Introduction: God, Land and Nation
Alywn Thomson

Comment: Re-routing and Redemption
David McMillan

Protestantism - Negotiating the Future
David Porter

A Discerning Hope
Derek Poole

The Promised Land?
Elizabeth Porter

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PROTESTANTISM -NEGOTIATING THE FUTURE
It often appears that it is the religious people in our community who have the greatest problem with any concept of negotiating the future, which, by definition, involves a commitment to compromise.

For religious Protestants, raised on the myths of protest, defiance and martyrdom, compromise is a dirty word. To have an unyielding mind is a compliment, a sign of faithfulness to the biblical gospel.

This religious fervour finds its political focus in the slogans 'For God and Ulster' and 'No Surrender'. The reality is that for a significant number of Protestants, particularly Evangelicals, to negotiate the political future is, at least subconsciously, an act of religious compromise. To tolerate a diversity of public cultural expression is a betrayal of a truly Christian society.

The dominance of Evangelicalism, which is the 'vision' keeper of this mindset within the religious Protestant community, should not be under estimated. With this 'Conservative' Protestantism we have an unyielding Protestant mind that is at best unwilling to negotiate, and at worst fearful of such engagement.

A Personal Journey
Faith to Live by
Part of my personal journey has involved the attempt to resolve the tension between my Ulster Evangelical Protestant subculture and my experience of Evangelical and Protestant communities in different political, religious and cultural contexts - in Pakistan, India, Malaysia.

The contrast has led me to question both my Protestant and Evangelical identities - and while I had consciously worked on being reconciled to the Evangelical within me, it has only been in recent times that I have begun to be reconciled to the Protestant.

Protestant
My discomfort with my Protestantism arose mainly from the perceived lack of political and cultural choice open to religious Protestants on this island. I remember meeting a former Sunday school teacher outside a polling station who expressed his confidence that as I 'knew the Lord' I would do the right thing. Naturally this meant voting for the party for which he was canvassing.

Looking back, I now believe that rejecting this led to an internal denial of my essential commitment to Protestant theology and convictions. Yet on matters of faith, I do profoundly differ from the Catholic and Orthodox families. Now it is from a position of confidence in these convictions that I think I am better placed to negotiate the future - a future where such diversity is respected.

Evangelical
This point was reached through a growing understanding of my Evangelical identity. Evangelicalism became for me something that was above Protestantism. Yet I now recognize that essentially Evangelicals are Protestants. And in the sense in which the term is used to define a movement, only Protestants can be Evangelicals. No amount of revisionism can, in my view, escape this. It is equally from this understanding of Evangelicalism as a reforming and renewal movement within Protestantism, that I can best contribute to creating a context in which religious Protestants Will be willing to negotiate the future.

Protestantism - Evangelicalism
Part of me still reacts to the whole concept of 'isms'. My spiritual journey is that of a Christian, a disciple of Jesus Christ. That this takes place within a historical, cultural context which labels my convictions Protestant and Evangelical, is a fact. That this places me within a religious community, which is part of Northern Protestantism, is a reality. I may not like the fact and the reality, but I have to face them.

Yet the Protestant Evangelical experience is as diverse as the individuals who identify with it, for it is a profoundly personal faith. In that sense my confidence in negotiating the future is mine alone.

A Necessary Division
Divided We Stand
The history of Protestantism is the history of the western world.

'Unlike the Renaissance, the Reformation directly affected nearly every European and forced almost everyone to make a choice between the old and the new. As it did, the Reformation movement profoundly changed the course of western civilization and touched every facet of human existence. The modern, pluralistic, culturally fragmented western world, for better or for worse, is largely the child of this tumultuous and significant movement.' Robert Linder

Defenders
It is in this context that I find the fear within Northern Protestantism an enigma. We are afraid of the Catholic church, a Catholic dominated Ireland. Yet Protestant faith is a matter of personal choice. Protestantism's strength was in breaking a centralized authority in the hands of corrupt officials, and putting the belief and practice of faith into the realm of conscience before God and Scripture. Once gained, no church can take that away from us.

The offer of a pluralist Ireland is no attraction for, despite Linder's observations, Protestants, in the main, fear a pluralist society. At best Protestant faith has become dependent on civil endorsement; at worst it desires dominance. We are fearful of losing our power and influence in society. The debate on the role of the Protestant churches within state education is evidence of this fear.

