Introduction: The Politics of Holiness
Derek Poole

Comment
David McMillan

From the Director
David Porter

Boundary Markers
Heather Morris

A Passion for Holiness or Dangerous Purity
Bishop Harold Miller

In the Flowing Tide
Steve Stockman

Holy Sectarianism
Alwyn Thomson

Book Reviews
Alwyn Thomson

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A PASSION FOR HOLINESS ... or Dangerous Purity
The title of this article is, I hope, the creative juxtaposition of two book titles, A Passion for Holiness written by Jim Packer and 'Dangerous Purity' by Bernard Henri-Levy. I am grateful for the work of these authors and their important perceptions. However, for the insights at the heart of this discourse I am indebted to a marvellous and life-changing book, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation, by Miroslav Volf. The significance of Volf's book arises from the rare combination of an able academic, committed to biblical scholarship and applied with the fresh radicalism that the scriptures demand. Volf puts into words so many of the seed-thoughts which have for a long time occupied my mind. He says what I want to say, but he says it as a Croatian who has had to reflect on the painful reality of former Yugoslavia, and the Gospel-issues raised by the violent ethnic divisions there. He is an example of the kind of person we need to be in conversation with in Northern Ireland. People who are exploring what it means to live Christianly in divided communities elsewhere in the world.

I want to begin by looking at the concept of holiness and in particular the difference between true and false holiness. Jim Packer points out, by means of caricature, two ways of illustrating false holiness. The first he describes as 'Rhapsody without Realism', and he explains it like this:

'Here at one extreme are those for whom holy living means what I call "Rhapsody without Realism". Their heart concentrates totally on devotional exercises, experiences of divine love, ecstasies of assurance, expressions of their own love to God, and the maintaining of emotional warmth and excitement in all their approaches to him and communion with him. Of this ardour, they feel, true holiness essentially consists.' Now, far be it from me to denounce such glorious experiences. There have been moments in my own spiritual journey when I have been lifted up into heavenlies, and known such closeness to God that I could sing with that awful chorus, '...the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace'. Times like that are vital for Christians. They give an eternal perspective, a longing after the otherworldly, and often the courage and strength to face reality. However, that is not biblical holiness which, as Packer reminds us, is always earthed. It is not seen essentially in ecstatic experiences, good though they may be, but in caring and living and getting our hands dirty in a messy world. James 2:14-16 puts it like this:

'What good is it' my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith, but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked or lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill", yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself if it has no works, is dead.' Packer concludes, 'Holiness requires us to show our love of God by the quality of love for others, whom we must assume that he loves as he loves us. Rhapsody without realism is not Christ-like; it is a failure in holiness rather than a form of it.' In the context of Northern Ireland I would suggest that holiness means getting our hands dirty in the complex issues of a divided community and a sectarian society. Warmth of fellowship without that kind of engagement is not holiness in any biblical sense.

The other memorable caricature Packer gives us is 'Rule-keeping without relating', referring to the kind of people who are prone to view holiness in this way: 'Their heart glows with love of God's law and the essence of holiness is the keeping of that law. They are meticulously honest in business, meticulously conscientious in shunning evil and avoiding activities classed as worldly.. meticulously insistent on maintaining God's truth, and their passion to be correct by the code merits unfeigned admiration and applause.' These are perhaps the true blue evangelicals rather than the earlier pietists or Charismatics. They get ten out of ten for correctness in theology, in ethics and in good manners; but if this is what holiness is all about, then we have a sneaking suspicion that it is the Pharisee at the temple who goes away justified. Packer sees this caricature as the person who keeps all the rules but cannot cope with relationships and particularly relationships that might be seen as sullying such perfection.

The point that I want to make is that Packer's caricatures of holiness are alive and well in Northern Ireland and have a profound effect on the politics of our situation. Rhapsody without reality becomes escapism, and we have to confess that within the evangelical community we are not short on that. We see escapism in churches which, although geographically rooted in needy communities, fail to notice that the community is there and avoid any responsibility for it. We see escapism in our worship, in the liturgy which never quite connects with the issues around us, and in teaching in which the needs of the world are never mentioned. Even when the most profoundly awful things are happening outside our church door we are tempted to escape into the religious sub-culture with its 'Christian' music, dress and language. When the gifts of the church only function to warm our hearts but never send us out to serve, we are living in pseudo-holiness.

