an exploration of  the friendship of C S Lewis  with J R R Tolkien.

A famous literary friendship which ‘marked the breakdown of two old prejudices’ (C.S. Lewis)

An illustrated talk based on Mercia Malcolm’s recent research. Rev Mercia Malcolm is Church of Ireland vicar in Carnmoney Parish.

This year is the 50th anniversary of the death of C.S. Lewis, who was born in Belfast in 1898. Few authors have left a greater legacy for those seeking to explore the Christian faith – no matter what their age!

This event was part of Community Relations Week 2013, May 20 to May 26, organised by the Community Relations Council, with the theme ‘Expressing Identity – Addressing Division’. This  event was one of over 170 events planned throughout the week making this the biggest event in the community relations calendar.

As a writer and arts facilitator I believe that community should be an integral part of how our city builds a sustainable, and indeed quality, arts and cultural scene. As a Christian I believe that God – having wired humanity for relationship in family, church and society – is passionate about community. Through creative partnership and collaboration, I have personally experienced the value of community. The Biblical adage “as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another,” (Proverbs 27:17), has proven itself painfully accurate, and my writing is a sharper and more powerful act for all the brave souls who’ve offered encouragement and critique. Despite the isolated nature of novel-writing I couldn’t have completed my first book without the support and inspiration of the incredible community of writers and artists who call Belfast home.

Community, in the truest and most honest sense, is integral to a healthy arts scene. Artists rage against stagnancy in their work. In my experience the meeting of creative minds, whether they be artists, business professionals, teachers or politicians, can be a vital weapon in this war; breathing fresh life, innovation and imagination into tired practices. The short story writer Raymond Carver expresses this eloquently when he writes, “the places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.” Like Jacob wrestling God for a blessing, the marrying of actively, creative minds has always been an awkward, messy process and yet for me, a spirit-filled experience; a place from whence emerges the most innovative, challenging and precious art. Art of any depth requires outside influence. For most artists this is a difficult journey, painful, exhilarating and best practised within a supportive and challenging community.

However, Carrie Tiffany’s act points towards an understanding of artistic community grander than mere collaboration or even support. Over the last few months I have been ruminating on what it would look like to incorporate the counter-cultural values of the Kingdom of God into the arts community and I see these same values embodied in Tiffany’s desire to honour the many alongside the few. Primarily, as artists we must operate from a place of security rather than fear. As artists who pursue life with Jesus our identity is found first in God and then, not in the artistic role, but in the art we create; scratchings at, and signposts to, the bigger beauty, truth and reality of the Creator. We strive to pursue excellence and discipline in our work, secure in the knowledge that we are gracefully accepted in spite of our failings. A serious artist, whether subscribing to a Christian faith or not, will want to shirk the self in pursuit of “Good Art.”

Community is a fabulous, and arguably God-designed space, in which to practice this fine art of dying to self. As artists our motivation should be “Good Art” not individual success or fame. True community should bind us to one another and as such a success for a fellow artist will be a win for the whole community, and an individual disappointment, a shared sorrow. The desire, as expressed by Tiffany, to honour others with whatever influence you are given, is an opportunity to move beyond the self and encourage the entire artistic community. Though simplistic, and perhaps obvious, to those of us familiar with the Biblical model of the Body of Christ – each part equal and essential – such a radical idea of community sits uneasily in the contemporary art world where funding cut backs, forced competitiveness and scathing critique often fosters a spirit of fear and negativity. If our arts scene, often critiqued for its provincialism and stagnancy, is to evolve towards excellence we need individuals like Carrie Tiffany who are prepared to upset the prevailing culture with a full, and outworked understanding of what radical artistic community should be.

Jan Carson.

Jan Carson is a writer, arts facilitator and theology graduate based in Belfast. Her first novel, “Malcolm Orange Disappears” is due for publication in early 2014.

People with learning disabilities have a much better quality of life than in the past. Social attitudes have become more accepting of their presence in the community and as a result they no longer have to spend their lives in large impersonal institutions. They are helped to live in their own homes and families receive greater support from statutory and voluntary bodies. Some children with learning disabilities may now be placed in mainstream education. Churches are less likely than in the past to discourage a person with a learning disability from attending worship or sharing in communion services. Some churches have ministry groups specifically for people with learning disabilities but too many churches still make little provision in their ministries in their local communities.

