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Rowan Williams sends Maundy Thursday plea to bankers, politicians and editors to assist communities in need
Bankers, politicians and newspaper editors should be legally required to spend a couple of hours every year working with the poor and needy to remind them of the purpose of their power and wealth, the archbishop of Canterbury has suggested.
He made the comments on Maundy Thursday, the day of the Last Supper when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and when the British monarch honours deserving subjects.
In his contribution to BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day slot, Dr Rowan Williams asked: "What about having a new law that made all cabinet members and leaders of political parties, editors of national papers and the hundred most successful financiers in the UK spend a couple of hours every year serving dinners in a primary school on a council estate?
"Or cleaning bathrooms in a residential home? Walking around the streets of a busy town at night as a street pastor, ready to pick up and absorb something of the chaos and human mess you'll find there, especially among young people?"
He continued: "I've no doubt some of our public figures do this sort of thing privately, and good for them.
"But maybe having to do it, to do it in public and not to be able to make any sort of capital out of it, because they had no choice?
"It might do two things: reminding our leaders of what the needs really are at grassroots level, so that those needs can never again be just remote statistics, and reminding the rest of us what politics and government are really for."
The Queen attended a Maundy Thursday service at Westminster Abbey, distributing red and white purses containing special coins in a centuries-old tradition.
Williams said a widespread adoption of the custom would remind the great and the good about the purpose of wealth and power.
"Power exists, in the church or the state or anywhere else, so that ordinary people may be treasured and looked after, especially those who don't have the resources to look after themselves," he said.
"But as we watch the Queen honouring some of her subjects today, it's worth remembering this startling idea that the goal of the supreme power in the universe is that we should be nurtured, respected and loved.
"What does that say – to monarchs, politicians, tycoons and, yes, archbishops too – about how we understand and use the power we have?"
