Churches had been RIGHT to refuse to assist ladies posing as needy moms begging for system who went viral. No one else will say it, says QUENTIN LETTS… however for this reason – and the Bible backs me up
Welfare cuts are not immoral, churches are not cash-dispenser machines and Christians, unless they can feed 5,000 people from five loaves and two Galilee sardines, are not mass caterers.
These truisms are worth stating because the politics of welfare has taken an ecclesiastical turn. If pursued, and stated with enough clarity in coming days, they could strip the Budget debate of its righteous posturing and rebalance the economy towards parents who work for a living, rather than those who expect everyone else to pick up their bills.
Kemi Badenoch created a stir this week by suggesting that her position on the two-child benefits cap (which she would keep) is more Christian than that of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, who has criticised it.
Mrs Badenoch argued that ever-higher national debt was immoral because it would bankrupt us and thus make even lower welfare payments unaffordable. Archbishop Mullally, who has yet to mount her pulpit, offered no immediate response.
On the internet, meanwhile, TikTok was gripped by a claim that two churches were indifferent to a young mother who telephoned them claiming to have a needy infant. TikToker Tawana Musvaburi demanded that the churches buy powdered milk for her baby. They declined. The rumpus may have won her some social media followers but it tells us nothing useful about Christian values or economics.
Let us consider first Ms Musvaburi. She claimed that her (non-existent) infant had ‘not eaten for days’. The caretaker of the first church she rang was unable or reluctant to hear her clearly and put down the telephone. The second told her to call back later. TikTok then showed her allegedly speaking to a mosque which immediately said it would deliver two tins of powdered milk to her.
I must confess that I found the mosque’s instant eagerness to assist just a little fishy. We know nothing about Ms Musvaburi or her allegiances.
Some TikTok users will ask ‘how can such churches call themselves Christian?’ Did Jesus not say ‘blessed be the poor’? What, too, about the parable of the Good Samaritan, who stumbles across a mugging victim and unhesitatingly offers help? The New Testament’s epistles of John, furthermore, urge compassion ‘in deed’ rather than merely in words.
TikToker Nikalie Monroe has gone viral in the US by pretending to be a needy mum and calling on churches for help in feeding her fictitious baby
Sarah Mullally will become the first female Archbishop of Canterbury when she starts in January
TikToker Tawana Musvaburi demanded that the churches buy powdered milk for her baby. They declined. The rumpus may have won her some social media followers but it tells us nothing useful about Christian values or economics, writes Quentin Letts
And yet St Paul might have given Ms Musvaburi a dusty answer. In his second letter to the Thessalonians, which was read at many Anglican churches last Sunday, Paul said self-sufficiency under God was a virtue. ‘If any would not work, neither should he eat,’ wrote Paul. As our kindly and admirably non-political Rector noted in her sermon afterwards, this is not an argument against all charity. We should pity the truly destitute. But those who will not work are a different matter.
The Book of Proverbs fulminates against ‘sluggards’ who lie in bed instead of going out to work. Such ‘wicked’ people are ‘an abomination’ to the Lord. St Paul again, in his letter to the Galatians, writes ‘let every man prove his own work’. Successful people should never arrogantly assume that their good fortune is solely down to their own brilliance. Talents are God-given. But it is not impossible that St Paul might have sided with Mrs Badenoch rather than with the Left-leaning bishops of the Church of England.
What would the great saint have thought about those churches currently being pelted with cabbages on TikTok? In her post, Ms Musvaburi sounds anything but desperate. Languid and spoilt, more like. She is no actress.
It can also be noted that our country has a large and, arguably, over-generous welfare system. Some unemployed welfare recipients are now on better money than people with jobs. How is that moral? It is bad that the two churches Ms Musvaburi telephoned sounded quite unhelpful but maybe she was not the first fraudster to telephone and demand help.
The facile assumption is made, normally by those uninterested in religion, that churches are hand-out stations, places of instant shelter and financial aid. Some do try their best to be generous, and that is their prerogative. I know of at least one bishop’s palace where tramps often knock on the door. They are given a sandwich but never money. The bishop and his staff are savvy enough to realise that cash will often just go to maintaining an addiction to drugs or drink.
We will win no brownie points at the Pearly Gates for having been a soft touch for fraudsters. Who is the sinner here? Churches that were chary of a stranger who contacted them out of the blue, demanding free food for ‘her child’? Or the drawling imposter who cried wolf simply to bag herself views on TikTok? There are indeed desperate young mothers in our communities, girls who have often been let down by their men or by their own feckless parents. Ms Musvaburi was not one of them.
As for the epistles of John and that instruction to Christians to show compassion ‘in deed’ and not just in word, let the passage be quoted more fully. It urges compassion ‘in deed and in truth’. Honesty works both ways.
The rich should acknowledge that poverty is not always someone’s fault – this, basically, is the ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ argument. Equally, welfare claimants must be genuine. The man helped by the Good Samaritan had clearly just been mugged. He was not a con artist looking for clicks on social media.
This is not yet a hard reality you will hear from politicians, who are terrified of sounding unkind, but food banks do not only attract the genuinely needy. Some ‘clients’ are opportunists on the take. If you hand out free food, prepare to be taken for a ride by some disreputable people. Jesus did not say ‘blessed is every stranger who rings your church’s landline asking for a freebie’. Tax collectors in 1st century Judea were even less popular than they are today. Jesus would probably have been astonished if told that tax rates would one day rise to more than 50 per cent.
Priests have a duty not to squander their limited funds. They exist for purposes higher than the dishing out of alms. Churches are places of reflection where parishioners can worship, sing and try to contemplate death. Let us hope that Archbishop Mullally, when she gets her toes under her new throne, applies her good mind to such spiritual matters and leaves debate about tax rates to the politicians. And let us hope the politicians cease this nonsense that higher welfare payments are somehow virtuous. There is just as much piety in balancing the books.
The story is told in the Acts of the Apostles of a paralysed beggar outside the Temple’s Beautiful Gate. He asks the apostles John and Peter for money. They tell him they are skint, but they have something better: knowledge of Jesus. The man is healed. Stick that on TikTok and smoke it.
