Introduction: Identity
Derek Poole

Comment: What's in a Name?
Janet Morris

From the Director
David Porter

End Game of the End Times
David Porter

We Will Not Have Home Rule
Alywn Thomson

The Lost Field
Tony Davidson

Divine Assumption
Alan Wilson

Walking the Tight Rope
William Storrar

Certificate in Biblical Peacebuilding
Lynda Gould

Liberal Evangelical Post-Unionism and ECONI
Esmond Birnie

O God Our Help in Ages Past
Christopher Catherwood

Transformation
Lynda Gould

< Past Issues Archive

LIBERAL EVANGELICAL POST-UNIONISM AND ECONI

A Preliminary Identification plus Response

This piece attempts to identify and begin the evaluation of a series of characteristics which I believe are central tendencies within the mindset of many (though not all) within the ECONI constituency. Categorisation of ideologies and/or theologies inevitably involves some simplification. For that I apologise. Almost certainly no one individual will hold to all the beliefs I am about to enumerate but I think most ECONI writers/supporters would hold to at least a majority of them.

This article does not pretend to be the last word on the subject. I have not provided a full system of supporting references so as to link perceived tenets of belief to those individuals who espouse them. Such an exercise would in any case be very difficult to do since many of these tenets are rarely stated directly. Even when they are this has often been only verbally rather than in writing. Nevertheless, notwithstanding all these caveats, it remains a worthwhile exercise to identify and begin the evaluation of what I will term Liberal Evangelical Post-Unionism (LEPU).

Empirically there was a close linkage between conservative evangelicalism/reformed Christianity and political unionism (CEPU) in Ireland throughout the 1850s-1960s period. I am saying this as an historical observation and not a statement of whether such a relationship was either a good or bad thing. By the late 1990s a substantial change has occurred. ECONI itself has been both part cause and part consequence of the growth of LEPU. Firstly, there has been some theological change towards a sort of liberal evangelicalism and, secondly, there has been the growth of a post-unionism. Post-unionism meaning something other than traditional unionism whilst not necessarily being explicitly anti-unionist (in other words, an ambiguous relationship somewhat akin to that which may exist between so-called modernism and post-modernism).

Why do I use the designation 'liberal evangelical'? Some may find the qualifier 'liberal' question begging and/or provocative. In fact it is meant to highlight the shift, for good or bad, away from a more traditional conservative evangelical approach. At the same time, its use here need not imply any marked similarity to classical, nineteenth century theological liberalism. 1990s liberal evangelicalism involves some of the following: openness to various explanatory models regarding the Cross (i.e. not just penal substitution and objective atonement), emphasis on structural evil and communal/historical guilt, use of subjective and psychological approaches to reconciliation, a reading of Biblical theology which is sometimes narrative rather than systematic, down-playing of anti-Catholicism on grounds of principle or pragmaticism, and 'anti-triumphalism' (i.e. a reluctance to use any state/legal backing for Christian principles).

The rest of this article attempts to identify, and sometimes comment on, nine characteristics of LEPU which are in contrast to the more traditional CEPU (I personally adhere to the latter though not, I trust, uncritically).

Reluctance to take a moral stance in the unionist-republican dispute

The old style evangelical-unionist alliance had no difficulty in seeing Ulster politics as moral drama. There was good and there was evil. The unionists were assumed (perhaps sometimes too easily) to be on the right side. For those who still hold to that approach the IRA campaign since 1969 may have reinforced their conviction of moral certitude.

LEPU, however, seems to be characterised by a moral agnosticism. Yes, the taking of innocent life is clearly wrong but there seems to be reluctance to distinguish between the morality of the unionist and republican positions. LEPU may be saying that political disputes are simply too complex to bring any sort of moral calculus to bear (surely a rather defeatist and nihilistic position for any Christian to adopt).

Alternatively, the adherents of LEPU may argue that unionists bear a large part of the responsibility for the creation of the post-1969 terrorist campaign given the perceived shortcomings of the 1921-72 Stormont regime (see points 2 and 3 below). In short, LEPU tends to emphasise a structural evil whereas CEPU would favour stress personal moral responsibility. Of course, these positions need not be mutually exclusive. What I do personally find very difficult to swallow is the inference of moral equivalence between unionism and republicanism.

