The Great Decommission: Religion's Place at the Table in Northern Ireland
David Buckley Thursday, 1 December 2005
The seating arrangement was no accident. When the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) reported in Belfast on September 26 that the Provisional Irish Republican Army had finally put its weapons beyond use, three international military observers sat front and center, while two local church leaders occupied a freestanding table slightly to the side. Reverend Harold Good of the Methodist Church and Fr. Alex Reid of the Catholic Clonard Monastery came to bring ecumenical trust, cross-community credibility, and good faith to this end stage of the decommissioning process. They spoke in unity with the military men, but from their own table, and with voices that carried authority untarnished by sectarian politics.
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