David Cameron’s “Big Society” dream will fail unless the country rediscovers traditionally Christian values, according to the academic credited with helping develop the concept.
The Government’s ‘liberal narrative’ must be overcome in order to achieve the ambitious goals of the Big Society, said Phillip Blond, who is a key speaker at the Beyond Individualism Conference, organised by Christian Concern in association with UK and European partners.
Mr Blond, the acknowledged driving force behind David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’, told delegates today that “Liberal individualism has led to a massive concentration of wealth and the disintegration of family relationships and human association: this reduction in ‘social capital’ has decreased well-being, health, trust and support for the most vulnerable.
“We need to displace this narrative with a larger and far more successful story – a fact that has perhaps not yet been fully grasped by those tasked with implementing the Big Society project. Moral markets, and a return to civic association, require Christian values: mutuality, subsidiarity, reciprocity, solidarity, mediation (both in the theological and institutional sense).”
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