Editorial: Thinking about the common good?
Anna Rankin

From the director: Untold stories
David W Porter

Faith and Politics After Christendom
Jonathan Bartley

Comment: Doing the Right Thing
Karen Jardine

Give Generously and Change the World?
Alwyn Thomson

Economics and the Common Good
Esmond Birnie

Interview with Jim Wells (MLA): Polishing our Cars
Anna Rankin

Review: No Longer Strangers
Mercia Malcolm

Division and Diversity: Churches in a plural society
Fran Porter

Buying in - Opting out
Sean Mullan

Interview with Fr Mariusz Dabrowski: Meet the neighbours
Anna Rankin

Questions & Answers: Reader survey responses
Anna Rankin

Review: Mark: Gospel of Action
Allen Sleith

Bible Study: The Common Good
Donal McKeown

Difficult Conversations: Let's talk about tax...
Lynda Gould

New Resource
Out of the Depths

< Past Issues Archive

Some events in life are so momentous that days later we are left wondering if what happened really did occur. By the time you are reading this you may well be forgiven for wondering if the events of 8 May were a collective figment of the imagination or the result of some mass hallucination brought on by the spring heat wave. With weather on their side, the DUP and Sinn Féin delivered on their earlier promise to enter into devolved government together. Many remain to be convinced that it will work, but we dare to hope that this is indeed the end of the war.

FROM THE DIRECTOR: Untold stories

TAKING MY PLACE among the guests at Stormont, it was easy to be caught up in the prevailing mood of optimism. However, looking around the Great Hall it was sobering to reflect on the absentees and those standing on the margins, the political casualties on the road to this new peace. As someone later remarked, while recognising that this new axis of power-sharing is what now needs to happen, there is something unseemly to many about the new dispensation. There is a lot of hurt in this peacemaking business. There was and is, of course, even more hurt and pain in the business of war. Outside Stormont victims groups from within the Unionist community protested against the new deal and the presence of Sinn Féin in government. In talking with some of them it was clear they felt deeply hurt and betrayed by what was happening. One man in particular was approaching the 30th anniversary of the murder of his brother, an RUC man, by the IRA. There were victims in Parliament Buildings too, those who also bear the memory and pain of lost relatives and friends. And yet, the common pain of human tragedy continues to divide rather than unite.

I am increasingly convinced that our ability to enter a shared future is linked to our capacity to find an appropriate way to deal with our shared past. Whether or not the devolved institutions deliver on public services and economic investment, the shadows of our past retain their power to either make or destroy whatever hope we may have of a better future. How we choose to remember the hurt and trauma of over 30 years of violence and care for those who continue to pay the physical and psychological price for the bitter hatreds of our traditions will be the greatest test of a truly stable and reconciled community.

Significantly, the specific needs of victims were recognised in the speeches made at Stormont and in the earlier press conference by Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams. “We must not allow our justified loathing of the horrors and tragedies of the past to become a barrier to creating a better and more stable future. In looking to that future we must never forget those who have suffered during the dark period from which we are, please God, emerging. We owe it to them to craft and build the best future possible and ensure there is genuine support for those who are still suffering,” said Ian Paisley. “We are very conscious of the many people who have suffered. We owe it to them to build the best future possible. It is a time for generosity, a time to be mindful of the common good and of the future of all our people,” said Gerry Adams.

In coming weeks, the First and Deputy First Minister will together appoint a new Victims’ Commissioner. Alongside this, the work of the PSNI Historical Inquiries Team continues, new legal inquiries are to be opened on several high profile murders, we await the publication of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry report and relatives and friends continue to bring cases for investigation to the Police Ombudsman. Each weekend the Sunday papers bring another series of revelations about the dirty war we have fought. We might want to forget the past, but the past will not forget us.

Alongside caring for those who bear the physical and emotional scars, we need to find our unique way to bear witness to our truth over the last 40 years. In South Africa they found the space for such hard talking in the concept of ubuntu. What is it in our culture and traditions that will provide a similar place for hearing and healing? That is something for us all to ponder, but I am sure it will not be found in the forensic application of our culture of law. If the Troubles have truly passed away, then maybe the “wake house” offers a suitable image, a space where we gather to put to death the past by a faithful remembering of our common story. Both the Irish and Ulster Scots traditions are deeply imbued with storytelling as a means of remembering and restoring community.

So too is the Christian faith. “Tell me the old, old story of Jesus and his love.” It is the gospel story which compels us to be reconciled to God. During my sabbatical, I had the pleasure of several conversations with Stanley Hauerwas, Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University Divinity School. On one particular occasion we reflected on reconciliation and how we deal with the past, a topic he addressed during his visit to Belfast in 1998. For Hauerwas, “Reconciliation occurs when my enemy tells me my story and I can say, ‘Yes, that’s my story.’” It is that moment when my enemy and I truly understand our respective experiences of the enmity between us and become open to a new beginning in the relationship. I found this comment both insightful and helpful, but what he said next really caught my imagination, “This makes God our greatest enemy.”

In a Christian culture where Jesus is our friend, the idea of God as our enemy is not heard as good news. Yet it is God who tells us our story as it truly is. The human story is one of alienation from God and each other. The burden of our responsibility for the enmity between us is clear. Yet in the life and work of Jesus our story is redeemed and we can truly face who we are in the light of God’s outrageous offer of unconditional love and complete forgiveness.

The Christian story has the potential to weave together the story of our Irish and Ulster Scots experience of living together badly. For both share the Christian experience of God in Christ speaking into our fractured human story to offer hope and redemption. A Christian community that is not prepared to engage in this hard work of healing the wounds of our past and dealing with the sins of our shared story will risk losing its credibility as a gospel people in a broken and hurting world. For addressing the historic wounds of our human story is as much at the heart of dealing with poverty in Africa and conflict in the Middle East as it is to do with making peace in Ireland.

As Hauerwas said in his 1998 talk, “You cannot have peace in Ireland if you forget the wrongs Protestants have done to Catholics or Catholics to Protestants. There can be no healing of the wounds of history if you forget the murders perpetrated by Catholics and Protestants alike. Moreover, the reasons you cannot forget the terror Catholics and Protestants have perpetrated on one another is that you are Christians. Christians are required to confess and remember their sins, but they are also required to remember the sins of those who have sinned against us. Any reconciliation that does not require such a remembering cannot be the reconciliation made possible by the cross of Christ.”

This is serious and heavy work. Like many at this time, the church dares to hope for a better future. But if we are not to be enslaved by our past, or doomed to repeat it, then we must dare to listen to the stories that tell us who we truly are. And for the church this must mean bringing the redemptive story of Jesus and his love into the conversation.

DAVID W PORTER

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