As we come to a close in this final chapter, where the main arguments proposed in this book are brought together and a potential future agenda for social policy research and practice is explored, two aspirations deserve articulation: that this book has helped set the scene about religious welfare generally and religious organisations in Britain specifically in relation to their social welfare role; and that a more rigorous academic debate has been etched out that may help students and teachers of social policy in the UK broaden their view of social policy, historically, theoretically and practically.

In both cases, however, what this book may have done is raise more questions than give answers, but ultimately, if this has served to better distil the key issues surrounding religious welfare and to raise critical analytical questions that show the merits of ‘dispassionate social scientific’ research (Sutton and Vertigans, 2005) on religion and social policy, then this book has achieved a worthy purpose. These new critical questions revolve around such themes as whether or not religious groups are being unfairly excluded from civic and democratic participation, what the real contributions in material terms are that religious groups bring to social policy and social welfare, and how we might rethink the terms of the social welfare debate under this light. Hence, as argued in Trigg (2007) and Sutton and Vertigans (2005), in order for religion not to fester in the ‘private’ sphere of life and explode sporadically in the public arena, it should undergo ‘critical scrutiny’, which academic research can offer. This can only be done once religious action in the public sphere is seen as a legitimate activity, and the likely contribution of religious groups to social policy debates is accepted.

But before this final chapter can delve into the concluding discussion about the arguments raised and the relative usefulness of the concept ways of being, it is important to address some potential weaknesses and points of criticism in this book, in order to better express the significance of its arguments. The book was restricted by the practical issue of space, and the ambition of this writing project, which was to offer both a broad and deep view of religious welfare in an introductory style.