A Planner's Reflection: Two sides of the same city

Sydney is a beautiful city, but its inequities run deep. The pandemic only shines a light on the deepening socio-economic divide across the city.  

In the last few weeks as Sydney deals with an ongoing lockdown, we have seen an elite private school in the Eastern Suburbs receive dispensation to take students on a trip to Kangaroo Valley and accidental vaccinations at a private school in Sydney’s lower north shore. Meanwhile, teachers in Western Sydney prepare resource packs to be sent home to families that struggle with connectivity issues and sharing devices between family members. 

We’ve also seen different narratives around responses to the outbreak of Covid in south-west Sydney, compared to those in the Eastern Suburbs or the previous Northern Beaches cluster. As one article has put it, “Rich, white, wealthy and middle-class Sydneysiders are treated with care and compassion. Multicultural and working class Sydney is a problem to be policed.” 

Sydney’s ‘latte line’ 

This divide is nothing new. It’s known as the ‘latte line’, the ‘Goats cheese line’ or the ‘Red Rooster line’. This line represents a huge socioeconomic disparity across Sydney. It’s a concept that sees a divide between things like income, housing affordability, amount of tree canopy, distance to public open space, NAPLAN and HSC results and even life expectancy. According to the economic commissioner of the Greater Sydney Commission, this line generally separates the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’. Depending on which side of the line you live on, life can look very different. 

Source: Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue

The pandemic only highlights this even more. Above the line, people are generally more likely to have access to white-collar jobs that can be undertaken from home, easy access to great open space like coastal walks and harbour parklands and be predominantly English speaking, which can make understanding health advice easier. 

Below the line, people are more likely to have blue-collar jobs which, under current restrictions, many people in South Western Sydney can’t leave their LGA for. There is less accessibility to high quality public open space. Large or multigenerational households in small apartments. Opportunities for adequate outdoor play and exercise are more limited and often just include the same small local playground. You also have single or struggling parents with no option but to rely on family members for babysitting. There are significant cultural and language barriers. Life in lockdown is complicated for the ‘have nots’ and may not be as straightforward as it might be for those above the latte line. 

Even just being able to watch Gladys at the 11am press conference, and be able to understand it, is a privilege (though, it can be confusing even for those who predominantly speak English!) 

The messaging around the current crackdown in South Western Sydney is also not the same as the messaging a few weeks ago when this all began in other parts of Sydney. This is likely to be for a number of reasons which I won’t go into, but this sadly leads to ‘othering’ and subtle (and not so subtle) opportunities for racism and classism. 

What can we do? 

From a planning perspective, there are many ways that this socio-economic divide could be addressed. Open space is a great place to start. An equitable distribution of quality, accessible and large public open space is key for planning across Greater Sydney, particularly in areas that are seeing high population growth and housing targets. Currently, open space is dealt with on a site-by-site basis, which is missing the mark. We need government intervention, consideration of open space at the zoning stage and need to ensure that future planning proposals on private and public land achieve positive long term social outcomes (Canterbury Racecourse is an example). 

What does this mean for St Pauls? 

When you look at the map above, Canterbury is right on the latte line. This presents us with some pretty unique opportunities as a church.

Our church vision, being a church for all people, comes to mind. This should include, amongst other things, the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. 

We have an opportunity in Canterbury to live out what it looks like for all people, regardless of social or economic status, to be part of one body. We can aim to personally get to know and welcome all people, regardless of where they are from. We can get around and support those who might be struggling to make ends meet. We can share life and pray together. And when we engage in conversation around Sydney’s lockdown, we can look on Western Sydney with compassion, not judgement. 

Jesus is deeply concerned that all people hear the good news of his kingdom. Our unique geographical location is an opportunity for our church to be a true reflection of God’s diverse kingdom. 

Samantha Kruize

Sam is a member of our 5pm congregation. She has a degree in City Planning and has worked as a Planner in the public sector for the last 5 years.

A confession...

For a long time I have not been convinced that planting congregations targeting particular language groups is a good idea. In fact my thesis in my final year at theological college was an argument against such practices!

For me this has been based on two major concerns.

First, a theological concern. when I read the New Testament, increasingly I see Jesus and the Apostle’s bending over backwards to communicate that now in Christ, there is one body made up of many parts. In the last post I quoted Ephesians 2 where Paul speaks about the gospel tearing down the dividing wall of hostility that existed between two racial groups - Jews and Gentiles. This is reinforced by John’s vision in Revelation 7 of a multi-ethnic community gathered around the throne of Jesus in worship. The church, it seems to me, is called to be a foretaste of that future multi-ethnic worship service gathered around the throne of Jesus. We’ll see a glimpse of this, this coming Sunday as we look at 2 Corinthians 5.16-21. A passage that speaks of the present church in these kinds of terms.