I am old enough to have had experience of vestgially evangelical Churches in England which in the mid 1980s, during the final climax of the Cold War, with Cruise Missiles versus CND's unilateralism, seemed to posit moral equivalence between the West and East. Between the admittedly flawed market economy and the hugely more barbaric Soviet totalitarian system. Maybe that is why I have such distaste for a moral equivalence approach in Ireland. If LEPU is simply arguing from a position of political pragmatism - i.e. that there is little point, and it may even be counter-productive, in hitting republicans with the big stick of moral censure - then this should be admitted. Such pragmatic judgements could even be correct at a certain level though I have to say that whilst political commentators/actors may sometimes have to act pragmatically I fear for the future if there are no Christian commentators who can give an explicitly moral judgement.

Let me give an historical analogy. The 1941-45 wartime alliance with the Soviet Union, which was essential to the UK's ultimate victory in the Second World War, required Churchill to be a close partner with Stalin. Indeed, to be convivial with him. It would, however, have been inappropriate for the Archbishop of Canterbury to have shared a vodka and cigars with the bloodstained Russian tyrant. The reader may be able to discern a parallel with our situation in terms of the moral dilemmas inherent in recent attempts to form an inclusive Executive in Northern Ireland.

A particular view of 1921-72

LEPU tends to take a dim view of the quality of unionist government during 1921-72. The more radical fringe may have absorbed the Michael Farrell/John Hume line that Stormont was a fascistic 'Orange State' comparable in its persecuting zeal to the worst of central Europe during 1933-45 or the Soviet Bloc during 1917-91. A more moderate, and therefore more defensible, version of LEPU would argue that unionists have a lot to apologise for in their recent history given their treatment of their catholic fellow countrymen (see next point below).

CEPU has had a number of views on the record of the Stormont Parliament. The most extreme would be one of total denial, i.e. there was no discrimination or unfairness whatsoever (I concede this position is very hard to support). Such views merge into a rosy story of 'proud little Ulster', the Northern Ireland technologists and inventors, the record in the two World Wars, the Scots-Irish etc. In short, a rather romantic view with elements of truth though there are now, for example, more sober assessments of Northern Ireland's contribution during 1939-45.

A more nuanced approach, as exemplified in Prof. Tom Wilson's 1955 book Ulster Under Home Rule, would be that whilst there was some unfairness in the treatment of catholics under Stormont the position of Northern Ireland's minority compared very favourably to that of other minority groups around the world (e.g. Blacks in the Southern USA or South Africa, ethnic groups within the central and eastern European countries). Admittedly, this relatively favourable position was of little comfort to Ulster's catholics either at that time or since. Perhaps the worst fault of the old Stormont system was that it patronised the minority--- implying that they should have been grateful for what was theirs by right. Whilst Prime Minister Terence O'Neill may have been right in his final conclusions his mode of expressing them (e.g. in speaking about how to get Northern Ireland catholics behaving like protestants) was a striking example of such a patronising attitude.

The transmission of guilt at the collective level or transgenerationally

LEPU seems to hold to the possibility that guilt can be transmitted from one member of a group to another (thus I as an individual unionist should feel some guilt for the activities of other members of 'my community') or from one generation to another (thus I as a unionist in 1999 should feel some guilt for Bloody Sunday, 1950s gerrymandering, the 1920s pogroms, the Famine in the 1840s, 1600s Plantation etc.).

CEPU, in so far as it has thought about this subject, would have grave difficulties with the concepts of collective or transgenerational guilt. If there is really a collective guilt was there an equivalent substitution and atonement for that guilt on the Cross? Christ took my place on the Cross. Did he also take on himself the guilt of the 'Ulster protestant community', the 'catholic community', 'German anti-semitism' and 'white colonialism' etc? I wonder if notions of collective or transgenerational guilt are evidence of a downgrade from ideas of an objective atonement?

