A Modern Money Box

London used to feel like home. I still feel comfortable in tube tunnels and crossing bridges over the Thames. I love to glimpse St Paul's Cathedral in the distance, even if it's now too expensive to enter. Admission was free when I was young and I visited often. 

I was born in London and grew up there so I'm sad at recent changes. The poor and homeless are at once visible and invisible as Londoners make an effort to avert their eyes and hurry past. This doesn't seem to surprise the people who huddle in sleeping bags and watch the passers by. I didn't see homelessness like this in London until the 1980s. Now the city seems closer to the London that enraged Dickens and his fellow reformers. Homeless people probably received more sympathy in the nineteenth century than they do in the 21st. Few now believe in Christian love and charity.

I was reminded of this when I visited the National Portrait Gallery and saw Grayson Perry's Jesus Army Money Box. It's part of his "Who are you?" exhibition and I stumbled on it when looking for something to do before catching my train home. The exhibition is free, which is a great inducement to see it - and it's set out as  a trail to follow through the gallery. The works are varied: tapestry, printing, sculpture and, of course, pottery. The works on display received a great deal of attention. The Huhne Vase brought mocking laughter but most of the exhibits, especially the Ashford Hijab and I Am A Man, received delighted appreciation. But I think the Jesus Army Money Box puzzled people.

We're not used to pictures which celebrate a group that's usually seen as a cult. But the focus of the money box, based on mediaeval reliquaries, treats the beliefs of the Jesus Army seriously while also depicting their good works: the care and hospitality they provide for homeless people. Perhaps that thought is rather shaming for visitors to the National Portrait Gallery. The conversations I overheard often showed a generous concern to accept people who are members of "outsider" groups, particularly if they crave acceptance. But I didn't hear any expressions of sympathy for the Jesus Army, or for the homeless people they help.

There's probably a  lot that the Jesus Army believe that  I don't agree with - and I certainly won't be rushing out to join them. But I wonder what the people bedded down in doorways on frosty nights would think of the Jesus Army Money Box, or if security staff  would let them into the Portrait Gallery to see it.