We are afraid of a nationalist Ireland, the pan nationalist front - for Protestant faith has become synonymous with British political and cultural identity.

Out of this fear religious Protestants have become the defenders of the status quo and the biggest capitulators to materialism and social inequality, which does so much to suck dry the spiritual vitality of biblical Christian faith.

Dissenters
In order to negotiate the future we need to rediscover our dissenting tradition. Many see this as being their essential character, particularly Presbyterians. They dissent from all that threatens from without.

The dissent that is needed is the willingness to dissent from the fear that threatens from within - to engage, not fear, the Catholic church; to see the essential powerlessness of religion within a pluralist society as something profoundly Christian, of the essence of New Testament faith, and therefore a position of Christ-like strength and not the power of Caesar; to mould our place and contribution in the wider context of Ireland on the basis of the strength of our convictions and numbers.

There is little hope that a majority of religious Protestants will move beyond their fears, suspicions and hostility in these areas. But a strong dissenting tradition, that brings a true diversity and provides an authentically Protestant alternative, is essential if we are to negotiate the future.

Renewing Protestant Principles
Back to the Future
Last November Michael Cassidy challenged Christians in this island as to whether we are to be prisoners of history or of hope. In many senses the choice is a false one. The seeds of hope lie in our history and this is particularly true of Protestantism.

The Reformation released a vast amount of creative theological energy, which has been lost and distorted by the bounds of our history, divisions and conflict on this island. Faith alone, Scripture alone, Christ alone, grace alone, to the glory of God alone, reformed and always reforming - these can help to recapture something of the authentic Protestant tradition.

Sola Scriptura
Protestants are marked by their commitment to biblical authority. In all things we are to let the Bible speak. Yet often we fail to recognise that this same Bible speaks beyond the bounds of our Protestant heritage. God is not confined to our cultural or political boundaries. Biblical authority in Ireland is not drawn from the last 75 years and the maintenance of a Protestant state through partition.

Accepting this authoritative role for the Bible, what then does it require of us in the task of reaching accommodation in this community? It calls us to work for peace, justice and reconciliation. We must be people who are committed to speak, make and build peace; to love and pursue justice; to be reconciled to God and neighbour.

Love becomes a political principle -an act of the will that leads us to embrace both friend and enemy. In doing so truth will be at the centre of our engagement. We do not walk away from the difficult confrontations, particularly where God, 5 standards are being undermined. Empowered by love, motivated by grace we can engage in negotiating the political future, but not our religious convictions.

Sola Fide
It is by grace that we are saved through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God. So say religious Protestants- and in so doing commit themselves to a healthy critique of heritage and tradition, whether in doctrine or practice, belief or lifestyle. The arrogant pride in our heritage and tradition is the severest stumbling block to negotiating the future. Protestants are in danger of believing that God owes then because they are Protestants.

The apostle Paul, who first made this statement had one word for it - in our polite translations, rubbish, filth. All his religious heritage - Israel, Benjamite, Hebrew, Pharisee, zeal and righteousness -all filth - for the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord.

Protestants need to recover a sense of humility, not the false sort, but that which comes from a true appreciation of ourselves. We need a breaking of self righteousness and an acknowledgment that our righteousness is in God - that our faith is an act of grace, God's unmerited favour - not in our being good Protestants.

In such humility of faith we find others, and having found them we learn to respect them and respecting them we can negotiate the future with them.

Semper Reforandum
Reformation is not an act but a process. The Reformers didn't go far enough. They replaced a Holy Roman Empire with a Holy Protestant Empire. The Radical reformers challenged the magisterial reformers who relied on the civil magistrates to maintain the cause of religion.

Faith must always be a matter of conviction and not coercion. This goes to the heart of Catholic and Protestant sacralism - the seed of religious nationalism in this island. It is a matter of competing empires and not competing creeds.

One God, One King, One Country is not a Christian option. While there are duties to king and country, there is loyalty to God and God alone - a God who has no favourites, who is not bound by cultural communities and political borders, whose worship and service is not dependent on a particular constitutional settlement.

Together these three factors, if embraced by religious Protestants, would transform their capacity to negotiate the future.

David Porter - ECONI's Director