It is harvest time for strawberries in the northern Philippine town of La Trinidad, so strawberry farmer Alice Rivera will start repaying a loan extended by a Geneva-based ecumenical church loan fund - writes Maurice Malanes.

"This is what we appreciate ... we can start repaying our loans only immediately after the harvest season starts," said Rivera, who is 45. She is just one of 7,000 clients being served by the Ecumenical Church Loan Fund-Philippines (Eclof-Philippines), whose initial seed fund was provided by Eclof International, a non-profit micro-finance organisation.

Rivera, a widow and mother of a nine-year old son, has started harvesting strawberries from a 500-square-metre lot that she leases from the farm of Benguet State University, an agricultural school.

Starting this January up to May 2012, she expects to harvest an average of 20 kilograms every three days. As of 25 January, Rivera said she had retailed her 20-kilogram produce at one hundred pesos (about US$2.35) per kilogram.

"Although retail prices fluctuate ... I can still earn something, enough to send my kid to school and set aside some amount to repay my loan," she said in an interview in late January when ENInews went with four Eclof staff to visit their clients.

Given eight months by Eclof to pay her 20,000-peso (US$467) "agricultural loan," Rivera said she was confident she could pay off her loan before May.

Eclof-Philippines follows what Eclof local branch manager Valentina Tangib describes as a "flexible policy" for agricultural loans. "Before, our policy for small business and agricultural loan repayment was uniform in which we collect loan payments monthly," Tangib said.

Tangib and her staff found that farmers had difficulty repaying their loans since they could only start earning three months after harvest. Since five years ago, they have made it a policy that agricultural loan clients are given eight months to repay their loans.

Meling Telcagan, aged 60, a cut-flower farmer specialising in growing "Malaysian mums" (a species of chrysanthemum), has also been taking out Eclof's small loans since 2005. Most flower growers like Telcagan time their first harvest during February because flowers are more in demand then.

Besides Valentine's Day, when a dozen mums are priced at as much as two hundred fifty pesos (US$5.84) to three hundred pesos (US$7), February is also a flower festival season for neighboring Baguio City during which mums are popular items.

Other flower plots in Telcagan's greenhouse will be harvested in March and April, the season of school graduation, while other plots are planned for June, a wedding month.

"I thank God for giving my family a net income of eighty thousand pesos (US$1,869) during only a month of harvest last year," she said. Telcagan says she plans to repay her 30,000-peso (US$817) Eclof loan by March.

[With acknowledgements to ENInews. ENInews, formerly Ecumenical News International, is jointly sponsored by the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Communion of Reformed Churches and the Conference of European Churches.]

[Ekk/3]

Disability Rights UK, a membership organisation representing over 500 NGOs across the country, has strongly criticised the coalition government's controversial Welfare Reform Bill.

Neil Coyle, Disability Rights UK Director of Policy and Campaigns, declared yesterday: “The Government’s removal of protections for some disabled people from the Welfare Reform Bill ignores the hundreds of thousands of disabled people directly affected, the hundreds of charities who have highlighted the potential devastating impact for disabled people and their families, the House of Lords who proposed additional protections and the Joint Committee on Human Rights who suggested the Bill will cause destitution.”

Disabled people are disproportionately represented among benefit claimants due to educational attainment issues, higher poverty, lack of accessible work and employer discrimination.

The Bill aims to cut 280,000 disabled people from receiving out of work benefits altogether and 500,000 disabled people to be made ineligible for a benefit designed to help with disabled people’s higher costs of living.

These plans have long term cost implications being ignored by DWP – including a substantial potential increase in (avoidable) NHS use and rise in demand for council social care services - which many disabled people are being made ineligible for due to council budget cuts.

House of Lords amendments had secured protection for some disabled children, disabled adults needing longer than a year to find work and disabled students.

Disabled people believed their fears and concerns had been acknowledged and addressed in the Lords, says Disability Rights UK, but but this hope has been removed in the Commons' demand for short term welfare expenditure cuts which ignore risks of higher future costs.

Huge political awareness has been raised around the WRB debate by the Spartacus Report on DLA and the social media driven Spartacus campaign led by disabled and sick people themselves.

A third of all disabled people already live in poverty, but the Bill will now enforce destitution for some families and individual disabled people, say critics. The amendments would merely have softened the blow of the cumulative impact of the Government’s cuts, they add.

Neil Coyle continued: “Disabled people remain the hardest hit by cuts. But the Government has completely failed to analyse the full cost of proposals. Cuts have consequences for disabled people and their families, but will also mean the NHS and councils experience higher costs through higher health, care and poverty needs. The Government has chosen to ignore long-term needs and costs in the short-term search for departmental savings.”

* Disability Rights UK: http://www.disabilityalliance.org/

* The recommendations of the Joint Committee on Human Rights report on the likely impact of the WRB on disabled people are online at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt201012/jtselect/jtrights/233/...

* Spartacus Report and campaign: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/spartacusreport

[Ekk/3]

SNP Work and Pensions spokeswoman Dr Eilidh Whiteford MP has hit out the ‘compassionless UK coalition’ after MP’s overturned House of Lords amendments to their Welfare Reform Bill on 1 February 2012.

Dr Whiteford said there was increasing evidence that the welfare system should be devolved and highlighted evidence from the Scottish Local Government Forum Against Poverty and Rights Advice Scotland who have warned that UK welfare reforms will remove a safety net for hardworking taxpayers and their families.