Certainly, I can see how an idea of collective/transgenerational guilt could match up with a moral example theory of the Cross (i.e. the Cross is seen primarily in terms of its subjective impact on us, making us love God more as we follow Jesus's example, rather than any objective external impact in terms of satisfying God's standards of righteousness). This would be more congenial to a LEPU than CEPU outlook. For example, the Christian moved by the moral example of the Cross would then attempt to break down the structural causes of evil (which could be the roots of the collective/transgenerational guilt). In CEPU, however, the Cross provides the ground for the justification of a sinner who is individually morally responsible before God and hence the basis for his/her sanctification.

The Bible suggests 'each is to die for his own sins...'and 'the soul who sins is the one who will die' (Deut 24:16 and Ezek 18:4; see also 2 Kings 14:5-6). Even 'punishing the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generations...' (Ex 20:5) proves too much because this is an attribute of the sovereign God which we would surely be presumptuous to copy.

Quite apart from theological considerations, historically notions of collective/transgenerational guilt have tended to lead to unjust outcomes - those who have not sinned are punished in order to reward those who were not victims. Here are some modern examples. Chamberlain and others pursued appeasement of Hitler during 1935-38 partly because they felt ashamed at the perceived vindictive treatment of Germany in the 1919 Versailles Diktat. Some of the Western policy towards Israel since 1948 (and hence towards the dispossessed Palestinians) has been driven by desire to assuage guilty feelings for 'allowing' the Holocaust. Former colonial powers, perhaps motivated by a sense of transgenerational guilt, have since the 1950s handed a series of Third World tyrants and despots blank cheques (sometimes literally so) to wreck their domestic economies and despoil their citizens. At least until very recently German policy towards the European Union has probably been motivated by an attempt to atone for 1933-45.

More post-modernist than modernist in its theology

A. McGrath, D. Bebbington and others have pointed out that from the eighteenth century onwards modern evangelicalism in the UK and USA has been somewhat influenced by the Enlightenment. This is sometimes meant as praise and sometimes as blame. What this has implied is an empirical and systematic approach to theology.

In contrast LEPU relies relatively more on the telling of personal stories, narrative theology, feelings and considerations of group psychology (e.g. adherents of LEPU would counsel that it is not just objective moral wrongs which matter but subjective ones; if catholics perceive job discrimination that is still crucially significant regardless of what the objective reality may be).

Yes, CEPU systematisation may sometimes be too cut and dried in its approach to the Bible. I hope I will not be judged irreverent if I say that if the Almighty had wanted the Bible to be structured like L. Berkhof's Systematic Theology he would have inspired the authors to write it that way! At the same time, whilst we may benefit from being reminded that the Bible often has a narrative structure, e.g. especially in the Gospels, I rather fear a ditching of the baby along with the bath water. The Truth contained in the Bible is not only expressed in terms of propositions but yet at the same time the Bible does contain many propositional truths.

Narrative versus systematic theology

This antithesis has been hinted at already. LEPU tends to the narrative approach and CEPU the systematic one. The implication is that LEPU is strong (and sometimes in commendable ways) on individual Christian ethics (e.g. in terms of forgiving one's enemies and embracing the excluded). What it does not seem to have (or perhaps recognise the need for) is a separate 'box' of ethical/Biblical precepts (e.g. Rom 13:1-7) governing the behaviour of the state as God's magistrate (e.g. with respect to issues like law and order, release of prisoners etc.).

Anti-triumphalism

LEPU condemns James Craig's often quoted (and sometimes misquoted) reference to a 'Protestant Parliament for a protestant people'. My fear, and this is grounded in a CEPU approach, is that they thereby throw out the baby with the bathwater. Have they given up all hope or aspiration to a state which does somewhat try to uphold Christian principles? In practice no state can be 'religiously neutral'. Legislation on abortion, divorce, Sunday trading, human rights, commercial regulation, gender relations etc. inevitably relies on value judgments and metaphysical assumptions.

