God Save Northern Ireland
Norbert Gasaj Friday, 5 August 2005
After 36 years of bloodshed between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland in which more than 3,600 people were murdered and several thousands maimed, it was indeed "beautiful news"[1] when on 28 July the leadership of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) pledged "an end to the armed campaign."[2] It was hailed worldwide as front page news. "All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms," guaranteed the statement. "All volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means."[3]
The official British response has been enthusiastic. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said it was a "step of unparalleled magnitude."[4] The British army within 24 hours began dismantling a number of security posts and watchtowers in South Armagh, part of Northern Ireland.
These remarkable developments give hope that conflict in Northern Ireland is finally over. Still, we must ask what it will take to truly transform a decades-long conflict — a conflict organized along religious lines -- into lasting peace and reconciliation. We must ask, more specifically, not only how religion has been part of the problem but how religion can be part of the solution.
War is Over (If You Want It)
"War is over," John Lennon sang in his famous Christmas song -- but at the end of the song he added a qualifier: "if you want it." And that's crucial. The sad reality is that it would be naïve to expect that the IRA statement alone will bring lasting peace to Northern Ireland. In fact, we are already seeing mixed reactions to the IRA move, most of them predictable. Some unionists are highly skeptical, demanding clarity and action. "The proof of pudding is in the eating ... and the digesting of it" declared the reverend Ian Paisley, the firebrand leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).[5]
The fact is that Northern Ireland's "Troubles" represented a war that nobody won. It left a terrible legacy, a wall of hatred between Catholic and Protestant communities that will have to be removed brick by brick by a new generation in the years to come.
For relatives of the victims of IRA violence, the latest moves by Republicans matter little. Alan McBride, whose wife was killed in the Shankill bombing, said: "Nothing is going to bring our loved ones back."[6] And it is not only those who lost relatives whose pain continues, but the thousands who were injured.
There are also ongoing political and security issues that are not fully resolved. Last autumn negotiations to restore Northern Ireland's Assembly collapsed after Ian Paisley demanded photographic proof of the IRA disarmament.[7] For the IRA, demands for photographic proof of decommissioning weapons were tantamount to demanding that the IRA submit to "a process of humiliation."[8] The problems of the past also remain visible in the daily life of Northern Irelnad, including sectarian violence and intimidation, paramilitary activity, corruption, drug rings, and extortion rackets.
Religion in Orange and Green
It is often difficult for Americans to understand the conflict in Northern Ireland between the forces of Nationalism and the forces of Unionism. One of the reasons for this is the use of religious labels to define the opposition sides. If Americans may be able to make sense of clashes between Muslims and Jews in the Middle East, between Hindus and Buddhists in Sri Lanka, or between Orthodox Christians and Muslims in Kosovo, they have difficulty understanding clashes among Christians. American Christians generally accept variations in creed or in religious fervor within Christianity, and for the most part they think of Catholics and Protestants as members of the same religious family. But this is not the universal outlook of people in Northern Ireland.
Why does religion matter so much in Northern Ireland? One Irish Catholic describes the differences between the views of Catholics and Protestants like this:
From my earliest days I was taught that the English were our oppressors, that our nation was incomplete while six counties of Ulster remained under the Union flag. My parents too had learned this tune and their parents before them. Grandparents on both sides of my family had taken part in the war of independence against the British. The prevailing political ethos told us that an Ireland divided could never be at peace. As for the Ulster Protestants who were supposed to be my fellow countrymen, I regarded them as obdurate and bigoted. I never could see their point of view ... Up north the children of Protestant Ulster were learning another tune. They were taught to fear us and regard us as foreigners. We were portrayed as citizens of a priest-ridden and backward country. To them a United Ireland meant domination by Papists and the loss of their Protestant faith and identity. The Catholics alongside whom they lived were to be despised and kept from power. Discrimination and exclusion were the order of the day.[9]
The results of a 2000 survey[10] also shed light on why religious antagonisms are so enduring. A very large percentage of the Catholics and a substantial proportion of the Protestants have been directly affected by the Troubles, either through being intimidated in their areas of residence or knowing personally someone killed or wounded in sectarian violence.
Religion matters because religion is a prime source of identity within the two conflicting communities in Northern Ireland, and people grow up not only identifying themselves as either Protestants or Catholics religiously but also thinking as Protestants or as Catholics in cultural/political terms. To be sure, the Northern Ireland conflict has never been "about" religious differences per se, but sectarian divisions are a crucial part of what has fed the conflict and sustained it over time. Because religion matters so profoundly, no long-term solution to the political problems of the province is possible without combining political and social reconciliation with religious reconciliation.
The Religious Peacemakers
No observer of the Northern Ireland peace process will deny the credit political leaders deserve, both from Northern Ireland (John Hume, David Trimble, Gerry Adams) and outside it (Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern, Bill Clinton). However, just as the political conflict has an integral religious component, the cure must also include religion.
The main religious denominations in Northern Ireland are Catholic, Church of Ireland, Presbyterian, Free Presbyterian, and Methodist. In practical political terms, however, there are two and only two dominant religious cultures: Protestant and Roman Catholic. In the 2001 census there were some 678,000 Catholics out of a total Northern Ireland population of 1,685,000 individuals. People identifying themselves as Catholic constituted 41.5 percent and people identifying themselves as Protestant constituted 53.1 percent (where Protestant represented ‘Protestant and other Christian, including Christian related').[11]
Some of the first efforts to sponsor reconciliation in Northern Ireland through religious engagement and dialogue occurred in the mid-1970. One such effort took place in December 1974, when the IRA met a group of Protestants -- mostly clergymen -- for discussions. The talks did not bring any immediate fruits, but they planted seeds for a process that was to become reality 20 years later. Reconciliation takes a long time.
