All Saints Church and Justice Mail

Changing the Church and saving the world

In 2004 the All Saints Social Justice Action Group, which is a sub-committee of the Parish Council, began to build up a list of email addresses of members of the congregation who were interested in taking actions on some of the great social justice issues of our day. Gradually the list grew until it had more than thirty email addresses. Members of the SJAG then combed through the websites of organisations like Christian Aid and Oxfam, selected one of the campaigns currently being advocated, and sent the link to people on the list.  Members of the list would receive the message and enter the link, which would take them to a message which could be sent to their Member of Parliament, a business corporation or some other responsible person with the power to bring about change.

About that time we discovered that an Anglican church in Leicester had hit upon the same idea. Representatives of the two churches, All Saints in Kings Heath and the Church of the Martyrs in Leicester, got together and agreed to form a sort of alliance. We called it “Justice Mail”. We decided to help busy people who wanted to change the world but did not have the time to work out what to do. As the work became better known, both churches received requests from other parts of the country to join the lists.

A new Church movement is born

Gradually new lists were formed in new congregations. A list was started for ministerial students in the Queen’s Foundation in Edgbaston. A constitution for Justice Mail was drawn up and adopted in 2010. By now, Justice Mail was being used by several hundreds of people, and an impact was being made both upon the culture of those local congregations and upon the campaign issue.

Now Justice Mail has its own website. If you go to www.justicemail.org.uk you will find it. The St Peter’s Saltley Trust in Birmingham met the costs of its development. On the website you will find details of all the existing member churches, some clear advice about how to start a list of your own in a new church, details about how the organisation works and a page of inspiring comments made by leading theologians. Justice Mail now supports more than twenty leading British campaigning organisations, such as Amnesty International, Church Action on Poverty, the Refugee Council and the Jubilee Debt Campaign. There is a full list of them on the website.

Would you like to join us?

Justice Mail is free. There are no charges. The list managers give their time and skill without charge. If you join Justice Mail you will become familiar with many of the great issues of social justice in Britain and the world today. You can turn your Christian faith into Christian action for the Kingdom of God. If you are reading this but not connected with All Saints Church Kings Heath, you might like to start your own Justice Mail list. Whether you are connected with All Saints Kings Heath or not, and you would like to take part in this exciting work, send an email message to Michael Cross, who manages the All Saints list. His address is cross_xmacx@yahoo.co.uk  And don’t forget to recommend the Justice Mail website to your friends.

 

John M. Hull