However although things are better, there is still room for improvement. People with learning disabilities still experience negative attitudes and discrimination. The confidential inquiry into the premature deaths of people with learning disability published recently http://www.bris.ac.uk/cipold/ found that people with learning disability are on average more likely to die 16 years before the general population because of delays investigating or treating their illnesses (that is they were preventable deaths). And as investigations into some residential facilities in both England and this province over the past two years continue to reveal, people with learning disabilities may still suffer harm in the places which are supposed to be providing care. As a society we too often expect that on those occasions when behaviour is problematic it will be managed with minimal training and resource. It is too easy to be critical of individuals who struggle to manage challenging behaviour. They and those they care for are too often out of sight and out of mind. Those caring for learning disabled people are too often under-resourced and inadequately trained – frequently due to inadequate funding either by the state or private providers.

Those who profess to follow Christ must continually be in the vanguard of efforts to improve life for the learning disabled and those who care for them. Volunteers can help a lot by acting as mentors. Charities like L’Arche, Prospects and (though not specifically Christian) Mencap and others have set the example of how to do it. Christians are to be agents for good in a world of disadvantage and darkness, preserving and incarnationally illuminating what is good and righteous. We are created to do good works (Ephesians 2:10) and this world and life, whether we like it or not, is all we have in which to show God’s loving commitment to humanity with all its imperfections, anxieties and hopes.

Matt 25: 45 “Truly I say to you: whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me”.

Noel McCune
Chairperson, Contemporary Christianity and retired NHS Consultant Psychiatrist.

Mrs Thatcher is largely remembered in Northern Ireland for her misjudged response to the hunger strike and for the much reviled Anglo Irish Agreement, which some now say paved the way for the eventual success of the Good Friday Agreement. But her economic legacy in Northern Ireland has been largely overlooked. Unfortunately, it was even less successful than her political interventions.

I spent the first half of Mrs T’s tenure as Prime Minister working in Northern Ireland as an economist in the public sector before moving to the private sector in the mid eighties. I watched therefore as unemployment in Northern Ireland rose to a peak of 18.1% in 1986 (compare this to a rate of 8.5% today), with over 120,000 people claiming unemployment benefit. The Thatcher government also preached the message to our businesses that they had to face up to the ‘cold hard winds of competition’, resulting in the collapse of our manufacturing sector where employment fell by around 40,000 in the first half of the eighties to less than 100,000 jobs.

In many ways, the Northern Ireland economy suffered more under Thatcher than in the present recession. While she did push through important structural reforms in the UK, her economic policies were little short of disastrous for Northern Ireland, even given the context of the Troubles which curtailed inward investment. The drive for home ownership was widely welcomed but also laid the seeds of the property boom of the first decade of this century. Ironically, where the Northern Ireland economy did benefit in the 1980’s was the huge growth in public spending which led to our current overdependence on the public sector.

In the so-called ‘Sermon on the Mound’ to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1988, Mrs Thatcher linked her economic and political policies to her Christian faith. ‘Christianity is about spiritual redemption not social reform’, she pronounced. This led her to conclude that our social and economic arrangements must be founded on the acceptance of individual responsibility which ‘comes with freedom and the supreme sacrifice of Christ’.

While I accept the basis of her belief, the implications for social and economic policy and the role of the state do not follow for me. Unfettered wealth creation was considered to be entirely acceptable as long as it was accompanied by a degree of altruism. The role of the state was not to ‘intervene’ in the market but to promote the market so that individuals could exercise their choice freely.

Michael Sandel has attributed to Thatcher and her American buddy, Ronald Reagan, the responsibility for turning our ‘market economy’ into a ‘market society’, a trend which was picked up enthusiastically by their successors Blair and Clinton, a society in which we have lost our moral values in pursuit of the market. The capitalist market economy is the best system available for allocation of resources but capitalism must be accompanied by compassion and concern for those who lose out. I look to government to support and promote these principles, not to ignore them.

Philip McDonagh

Philip McDonagh is an economist and a member of the Society of Friends.

Nowadays meat is traded on a global scale like oil, iron and other ‘commodities’. About a month ago I was about to buy a frozen pizza from my local supermarket when standing in the queue I noticed that the chicken on it came from Thailand. I took it back wondering how on earth we had got to this stage. There are at least 10 farms within a three-mile radius of my house, why am I eating meat from 5,000 miles away?

I’ve heard lots before about food miles, the dangers of processed food and sustainability but I have to admit that it’s only since horsegate that I’ve really stopped to consider my part in this. I voted with my own feet and wallet for cheap and unsustainable meat. I hadn’t stopped to consider the effects of my choices on the animals, local producers or the environment. Meat has not become cheap, it has become cheapened.

