I've been delving into a new area for me: the subject of Christian "social entrepreneurship". I hope to unpack it a bit in my posts this month.
According to this article, a social entrepreneur is usually a creative individual who questions established norms and harnesses entrepreneurial spirit and dynamism to enrich and help society rather than make themselves rich. We're talking about a blend of philanthropist, visionary, business thinker and 'go-getter' - and for a Christian, a strong faith.
Christian social care is as old as Christianity itself, of course; caring for widows and orphans is foundational to godliness (the Bible, James 1:27). Perhaps the first instance of a more visionary enterprise was Basil the Great's Basiliad in 4th century Caesarea. This was
"the great philanthropic foundation established by St. Basil where the poor, the diseased, orphans and the aged could receive food, shelter, and medical care free of charge from monks and nuns who lived out their monastic vocation through a life of service, working with physicians and other lay people. The New City was in many ways the culmination of St. Basil’s social vision, the fruit of a lifetime of effort to develop a more just and humane social order within the region of Caesarea, where he grew up and later served as a priest and a bishop."
This line continued primarily through Christian hospitals, only really broadening to other areas with the coming of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. As poverty increased and health deteriorated through the factories, a window of opportunity opened for Christian social entrepreneurs. Suddenly prison reform, schools for poor children, cooperative societies, trustee savings banks and suchlike were big on the agenda, and gifted Christian men and women stood up with vision and application to see them through.
In my next posts I hope to pay tribute to a few of these and to see whether, as this site claims, the time is ripe today for a new generation of Christian social entrepreneurs.
And explore the complex issue of combining the spiritual impact of the gospel with the social impact of such projects? Hope so - it's a key issue we neeed to be thinking about carefully, I reckon. Call it the 'holistic' gospel... It's the road we're travelling on - we need lights to see our way and avoid the ditches on either side!
ReplyDeleteAh, normal, the hard ones first, eh? It certainly is a key area, particularly as western society gets increasingly post-Christian, but it strikes me as the sort of subjcet the Inquistors of old would have liked: you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.
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