OUR ten core ‘benchmarks’ for moving towards a better society, and working/voting for a genuinely common good, were first enunciated in 2015.
They were consciously designed to be sharable by people of goodwill from different faith traditions, and among those of non-religious convictions, too.
• A commitment to favouring the poorest and most vulnerable
• Actively redressing social and economic injustices and inequalities
• Welcoming the stranger and valuing displaced and marginalised people
• Seeing people, their dignity and rights as the solution not the problem
• Moving from punitive ‘welfare’ to a society where all fare well, including UBI and UBS
• Promoting community and neighbourhood empowerment
• Food, education, health, housing, work and sustainable income for all
• Care for planet and people as the basis for human development
• Investing in nonviolent alternatives to war and force as the basis for security
• Transparency, honesty, representativeness and accountability in public and economic life
Underpinning these, in the political realm, is a commitment to subsidiarity, popular sovereignty, proportional representation, and participatory/deliberative democracy as ethical imperatives.
Ekklesia’s approach is also rooted in virtue ethics. This involves a focus on exploring what ‘the good’ means in tangible terms; a refusal to separate means and ends; attention to how we need to be shaped as people and communities to help realise a good society (character formation); and nurturing the particular habits and practices required to direct interpersonal life towards love as well as justice: things like nonviolence, forgiveness, sharing, creativity, solidarity, restoring and repairing.
Our latest FAQs will follow shortly.
(The previous ones can be viewed here.)
Similarly, we will be adding a new Values statement in the near future.
(The previous one, from 2007, can be viewed here.)