Rule-keeping without relating is also too common in our situation. Packer describes people who are like this in the following way; 'Their problem is that their tunnel-vision makes their passionate grace-given commitment to law-keeping appear to them as the whole of spiritual life. But rule-keeping without relational closeness to God and one's fellow human-beings is not Christ-like, and is a way of missing holiness rather than achieving it. This kind of rule-keeping can so easily make us judgmental towards others who don't emphasise and keep the same laws as we do. It can make us hypocritical in ourselves as we seek to give the impression of living good and perfect lives, even when we don't. Alternatively, it can make us distant, so that we don't let people get too close to us. Do you ever ask why so many churches in Ulster are bastions of the kind of manners that create formality? Why are churches the places where people are addressed as 'Mr' and 'Mrs' while the rest of the world is using 'Christian' names. Law keeping keeps us at a safe distance from genuine human encounters. It is afraid of the kind of weakness and vulnerability that are essential if people are to truly meet. It is concerned with keeping everything clean and tidy, and anxious not to be sullied by the messiness of human life.

In our pursuit of holiness we need to avoid these caricatures, the escapism of rhapsody without reality and the self-righteous dangers of law keeping without relationships. In all of this our paradigm is Christ. The New Bible Dictionary reminds us that 'Christ in his life and character is the supreme example of divine holiness. In him it consisted in more than sinlessness; it was his entire consecration to the will and purpose of God.' In other words, biblical holiness leads in the direction of embrace rather than exclusion. If Jesus Christ were simply a sinless human being preserved in aspic, the task of salvation would not be complete. He was, rather, a sinless human being involved in all the suffering and mess of a needy world. Similarly the Father, whose holy nature does not allow him to live in separation from a fallen creation, reaches out in love to embrace broken people. The same is true of the Holy Spirit, who does not wait for us to be perfect before beginning a work of grace in our lives, but rather enters in to human frailty.

In seeking to understand the nature of holiness the metaphors of 'exclusion and embrace', used by Miroslav Volf, are extremely helpful. There is a kind of holiness which can only exist by excluding, and another kind of holiness which wants to embrace. By appealing to the concept of embrace I do not want to imply an extreme universalism that diminishes the place of repentance, for undoubtedly the Gospel is such that people do at times exclude themselves. However, I believe that overall the approach of Jesus in the Gospels is one of embrace and openness to people. He breaks down every dividing wall of partition and is found among those condemned as unsound, dirty, sullied, or outside of God's plan; the Jews and the Gentiles, men and women, the religious and the 'sinners', masters and slaves. Jesus reaches out where the world of his day excludes.

Miroslav Volf speaks of a perverted holiness that separates us from others. He argues that in the pursuit of false purity the central aspect of sin emerges. 'That is the enforced purity of a person or a community that sets itse if apart from the defiled world in hypocritical sinlessness and excludes the boundary breaking other from its heart and world. Sin is here the kind of purity which wants the world cleansed of the other, rather than the heart cleansed of the evil that drives people out by calling those who are clean 'unclean' and refusing to help make clean those who are unclean.'

Volf suggests four different ways in which we can engage in the 'dangerous purity' of exclusion and separation from those we consider unclean and I want to apply these to the situation in Northern Ireland. Although it is always tempting to highlight the theologies and practices of exclusion within the Catholic church, biblical integrity requires that as evangelicals we examine ourselves and seek to put our own house in order.

Assimilation

Firstly, assimilation, which Volf describes as, 'You can survive, even thrive, among us, if you become like us; you can keep your life, if you give up your identity.' Or put even stronger, 'We will refrain from vomiting you out, if you let us swallow you up.' Now we all know this particular way of excluding once it is named. We know it in our evangelical churches; the Jewish Christians in the early church knew it when they argued for circumcision and Jewish food laws as a requisite for Gentile inclusion; the Protestants in the Republic of Ireland have known it as a 3% minority. Irish people in England have known it, and tried to become 'anglicised'; and nationalists have known it for many years in Ulster. In so many situations the unspoken condition for acceptance is to merge into the predominant cultural group. My own mother, who worked all her life in the Ulster Unionist Headquarters in Glengall Street, would speak in hushed tones of the fact that her father (who died when she was 5) was a Roman Catholic. She had imbibed a message that this kind of information was best kept secret.

Within the evangelical world, required assimilation is generally benign and sub-conscious but at times brazen and hurtful. One of the most memorable (though poorly written) books I have read in recent years is Marilyn Hyndman's, Further Afield: Journeys from a Protestant Past. This collection of essays explores the lives of people brought up in Protestant Ulster who simply could not and in the end would not fit in. In the process of disengaging, many of these 'nonconformists' give up their Christian faith completely. The hidden message of many Protestant churches to the outsider or fringe observer is 'become like us and we will accept you'. Become a bit more middle class; use the shibboleths - 'saved', 'born again'; sing our kind of songs; don't challenge our politics; and you will be welcome among us. We also transfer these expectations onto Roman Catholics. I for one am very grateful for the last edition of Lion and Lamb and particularly for opening up the discussion about Evangelical Catholics. I don't necessarily agree with all that has been said, but I do agree that we need to embrace, at least as fellow human beings, Roman Catholics who do not agree with our evangelical presuppositions, and not simply relate to those who more fully agree with our theology. Don't get me wrong. I am thrilled when Catholic Christians understand justification by grace through faith, but I do not require them to try to be assimilated before I move towards them.