Dr Whiteford declared: “The UK Government has exposed itself as an out-of-touch and compassionless coalition. It is increasingly clear that the only way we will get a welfare policy that suits Scotland’s needs is by having the powers to set that policy in Scotland."

She continued: “From time limiting contributory Employment and Support Allowance to cuts in the availability and level of crisis loans, it is the most disadvantaged in our communities that are paying the price of the Tories reforms."

“Reform of the benefits system is necessary but the Tory/LibDem Coalition Government’s plan looks increasingly like an assault on the most disadvantaged. We must not have cuts for the sake of cuts. Not only would that risk forcing the most vulnerable in society into a perilous position, it also takes vital capital out of the economy without consideration of the impact," said Dr Whiteford.

“While reform is necessary, it must be done carefully and decisions on entitlements based on medical need – not government spin," she said.

“The welfare system should maximise the potential for all people to work and live free from poverty, however, this cannot be achieved through cuts in support for disadvantaged people," Dr Whiteford added.

“This issue shows yet again the different stance Scotland would take if we had the power to legislate on this issue and it is our clear view that it is the Scottish Parliament, not the UK Parliament, that should decide on welfare policy for Scotland – as would be the case if Scotland was independent,” the Scottish National Party Work and Pensions spokeswoman at Westminster concluded.

[Ekk/3]

The Church of England’s decisions about women bishops are likely to have a major impact on its mission as well as its ministry. If the church appears to be reluctant to accept and fully use women’s gifts, attempts to attract and involve more people across a wide age-range may be undermined.

Research findings: cause for concern

Findings from the 28th British Social Attitudes survey were published in December 2011. It showed a serious decline in religious belief and practice in recent decades. 31per cent in 1983 did not belong to a religion, compared to 50 per cent now (64 per cent of those aged 18-24).

There are various reasons for this. But evidence suggests that the widespread perception that Christianity treats women as inferior is one of the factors.

For instance in 2008, Women and Religion in the West: Challenging Secularization, edited by social scientist Kristin Aune of the University of Derby and two others, was published by Ashgate. This revealed that, in England, Christian churches had lost over a million women worshippers since 1989, in part because of their perceived attitudes.

“Because of its focus on female empowerment, young women are attracted by Wicca, popularised by the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Dr Aune observed. “Young women tend to express egalitarian values and dislike the traditionalism and hierarchies they imagine are integral to the church.”

In contrast, there is evidence valuing women’s gifts has a positive effect on mission. For instance, a 2010 University of Warwick paper, 'Statistics for evidence-based policy in the Church of England: Predicting diocesan performance', by Leslie J Francis and colleagues, examined the factors linked to differences in diocesan performance during the Decade of Evangelism, from 1991-2000. In dioceses with a higher proportion of women clergy, the Church of England tended to enjoy more growth or slower decline.

Taking into account the fall in church membership and involvement, and even nominal Christianity, such findings deserve serious consideration.

The debate over women bishops

There is wide public support for allowing women to be bishops in the Church of England. A YouGov online survey in July 2010 of Britons aged 18 or over found that 63 per cent were in favour and only 10 per cent against, while the remaining 27 per cent expressed no opinion. By the end of 2011, after dioceses had discussed the issue, it had become apparent that there was overwhelming support among churchgoers too.

Moving forward on this matter would greatly assist the church in mission and ministry in England today. The decision on whether women should be eligible to be bishops in the Church of England (or senior clergy or elders in other churches) does not simply affect potential candidates, but has far wider implications.

The role of bishops is not merely administrative: they are there to nurture and support other clergy in their calling and, most importantly, to enable the priesthood of all believers, in all their diversity, so that the whole people of God in each locality can witness in word and deed to the good news of Christ.

The exclusion of any section of the Christian community from being even considered as bishops can have a demoralising effect on those who, at parish level, are seeking to live out their faith within an often sceptical society, and to help to build God’s realm of justice and peace in an deeply unequal and sometimes harsh world.

There has been growing recognition that both men and women are made in God’s image and that, in Christ, barriers are broken down: in the words of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Yet the church has often failed to communicate this effectively to the wider world, in part because this is not fully reflected in its own life. Some churches seem unsure how to respond when the Holy Spirit calls and empowers women.

There is an understandable wish in church circles to accommodate the small minority of churchgoers who still do not accept women’s ordained ministry, and proposals have allowed generous provision to enable them to be ministered to by solely male clergy, including the delegation of pastoral functions to male bishops.

Some are uneasy with this but have accepted it because of the desire to move forward together. However there is a risk that concessions could be extended so far that the role of women bishops was seriously undermined, and ordination of women to the episcopate might become unworkable. This would be a tragedy, not only for the Church of England but also for Christian witness nationally.

However, a positive decision by the Church of England to open up all orders of ministry to women as well as men could promote mission, especially if used as an opportunity to share the theological reasoning behind the move. For, now as much as two thousand years ago, Christians believe that the living Christ continues to invite men and women, people of different ages, ethnicities, cultures and backgrounds, to follow, be transformed, join in changing the world and become inheritors of eternal life.

--------

© Savi Hensman is a respected Christian commentator on religion, politics, theology and social policy. She is an Ekklesia associate.