ (ethics…) is a completely different one. There are many effective interventions that are unethical (in various ways – literacy; infrastructure; … – colonialism was pretty effective!) – and many perfectly ethical interventions that are fairly ineffective. The only ethical question actually raised appears to be in this paragraph of the BBC report: But critics of this form of child sponsorship argue it is unfair and discriminatory; while one child is helped others in the community are left behind. The argument is that child sponsorship is an inevitably selective form of charity, and such selectivity is unethical. Is this a good argument? It seems to me not, and fairly clearly so. Let me offer an analogy: suppose I was desired to give some money to support higher education in the UK; is it more ethical to divide that money equally between all universities, or to give a large sum to just one? As far as I can see, I am at liberty to do either, ethically speaking. Again – and more strongly – suppose I am trained in first aid and arrive quickly at the site of a train crash, where there are dozens of injured people. Should I attempt to split my time equally between them, or should I help one until she is stable and then move on to the next? I think we all know the answer to that one… The fact is, with finite resources, we often cannot help everybody; this is never a good reason not to help anybody. The result will, in some sense, be ‘unfair’ – one person will be helped and another not, for no good reason, but that’s OK, ethically speaking. Now, if a particular child sponsorship programme were in fact ‘discriminatory’ it would be a different matter. To sponsor only boys, or members of one ethic group in a mixed area, or Muslims but not Christians, would be unethical (unless there was good reason for the decision – the ethnic group being sponsored being historically underprivileged or similar). But random choices are not discriminatory, pretty much by definition, and I take it that, by the time all the different factors are rolled together, the choice of which children in a community find sponsors is a fairly close approximation to random. (For example, when we chose the two children we sponsor we were looking at a selection of cards put out on a Compassion stand at Spring Harvest, which selection was I suppose fairly random to begin with; we looked for two girls the same age as our older two daughters, so that they could be penfriends; someone else I overheard looking for a particular country which she had long had a prayer burden for; a hundred reasons like this turn into random selection.) I think we can say more than this, though. Wydick, et al., suggest that the personal intervention is crucial to the surprising effectiveness of sponsorship; it is also an antidote to the biggest ethical problem around charitable fundraising for relief and development in the UK at present, what has been called ‘poverty pornography‘. The most effective way to raise money for aid/development is graphic and harrowing pictures of starving or sick children, seemingly alone, in visibly horrific conditions. But of course such images give a completely false impression of reality, and objectify the people being helped. This is unethical, but effective. (Actually, if BBC journalists want to talk about the ethics of charitable fundraising, they might look again at the mawkish videos of One Direction in a malaria hospital that led the Comic Relief campaign this year: rich Western white men talking to camera about how awful life in Africa looks from their 2 hour acquaintance; poor black African women and girls (mainly) suffering silently in the background as objects, voiceless illustrations of what the rich white guy is saying…) How do you...
Read MoreIn memoriam Colin Gunton
Remembering and celebrating the legacy of Colin Gunton on the tenth anniversary of his death.
Read MoreCelebrating Lynn Green’s election
Today, the Revd Lynn Green has been elected as General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain. (Report here.) On one level, this news is distant from me. It happens that I do not know Lynn – we have met, more or less in passing, but I certainly cannot claim any close relationship with her. And it is eight years or more since our family moved to Scotland, and so I transferred my ministerial accreditation from BUGB to the Baptist Union of Scotland. That said, BUGB is the denomination into which I was baptised, which tested and affirmed my call to ministry, which ordained me, and in which I began my ministerial service. The two General Secretaries before Lynn are personal friends, as are several other national and regional leaders. I owe BUGB more than I can say, and retain many relationships with individuals, churches, and translocal structures within the denomination; I still feel as if I belong to some extent – I do not know if BUGB would still want to own me as one of theirs, but I would want to be so owned; for me, there are deep ties of history, loyalty, and friendship here. So today, knowing from friends that something exciting – I did not know what – was in the offing, I repeatedly checked my Twitter feed between sessions of our church awayday. I saw that Lynn had been proposed, and then that she had been elected; I saw the rejoicing from brothers and sisters ‘down south’ at the election; I shared in the rejoicing; I saw at least one friend, an Anglican priest, express a wish that she were a Baptist today; I began to reflect. The General Secretary of BUGB is the leading Baptist office in the UK. This is, so far as we have one, the equivalent of the Archbishopric of Canterbury, or the See of Westminster. Lynn is the first woman to be called to the role. I saw numbers of friends down south tweeting ‘proud to be a Baptist today’ – and, as I say, at least one Anglican friend wishing to be a Baptist. What did all this mean? Of course, the calling of the first female General Secretary is a moment of history; this will be recorded and remembered as the moment when a decisive change became visible. And many – perhaps on my