Domination

A second form of exclusion, defined by Volf, is domination. He describes this in words which some of the minority population in this province might claim to have historical resonance for them. 'We are satisfied to assign 'others' the status of inferior beings. We make sure that they cannot live in our neighbourhoods, get certain kinds of jobs, receive equal pay or honour; they must stay in their proper place, which is to say, the place we have assigned to them.'

After my address at this years Down and Dromore Diocesan Synod, I had a phone-call to correct me on comments I made about Harryville. I had praised the priest and people of the Catholic parish for giving space in a heated summer by forgoing their Saturday night mass during July and August. The tenor of the phone call was that this was a predominantly (97%, I think) Protestant area, and the Catholic Church had no right to be there - it was the wrong place to have a 'chapel'. By the same argument, of course, there would be no Protestant churches in the whole Republic of Ireland!

However, the point was that 'they' had invaded 'our' space and it is 'our' space because we are in the majority and are therefore authorised to define 'their' appointed place. This attitude finds its justification not in some distorted notion of democracy but in the sense of superiority that is at the heart of all forms of domination. Whether it is the domination of male over female, white over black, Aryan over non-Aryan and British over foreign a sense of superiority is always present and with it the will to power. In the story of the Samaritan woman, Jesus cuts through this mentality. She qualified in every way for the status of 'inferior being'. She was a Samaritan, with whom the Jews had no dealings; they worshipped on the wrong mountain, and had bad theology. She was a woman, and as the old Jewish prayer went, 'Thank you, Lord, that you have not made me a Gentile or a woman!' She was an 'unclean' woman who had many husbands and a reputation. You don't shake hands with someone like this, let alone accept a drink from her! However, Jesus gets right alongside her. There is no hint of domination or put down, no subtle threats or derisive innuendoes. Nothing is said or done to reinforce any sense of inferiority.

I am convinced that the issue at the heart of the Irish question is the issue of cultural superiority expressed in political power. In a thirty-two county Ireland, where Catholics are in the majority and in a six county Ulster where Protestants have had predominance, the story is the same. We have both been driven to dominate, to keep the minority in their place and to suppress the others' rights. A so-called 'realist' might argue that this is the way of the nations and that domination is the way of the world. But as Christians we must proclaim the song of blessed Mary, 'he puts down the mighty from their thrones and raises up the poor and lowly'.

Abandonment

The third form of exclusion highlighted by Volf is exclusion by abandonment. Although he applies this category to relationships between the suburbs and inner cities, it is applicable to the class dimensions of the N. Ireland conflict. Exclusion by abandonment speaks to that middle class super-cleanness in us that consigns the cultural and sectarian problems of our conflict to places like the Falls and the Shankill. Here's what Volf says, 'Like the priest and the Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan we simply cross to the other side and pass by, minding our own business. If others neither have the goods we want nor can perform the services we need, we make sure that they are at a short distance, and close ourselves off from them so that their emaciated and tortured bodies can make no inordinate claims on us.' As Christians we need to be very careful that we do not abandon areas we consider to be 'unclean', under the pretext of preserving our spiritual purity and theological integrity. By perpetuating the myth of holiness by separation, we not only disguise the class issues in our social divisions but assist in the exclusion of marginalised people by abandonment

I am personally conscious that the predominance of middle-class people in the Church of Ireland can produce a reasonably liberal approach to politics, and consequently I won't get too much hassle for some of my views. However, our danger, along with the middle-class profile of most Protestant denominations, is the creation of neat and tidy spaces that exclude those who are different or socially unacceptable. The modern equivalent to tax collectors and sinners has been abandoned by our comfortable society and by the church community. We are still apprehensive to make a place for them at our table.

Elimination

The fourth means of exclusion considered by Miroslav Volf is the one we don't wish to hear. I almost tremble to mention it for it will elicit in all of us a strong sense of denial. It is exclusion by elimination. Volf argues that in extreme cases we will remove the threat of difference by driving people out of our area or even killing them. Moreover, says Volf, 'to ensure that the vengeance of the dead will not be visited upon us in their progeny, we destroy their habitations and their cultural monuments.' This is the most fearful working out of dangerous purity.