I should have known better. I used to work on a farm that raised beef cattle and it was really hard work and the rearing of a calf from suckling to slaughter took several years. Every day of the year there was hard work to be done, producing silage for the cattle to eat, cleaning their sheds out and basic animal husbandry. There was a connection between the animals and the land and the people who reared them. This seems to have been lost not just by me but by millions. How on God’s good earth could all this work and care go into the welfare of these animals for four burgers to be sold at under a £1?

However, horsegate is a great opportunity to bring about change. Food is flavour of the month, almost every other programme on TV is about food and there are even whole channels devoted to it – we are obsessed. The Bible is full of references to food right across the Testaments. It’s celebrated as a blessing and gift from God and there’s a strong narrative of justice and jubilee economics when it comes to food and its connection to the land. From God providing manna in the wilderness under a system where nobody can accumulate right through to the prophets railing against the rich who were robbing the poor of their land and ability to work and produce food.

When talking about food in this context we raise huge issues of world trade, poverty, hunger and deprivation. Right now in the world around 13 per cent of people are hungry while 20 per cent are overweight or obese. Locally and across the UK new food banks are opening every week and for many there is simply no choice when it comes to the food we eat. This is the sad reality. The complicated chain of food processing relationships that horsegate has exposed will not be changed overnight. The unholy disconnect between the farm and the fork has taken place slowly over many years. It will take time and a new intentionality to be redeemed.

So this is not a call to eat trendy and expensive organic food, to raise your own flocks or to become a vegan. Rather, I’m simply asking, what would it look like if followers of Christ began pay more attention to where we source our food? What if this movement already pioneered by the few became the mainstream in our churches? Not legalistically but in a way that encourages careful consideration of the value of food beyond its price. Perhaps we may find that we cannot afford to eat meat every day. Perhaps we will re-discover the real cost and true worth of meat. This scandal asks huge questions of all of us. As children of God with a creation mandate to rule well over the earth, can we continue to blindly accept the food on the shops’ shelves? Imagine the witness to those around us if we extend our understanding of integrity and God’s kingdom living to what we eat and more broadly what we consume.

David Smyth.

David Smyth is Public Policy Officer with Evangelical Alliance (NI). This is an abridged version of an article which was first posted on the EA (NI) website and is used with permission.

The acclaimed BBC series ‘Call the Midwife’ illustrates very well what good care is like. The drama, based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth and set in London’s East End during the 1950s, illustrates an intimacy and individuality of care to which all health professionals would aspire. Such care is indeed to be found in our health service. There are many examples of excellent care that don’t hit the headlines as callers to radio programmes often testify. In the last few years family and friends known to me have experienced such high quality treatment and care from health and social care services.

What then lies behind such basic failures of care as occurred in Stafford? The answers are complex and multiple. Ruthless imposition of targets by departmental officials, unwillingness to listen to the concerns of coal face workers and underfunding of services are commonly cited but this isn’t the forum for discussing them. Rather, I want to suggest that at a deeper level one cause is our society’s devaluing of the ordinary.

The unique way in which ordinary ‘chores’ foster relationships  has been devalued in the modern cults of achievement and celebrity. Our understanding of work that is menial has changed because our ability to grasp its meaning has changed. The word, derived from the 14th century Anglo-French meignial – belonging to a household – originally engendered a sense of rootedness and connectedness but nowadays only implies something that is monotonous and anonymous. This is significant, not only because it separates the menial nature of a carer’s work from its relational context, but also because it values this work solely in economic terms. Although at times there have to be ways of improving how things are done, the tasks of caregiving and bringing healing by health professionals should not be reduced to an exercise in efficiency. They are best measured by the quality of the work done rather than the speed with which it is accomplished.

Finding moral purpose isn’t about trying to make those things which are ordinary somehow profound, but rather simply to consecrate them. Christians worship a God who has taken on our frail humanity and has lowered himself to meet us. So we need not dismiss the mundane routines of our physical state as inconsequential, but rather offer the ordinary tasks and the close relationships back to him, trusting that all work is indeed His own. George Herbert’s 17th century poem ‘the Elixir’ reveals the secret of finding moral purpose in work, whether voluntary or in paid employment.

Teach me, my God and King, In all things thee to see,
And what I do in anything, To do it as for thee.

Noel McCune.

Noel is Chair of the Board of Contemporary Christianity and worked as a Consultant Psychiatrist in the NHS.

