It’s all about t̶h̶e̶ ̶E̶c̶o̶n̶o̶m̶y̶ Relationships
David Andrew
“A slew of studies has shown that feeling supported and loved can help protect you from common conditions, including diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and heart attack … In the workplace, good relationships are linked with greater creativity and job satisfaction – and a lower risk of burnout.”[1]
These findings, reported by David Robson in New Scientist, should come as no surprise to Christians, who believe that human beings are created in the image of the Trinitarian God. Relationships are intrinsic to who God is, and so we should expect them to be equally fundamental to human flourishing. If we can accept the stipulations of the Old Testament law as in some sense God’s blueprint for the Good Society (albeit a late bronze age agrarian version of the Good Society), then it is surely significant that Jesus summed up the requirements of that law with the twin commands to love God and to love our neighbour. Because love is all about relationships. And yet relationships are virtually invisible in most political discourse.[2]
Sadly, however, that is not because relationships are unaffected by political choices, nor because relational realities do not impinge on political issues – far from it. Most of the problems with which public policy has to grapple have their roots in poor quality relationships – between individuals, between communities, between organisations, or between some combination of these. This is true in areas as diverse as economic productivity, law and order, physical and mental health, or the need for and provision of welfare and other public services. Equally, political policies formulated without reference to their impact on relationships (at all levels) too often have the unintended consequence of undermining and degrading relationships — thereby exacerbating the problems they were designed to fix, or creating new problems in other areas.
These insights form the basis of a fresh approach to political questions, pioneered by the Jubilee Centre in Cambridge, UK, and a number of associated organisations. Deeply rooted in Scripture, its focus on relationships nonetheless provides a language, analysis and agenda which can resonate with people of any or no explicit faith,[3] because of the way it “goes with the grain” of human nature and provides “a demonstrably plausible account of human flourishing”[4] – as the quotation at the head of this article indicates.
The Relationist is a small website coming out of this stable, which aims to build and nurture an international community of people committed to making the relational dimension explicit in all areas of life, both public and private. Such “Relationists” will ask questions about how existing practices or new proposals either promote or undermine relationships – and how they (often only implicitly) depend on relationships. They will seek to understand a range of issues from a relational perspective: what relationships are involved in them or affected by them, how those relationships could be improved, and what difference better relationships would make. And they will prompt others to pay attention to relationships too, rather than simply ignoring them.
We would love to welcome members of the KLC community to join us – to be stimulated in their thinking, and to contribute their own relational insights through our blog. Please register at https://the-relationist.net/contact-us/ to be kept up to date with new posts.
David Andrew is Editor of The Relationist Website and blog, and an Anglican minister.
[1] New Scientist 1 June 2024, p.40 (online at https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26234933-100-these-scientific-rules-of-connection-can-supercharge-your-social-life/).
[2] New Scientist 1 June 2024, p.40 (online at https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26234933-100-these-scientific-rules-of-connection-can-supercharge-your-social-life/).
[3] See, for example, John Ashcroft et al., Understanding, Managing and Measuring Stakeholder Relationships (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
[4] Michael Schluter and John Ashcroft, eds., Jubilee Manifesto: A Framework, Agenda and Strategy for Christian Social Reform (Leicester: IVP, 2005), 31.