My second major concern with this approach to church planting is a strategic concern. Congregations targeting particular language groups often are very effective at reaching first generation immigrants, but the second generation don’t identify as first generation immigrants as their parents did. They have been raised speaking both English and their heart language. I’ve found they often don’t feel entirely at home in their heart language church. By the time the third generation of immigrants come around (i.e. the grandkids of those who begin a service in a particular language group) they almost always never identify with that cultural group. They often only speak English and have very little desire to identify with their grandparents cultural group. I

In Sydney in the late 90’s and early 00’s there was a push to plant churches reaching out to the many SE Asian immigrants moving to the city. Twenty years on, many of these churches are now reporting how difficult it is to keep the emerging young adults in their churches. Many of them are leaving those home churches to join English speaking congregations, or sadly disconnecting from church all together. This is the third generation moment.

Because of these concerns, from the time we begun reaching out to the Mongolian community (in 2018) I have not been convinced that we should consider planting a Mongolian speaking service…until late 2020.

What changed for me was not my theological convictions, or my concerns about long-term strategy. I hold these perhaps stronger than ever, what changed for me was reflecting on our Anglican ecclesiology (this is going to get pretty nerdy for a little while) and how well suited it is to incorporate targeted ministry with certain parameters in place to ensure our oneness in Christ is not compromised. To put it simply, we are already one church with targeted ministry taking place. In the next post I will tease out some more detail about how we target ministry and express our oneness in christ, and our oneness as a church, St Paul’s Canterbury.

We have a problem

Over the last week the news has shifted slightly away from COVID-19 to another crisis in America. Last week George Floyd was killed in custody. His tragic death, captured on video, has fanned a flame of protest after a number of African American people have been killed in police custody. Floyd’s death has rightly affected many people around the world. 

We are coming to the end of reconciliation week here in Australia. I didn’t realise this until earlier in the week, but reconciliation week can trace its origins back to a Christian movement of prayer for our nation. 

The 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody made 339 recommendations to the government, most of which have never been implemented. The final recommendation was this: 

Initiate a formal process of reconciliation between Aboriginal people and the wider community.

Interestingly it was a movement of Christians who picked up on this recommendation and in 1993 called for a ‘week of prayer for reconciliation’. Three years later, a wider societal movement began, National Reconciliation Week. 

The events in the US this last week have shown us two things. First, and sadly, that racial tension and injustice is a prolific problem across the globe. But secondly, it has put the spotlight on our own nation and the need to tread carefully here. Many people have condemned the crisis in the US without reflecting on the continuing crisis in our own land. 

Since 1991, and despite a Royal Commission, another four hundred and thirty Aboriginal people have died in police custody. No police officers have been convicted. In fact, since 1991 things have actually become worse. The rate of incarceration of Aboriginal people has doubled and a 2019 study found Aboriginal Australians are more likely to be imprisoned than African Americans. 

The Australian Law Reform Commission reports that ‘Although Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults make up around 2% of the national population, they constitute 27% of the national prison population’. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women it is 34%.

There’s a huge problem in our country. Whatever you think about the reasons for this problem, or what solutions are at our disposal, we need to acknowledge that this is a huge problem. 

Since the early days of the church the gospel has been applied vertically (between us and God), and horizontally (between each other). And so Paul wrote to a fractured church in Ephesus: 

For he himself (Jesus) is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. (Ephesians 2.14–18)

Our context in Australia is very different. But it’s interesting to note that every time Paul spoke of the new, free, justified stance of the Christians before God he also related this to the relationship between Jews and Gentiles. The vertical gospel must be applied horizontally.

We might disagree about what we can actually do, or what part we play in this problem, but can you imagine if the church had kept leading society in prayer over this? At the very least let us draw near to God in prayer for our nation. Below is a prayer we’ve often used at church written by the Wontulp Bi-Buya Indigenous Theology Working Group:

Holy Father, God of Love,

You are the Creator of all things.

We acknowledge the pain and shame of our history

and the sufferings of Our peoples,

and we ask your forgiveness.

We thank you for the survival of Indigenous cultures

Our hope is in you because you gave your Son Jesus

to reconcile the world to you.

We pray for your strength and grace to forgive, accept and love one another, as you love us and forgive and accept us in the sacrifice of your Son.

Give us the courage to accept the realities of our history so that we may build a better

future for our Nation.

Teach us to respect all cultures.

Teach us to care for our land and waters.

Help us to share justly the resources of this land. Help us to bring about spiritual and social change to improve the quality of life for all groups in our communities, especially the disadvantaged.

Help young people to find true dignity and self-esteem by your Spirit.

May your power and love be the foundations on which we build our families, our communities and our Nation, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

(Wontulp Bi-Buya Indigenous Theology Working Group 13 March 1997 Brisbane, Qld).