timeline 75-80% – of the comments were celebrating this moment in history. They did not know Lynn; they had no doubt that the selection committee had made a wise choice; but the celebration was for the crossing of a Rubicon: now there is no office left in (British) Baptist life that is not open to women and men indifferently. The other 20-25% of the people I heard celebrated because they knew Lynn and had no doubt that this was a transparently excellent appointment, to be rejoiced in because Lynn is Lynn, not because Lynn is female. It seems to me that both reactions are valid, and both are important to understand why today should be a day of rejoicing for British Baptists. The second first: Lynn was called because, simply, she was the best candidate for the post. Nothing I saw even began to0 suggest any element of ‘tokenism,’ or even of a desire to right a lasting injustice, appropriate though such a desire might have been. I was not privy to the internal discussions, but I feel completely convinced that I have heard enough today to assert with utter confidence that Lynn was called because she was the best candidate for the post. The first reaction: as I read the reaction – and the reports of voting percentages – this was not a moment where the view of the denomination changed; rather, this was the visible working out of a change in view that had already happened. Almost nobody in BUGB is worried about the highest office being occupied by a woman now. Many of us knew, or suspected, or hoped, that that was the case; the Assembly’s calling of Lynn, however, was a public and visible confirmation of what we knew, or suspected, or hoped – as such it is worthy of great celebration, not as a moment of change, but as a moment when a change that happened before became transparently visible. I have read dozens of tweets announcing ‘Today, I am proud to be a Baptist’. Yes. Today, I am proud to be a Baptist. Not just proud, but hopeful. Lynn’s calling is profoundly important because she is the first woman to be called to this position, and that will, I pray,...
Read MoreOn feeling valued
Yesterday I travelled down to the Westminster Faith Debate on same-sex marriage. The Religion and Society programme had booked my train travel first class (complete with confirmation from a university travel service announcing in big letters ‘CHEAPEST FARE OF xxx REJECTED. SAVING OF xxx COULD HAVE BEEN MADE. REASON GIVEN FOR REJECTION: “vip passenger”.’ which I enjoyed, and which says far too much about the general state of university support services in the UK). I have never actually traveled first class over any distance before, apart from occasional overnight sleeper trips on a promotional ticket, so I was looking forward to this experience, and ended up laughing about odd details with some Twitter friends. Then I was met at the debate venue, by an extremely polite intern, taken to a Green Room, greeted warmly, &c. Then I met the photographer (see previous post), and was bossed around and fussed over till she had exactly the shots she wanted. I ended the evening in a restaurant where the standard of service was higher than I am accustomed to before boarding the train home. There were other details, but you get the flavour. The day was extraordinarily pleasant – there were moments of course; it is a controversial subject. Given the choice, for instance, I’d have skipped being told to my face that people of my intellectual calibre should be banned from speaking in public (love you too, mate…), but these felt like brief clouds in a sunny sky. I reflected on the whole experience on a delayed train this morning, and realised: I had spent the day being valued, being treated as if I mattered, and that this is both fairly unusual in my life, and extraordinarily affirming. I half-remember a quotation from G.K. Chesterton: he puts it in the mouth of Fr Brown, but I am sure he is speaking, and speaking out of his profound Catholic faith. ‘All people matter. I matter. You matter. It is the hardest thing in theology to believe.’ All people matter. We debated same-sex marriage, and I found myself troubled. On the one side are those whose rhetoric too often suggests that only straight people matter. This is about as close to heresy as any modern view I have ever encountered. On the other side, there is an ‘inclusive’ (heavily inverted commas) position that says, essentially, ‘lesbian, gay, and straight people who obey the rules the church has set matter’. This is just as close to heresy. The truth is, all people matter – straight, lesbian, and gay, bisexual, confused, queer, asexual, polyamorous, living in profoundly improper and abusive relationships, struggling to find any term to describe their felt identity – they are people; they matter. Chesterton somewhere else imagines Father Brown facing up to someone who has committed a sin that society regards as unforgivable. ‘I wouldn’t touch him with a barge-pole,’ says another character; Father Brown’s comment is something like – I am quoting these texts from memory – ‘as a Christian I must touch him, and not with a barge-pole, but with a benediction.’ The call of the church is to treat people – all people, without exception – as if they mattered, to touch them with a benediction. I know that I benefit from almost every injustice in the world; I know how to check my privilege extraordinarily well – and yet I found the experience of a day being treated as if I mattered emotionally powerful and deeply affirming. I think of friends who are on the wrong side of one, or more than one, injustice – lesbian/gay, or poor, or female, or disabled, or young, or old, or black, or Romany, or – well, you know the list… I think of people I have met who are on the wrong side of almost every injustice – what would it feel to them to spend a day being treated as if they mattered? I know that, from my position of privilege, I can’t imagine. I also know that I believe in the depths of my soul that this is what the experience of church should be – for every person who...
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