Day after day of protests, riots, stone throwing, petrol bombs, attacks on the police, illegal parades.  It’s all so very familiar if you were around at the beginning of the troubles. And the places are the same: Albertbridge Road, Lower Newtownards Road, the Short Strand. The slogans may be focused on something different, the controversy over the flying of the flag on the City Hall in Belfast, but they expose the presence of familiar attitudes.

It’s easy to condemn those involved rather than try to understand them.  However the cause of the unrest is a complicated one, and needs proper political attention. But what the flags protests reveal, more than anything else, is that the Protestant paradox is alive and well and living in Ulster.

Those involved in the protests are concerned about an erosion of their British culture and their British heritage. This heritage may be very narrowly defined as the right to fly flags, even to brandish them, and the right to parade where parades have traditionally gone. While narrow, it would be unreasonable to object to this desire to retain one’s identity as one sees it. The defence and expression of one’s political views is legitimate in a democracy, provided it is undertaken within the law.

However, many of those involved in the protests see themselves as not only defending their British identity, but as defending Protestantism. The paradox is a familiar one.  Many of the Protestants who wish to defend Protestantism seem to have left it behind. Their fight is not for the key doctrines of the Reformation: the centrality of scripture, salvation by faith in Christ alone through the grace of God alone. Many Protestants do not know the bible, do not read it, have not sought (or found) salvation in Christ and have little time for God. Moreover the right of Protestants to worship is not in question. We are free to preach the doctrines of grace. The division caused by the Reformation remains, but too many who use the term Protestant seem to have forgotten what it really means.  The name Protestant remains as a symbol, for many, of division, but is empty of its true content, the desire to love God and to serve Him.

Secularism and the process of secularisation take many faces in the West. Protestant secularism in Northern Ireland has been exposed by the recent flags controversy, by the worship of our British heritage above everything else, to be placed alongside the preoccupations of those in leafy suburbia. Protestant secularism is just as much a working class as a middle class phenomenon.  God is left behind, disregarded by a concentration on the here and now.

That is the saddest thing about the recent events: the fact that many do not base their lives on the authority of scripture, have not placed their faith in Christ and are not seeking to live for Him and His glory alone through grace.  For that is what the Reformation was about in the first place, wasn’t it?

John Gillespie

John Gillespie is Professor of French Language and Literature at the University of Ulster and a Presbyterian Elder.

It certainly makes sense on the face of it that when the weather gets worse, people’s mood goes downhill. But when weather is getting better, why should some people’s mood get worse – especially if they are getting help? That seems to make no kind of sense – or maybe there is an explanation.

“It’s not the despair … I can stand the despair. It’s the hope” So John Cleese’s Mr Stimson in the film Clockwise assesses the peaks and troughs of his epic journey, and the evidence seems to suggest that he is not alone.  If help has come, if the weather is getting better, or peace arrives, then hope begins to grow and that hope calls for change. Change is often difficult, it is sometimes painful and it nearly always means effort. People don’t cope well with change.

So what does this have to say to those who profess to follow Jesus Christ in Northern Ireland? Well, I suppose that there are two strands. Firstly and generally, the Christian message offers hope, and we need to be aware that this will impose strains that weren’t there before, people come to faith – though of course there will be resources as well!  Secondly, in Northern Ireland specifically, the ceasefires certainly gave hope of something better, but has the peace actually been delivered? Do recent events on the streets of Belfast suggest that people in our communities feel that they are coping with change  well? So, what are we doing about it?

Chris Morris.

Chris Morris is a retired statistician and has an MPhil in Reconciliation Studies.

Is it just me, or is there anyone else out there getting more and more dispirited about the quality of public discourse? Arguments on an ad hominem basis; speeches with barbed phrases, and interviews that both lower the tone and lessen understanding of the issues apparently under consideration.

I am perplexed as well as dispirited. I have been under the impression that leaders were elected to lead. I cannot really believe that any significant number of voters went to the polls to ensure that their representatives or their colleagues indulged in one liners that demean others or lessen the potential for progress.

Yet I also sense a pattern here in wider society. One has only to read the comments that often follow on at the end of an article or blog. Anonymity for many such contributions often means that the tone is lowered with the language tending towards the abusive.

Thankfully, not everyone with influence is buying into this pattern and culture. For example, one of my friends who is an accredited lobby journalist in Parliament at Westminster has a principle that he will never write anything that rubbishes or diminishes anyone he has met or interviewed.