Most significantly for the peace process, a strong friendship arose and deepened from the early 1980s onwards between Rev. Ken Newell, a moderator at the Fitzroy Presbytarian Church, and Fr. Gerry Reynolds of Clonard Monastery, a Roman Catholic community in west Belfast. The friendship led to the formation of the Fitzroy Clonard Group, a fellowship which has allowed Catholics and Protestants to experience their shared faith together while candidly but respectfully exploring areas of religious differences. It has also had an important impact on political reconciliation.[12]
This reconciliation between the two denominations began with a theological dialogue. Reverend Newell recalls:
We began meeting together, getting to know and understand one another better, to study the Bible in relation to Northern Ireland and to pray and worship as a group. By emphasizing what we had in common, a community has developed which values the support and help we can give to one another as fellow Christians and which I hope has been an example to others of a better way of living together rather that the division and sectarianism many experience.[13]
The Clonard-Fitzroy Fellowship began with Bible study, which made everyone feel comfortable with each other. Then, the Fellowship responded to the larger political scene together, and Gerry Reynolds and Ken Newell were unafraid to discuss and pursue any political concerns. Indeed, Reynolds and Newell went even further, engaging in secret discussions with the leaders of both IRA and Loyalist paramilitary organizations. These meetings, organized by Fr. Alec Reid, a colleague of Fr. Reynolds at Clonard Monastery, had to be secret because the bombing campaign of the IRA was continuing, and the doctrine from the British Government was that there could be no talks with terrorists unless there was first a ceasefire. In this context, Newell, Reynolds and Reid took great risks in that they would have lost credibility in their own communities if their discussions had been found out.
For Rev. Newell, Fr. Reid and Fr. Reynolds, the end of violence and the beginning of a peace process was only one aspect of the larger political, social, and religious reconciliation between the peoples of Northern Ireland. The role of churches in the peace process may seem invisible and unobtrusive, but it had a huge significance for the ongoing politics in Northern Ireland.
Another important factor to bear in mind when considering the ongoing significance of faith-based reconciliation is that Belfast is one of the most churchgoing cities in the Western world, with about three-fourths of its Catholics and only slightly fewer of its Protestants attending church at least once a week.[14] What surveys show is that both the Catholic and Protestant populations of Belfast retain a striking commitment to traditional Christian beliefs, especially with respect to orthodox views of God, the need for salvation, and the authority of the Bible. If this is true, it should be seen as a source of hope that the balm of a sturdy Christian faith can be a medication for the land. As Ken Newell has said, the church has to be more than just a pastor and heal wounds; it has to create an atmosphere where those wounds are no longer inflicted through animosity and hatred.[15]
Giving Peace a Realistic Chance
Last December the peace process seemed to have suffered yet another derailment when the IRA refused to decommission its arms in the open manner needed to convince the Unionists of its commitment to democratic politics. Now the IRA has made its historic statement renouncing terrorist tactics. And not only that, the statement also says:
The IRA leadership has also authorised our representative to engage with the IICD [Independent International Commission on Decommissioning] to complete the process to verifably put its arm beyond use in a way which will further enhance public confidence and to conclude this as quickly as possible. We have invited two independent witnesses, from the Protestant and Catholic churches, to testify to this.[16]
This turn of events has created an unprecedented opportunity to give peace a chance. Such opportunity must not be lost. Churches and clergy have an opportunity to help finally move the peace process past the sticking point over decommissioning weapons.
According to BBC Northern Ireland's Spotlight program a year ago, Ken Newell, wondering aloud about such witnesses from churches, remarked that: "These have to be people who are trusted. These must be people whose word is their bond -- people who are against any kind of exaggeration or hype because people today have a great skepticism against the whole spinning industry. They want people to speak the truth—to tell it as it is and talk straight.[17] The time for such clergymen from both the Catholic and Protestant sides has come. And it is not an accident that this moment of opportunity has arrived; it is a product of patient pursuit of faith-based reconciliation.
[1] Pope Benedict XVI in his regular Sunday address to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square called the recent turn of events "beautiful news," and added that "I encourage everyone to continue to travel down the indicated path and to undertake further steps which allow the strengthening of mutual trust, promote reconciliation and consolidate negotiations aimed at just and lasting peace." Christian Today, 1 August 2005.
[2] The IRA statement, 28 July, 2005. An Phoblacht/Republican News.
[3] Ibid.
[4] BBC, 28 July, 2005.
[5] BBC, 28 July, 2005.
[6] BBC, 28 July, 2005.
[7] The Guardian, December 1, 2004.
[8] Exclusive IRA statement, 9 December 2004. An Phoblacht/Republican News.
[9] Time International, April 20, 1998, p. 25.
[10] Frederick W. Boal, Margaret C. Keane, and David N. Livingstone, Them and Us? Attitudinal Variation Among Churchgoers in Belfast (Belfast: The Institute of Irish Studies, The Queen's University of Belfast, 1997).
[11] See http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/index.html.
[12] Pax Christi, the Belgium-based international Catholic peace organization, honored this groundbreaking initiative with its International Peace Award in 1999. This was the first time it had been awarded to any group in Ireland and the first time to a mixed Catholic-Protestant group.
[13] See www.presbyterianireland.org.
[14] Boal, Keane, and Livingstone, Them and Us?
[15] Radio National, 27 April, 2005, http://www.abc.net.au.
[16] IRA statement, 28 July, 2005.
[17] BBC, 16 November 2004.