In this century we have seen the genocidal impulse of different ideologies in their attempt to cleanse the world. The atrocities of Nazi Germany continue to haunt us, both for the systematic evil of the regime and, as we now know, the passivity and collusion of ordinary people that made it possible. What is so surprising about a visit to Dachau near Munich is its incredible ordinariness. You can hardly believe that this little village was the place where so many were eliminated to fulfil Hitler's vision of racial purity, and that local people continued with their lives as though nothing were happening. We must never discount our capacity to violently eliminate those who threaten us with what we perceive as political, cultural or religious 'contamination'. And we must not underestimate the collusion of 'good' people in the process of ethnic cleansing.

The concept of ethnic cleansing has been invoked in the N. Ireland context by both communities and in the light of the horrific experiences of the last twenty-eight years it could be argued with some justification. I recently read on a Belfast wall a piece of graffiti that said, 'Keep Britain tidy - Kill all Taigs'. Now it is evident that there are people in our society who have become so possessed by the fear and anger of sectarianism that the physical destruction of their enemies is not only possible but desirable. However, the actual killing of people can only happen when a society has gone through the de-sensitising process of de-personalising and demonising our enemies.

The process of elimination begins with the use of certain kinds of words. James is right when he says, 'the tongue is like a spark that can set off a forest fire'. Miroslav Volf gives us some examples of the kinds of words we use when seeking to damage or destroy others. If they are outsiders, they are 'dirty', 'lazy' and 'morally unreliable'; if women, they are 'sluts' or 'bitches'; if minorities they are 'parasites' and 'vermin', etc. We could easily list the litany of abuse that is common currency in our sectarian society.

The habitual use of debasing language diminishes the value of people in our eyes. It removes from our vision the essential humanity of the person and assigns to them a non-human status that makes them expendable. It creates a climate in which we excuse prejudice, injustice, discrimination and even atrocities committed on our enemies and this in turn leads to an inexorable decline in the value of life in that society. Through the process of dismissin g people by our words we create an environment in which it is possible to eliminate them by violent action, for abusive language not only demeans others but also brutalises ourselves.

The Gospel Alternative

These means of exclusion - assimilation, domination, abandonment and elimination - are familiar methods of dealing with cultural and political conflict in the world and who in this Province hasn't seen all four at work? But the gospel of Christ invites us to an alternative vision of how we might live in society and be agents of hope and healing in our divided community. At the heart of this vocation is a call to holiness. However, as we have seen, biblical holiness is an invitation to share our lives in love and service rather than to isolate ourselves from the painful and sinful realities around us. The calling that sets us apart for God is also for the world's sake. The kind of holiness that creates unnecessary barriers and cultivates a separatist mentality is at odds with the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us.

Much of the theology of separatism which we have inherited in Ulster is spuriously based on Paul's quotation in 2 Corinthians 6:17-18, 'Therefore, come out from among them, and be separate from them says the Lord'. Here Paul is speaking of gross wickedness and idolatry, into which believers are being drawn. Calvin rightly points out, however, that those who have been redeemed and rescued from the world are not meant to turn their backs on life, but rather to avoid all participation in the world's uncleanness. Salt only flavours when it is at least contiguous to the food, light only enlightens when it is in the midst of darkness. In the world, but not of it; sharing space with others, not separated from them; open to embrace lives destroyed by sin, rather than excluding them.

The evangelicalism of N. Ireland doesn't make this easy for us. Our propensity for demanding conformity to 'my' views is considerable and we have inherited an ecclesiology which says that we must get out of a church if something in it is wrong. The Churches page in the Belfast Telegraph reflects this attitude with its plethora of adjectivally described churches - 'free', 'independent', 'evangelical' and sometimes all three. This reflects our ability to fragment over some finer points of doctrine, ethics or church government. We live in a society where a handshake can be a dangerous and sullying thing, and where being in the same room with the 'wrong' people suggests a moral duplicity that must result in compromise, betrayal and contamination.

I have written this article under the title A Passion for Holiness or Dangerous Purity. I believe that a passion for authentic biblical holiness is essential for the witness of the church in our community but that this holiness is the kind that gets its hands dirty. I also believe that we need a passion for dangerous purity; the purity of an undivided heart in the service of God and dangerous service that puts us in touch with the lives of 'unacceptable' people and engages with the realities of a broken world. This is the way of Christ and it provokes misunder-standing and condemnation. The alternative however is a safe separatism that is both socially irrelevant and spiritually bankrupt.

Harold Miller is the Church of Ireland Bishop of Down and Dromore. His previous appointments include membership of the staff of St. John's College, Nottingham, chaplaincy at Queen's University, Belfast and before his current position he served as Rector of Carrigrohane, Co. Cork. He now lives in Belfast with his wife and four children.