Of course, there are complex and often very difficult issues to be discussed and debated in the media, but he feels that his role is to uplift that discussion rather than contribute to the denigration of those who have to make the decisions – even if he feels that they are not very good at what they are doing.

My core point is really quite a simple one. Wouldn’t we all be better off if we re-introduced civility into political and public discourse as well as civic life?

An article by the American Christian thinker Stanley Hauerwas which was sent to me recently, describes the situation very well. He said, and I quote ‘I use the example of the Queensberry rules with boxing.  (With roots in) Roman gladiatorial games, boxing was pretty brutal until the 19th century.

In 1867 the Marquis of Queensbury lent his name to regulations that put boxing in a ring, under a referee, within (a framework) of rules. For instance: touch gloves to begin and don’t punch below the belt.  But boxing is not a love-in.  Boxers fight until one loses. That’s democratic civility.’

I fear that unless we get a grip on our public discourse, the arena for the battle of ideas will not be the healthy public square where there is disagreement, debate and a serious attempt to persuade. It will be the arena of the gladiator where there is blood on the ground and an expectation that more will follow.

I do not want to pretend that my own interactions with people over the years have always been as uplifting as they should have been. And I do want to apologise properly for the times when what I have said or the tone in which I have said it has been less than worthy.

I have tried to learn from those encounters, and I do believe in life long learning! I have learned the hard way that good arguments do not of themselves win the hearts and minds of people, even of those who may be inherently sympathetic.

Effective persuasion is a very skilled business and even the best arguments often need a long time to take root. Adversarial encounters may give a buzz at the time, but usually widen the communication gap and lengthen the time needed for proper understanding and persuasion.

It is a sad reflection on us that we make saying ‘Sorry’ such hard work, even for relatively minor matters that have gone wrong. This bodes ill for any prospect of saying sorry into issues of greater pain and complexity.

That is a key reason why I am so dispirited at the current very public outbreaks of aggravation. As an antidote to this, I suggest that we would all do well to try to usher in a season of respect, verbal restraint and public and inter-personal civility. Why not?

Norman Hamilton.
Rev Norman Hamilton is minister of Ballysillan Presbyterian Church.

I read the previous evening how the Sisters of Mercy bathed and fed lepers and I was struck by the love and dignity they gave the dying. God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. They recognised the image of God in each leper and in contrast I found it hard to demonstrate similar action that recognised God’s image in this inebriated person.

Some question how a leper and an alcoholic are comparable. Does an alcoholic not choose to drink and find themselves into such a state while the leper contracts a disease through no fault of their own? Such a focus risks a deserving and undeserving classification for mercy and the Gospel makes no such distinction.

The commonality of leprosy and alcoholism is their stigma. Stigma keeps the sufferer or the diseased hidden and separate in society. Both steal, kill and destroy the person, their family and communities. The disease is an affront to our senses and betrays the frailty of our own body and minds. Is it pride that we think ourselves better as our drinking can be controlled or abstained from? If the image of God is in us and the alcoholic are we are linked in our humanity that carries the mark of our Creator. As Christ’s followers we are Spirit filled children gifted to recognise the divine image in others despite its disguise in society’s stigma.

It is challenging to love a person who can betray, manipulate and lose control of their physical, mental and emotional capacity. These failings obscure the image of God but the truth remains we are made in the image of God. If God humbled himself for such as these are we not called to follow his example and engage with the acceptable and the stigmatised in love.

Often we leave the issues of addiction to the government and for many years our Health and Social care systems have done much work. However, funding cuts have begun to limit engagement in the calamity of alcoholism in our society. Organisations like FASA, Sister Consilios, Betel-Dublin and Stauros continue to support those with drug and alcohol addiction and their families using different methods of treatment, therapy and acts of love. These organisations need the churches support as they bring the Gospel that speaks of transformation that gives dignity to those who have lost sight of their own dignity.

However, on the day these professional organisations are not there – the day the alcoholic’s soiled body needs bathed; their clothes need changed; the walls, floor and sofa need cleaned – they need a kind word of love and the presence of someone who recognises they are made in God’s image. As church communities we not only need to support the professionals but we need to act in love. We’ll need a stomach, heart and will to walk in the sandals of the man who taught us how to be with the stigmatised. We have God’s Spirit empowering us to follow his ways; to humble ourselves so that we can give dignity to those who have lost theirs.

Heather Law.

Heather Law has worked with a homelessness charity in East and South Belfast for the last five years after completing her Masters in Theology. She previously worked overseas with Tearfund and SIM.