Is it Christian charity to allow the secular, humanist agenda to continue to prevail in the West? Paul seems (in Rom 13:1-7) to have obligated the state to be both a 'minister of wrath' and a 'rewarder of the good'. Yes, we live in a fallen world where real states will not attain the perfect but should we aim for anything else? LEPU, sadly, buys too much into the Radical Reformation/Anabaptist approach and therefore surrenders any attempt to use power to maintain any level of civic or social righteousness.

Superceding traditional evangelical views on Catholicism

LEPU has argued that the CEPU attitude of hostility and/or distance from Catholicism in Ireland is wrong, outdated or both. LEPU justifies this assertion in terms of the general decline in religious observance across the island and the changes in the Republic of Ireland (declining political clout of the Catholic hierarchy) in particular. LEPU sometimes goes further. It is argued that evangelicals and Catholics can work productively together on areas of social concern and perhaps even on evangelism as well. The LEPU position might charge CEPU with false and damaging anti-Catholicism. LEPU might feel it has been vindicated by a recent book by Professor J.D. Brewer and G. Higgins. However, Brewer and Higgins' analysis may represent sociological reductionism whereby Ulster's anti-catholicism is reduced to simply a economic and political instrument in group conflict without adequate recognition for any theological or Biblical drivers for that anti-Catholicism.

My own response is that I wonder if official catholic teaching has yet adequately responded to the traditional protestant position on justification by faith alone (Trent is still 'on the books' and the recent Papal welcome to indulgences may even indicate some regression). Secondly, I have a suspicion that some have embraced ecumenism in the theological sphere because they see this as a necessary step towards getting unionists, nationalists and republicans working together in the political sphere (a worthy intention but, I submit, a misguided process).

Confronting the traditonal unionist-protestant 'alliance'

As I have already suggested, there is a clear difference between LEPU and CEPU in this regard. At its best LEPU provides a challenge to those evangelical and reformed christians, such as myself, who are unionists, to put our own house in order, to prayerfully and Biblically re-examine our presuppositions.

However, at its worst, LEPU may indulge in the rhetorical device of the straw man (of course, some of my readers may think that is what I have done to them!). Construct the image of a bigoted and reactionary Orangeman and then cast doubt on all adherents of CEPU.

A new category of excluded ones

LEPU is strong on CEPU's tendency to exclude. It is alleged that unionism (and perhaps also nationalism) was/is an exclusive ideology which, by definition, provided no sense of belonging to a sizeable minority group. I recognise some force in such critiques. Though, I wonder how far our response should be taken? Are Christians obligated to sublimate both unionism and nationalism into joint sovereignty? This depends on whether 'exclusion' applies only to social, cultural and economic rights (because these can be granted in the full even to an Irish nationalist/republican living in a Northern Ireland which remains in the UK) or is someone to be judged excluded if Northern Ireland fails to attain his/her aspired constitutional position? Almost all ideologies/theologies, e.g. capitalism, socialism, racism and Euro-federalism, exclude someone by their definitions. Christianity implies the eventual and eternal exclusion of the unsaved!

LEPU, however, needs to be cautious lest it generate its own category of the excluded, i.e. those sections of the protestant church community who do not share LEPU's 'enlightenment' as to the need for a new dispensation with respect to politics and theology. I am thinking of, for example, Free Presbyterians, some members of the Loyal Orders and also those members of the smaller evangelical churches who still take a 'separatist' view on religion and politics.

Conclusion

By this stage the reader will realise my reaction to the various strands of LEPU varies from interest, through to intellectual engagement and then through to a judgment that it sometimes downright wrong. What LEPU does represent is a new animal. A new way of 'doing' Christianity and politics in Northern Ireland. As such it needs to be examined and investigated with the same vigour that ECONI and others have devoted to weighing up CEPU.

Dr Esmond Birnie - Assembly Member (UUP) for South Belfast. He is a member of Lowe memorial Presbyterian Church, Finaghy.

1 Indicated by the General Assembly and Synod deliberations on the 1912 Home Rule Bill (the latter receiving almost no backing) and the very high proportion of 1921-72 unionist MPs who were also Orangemen.
2 Indications of the relative strength of LEPU include: (i.) At the time of writing (November 1999) perhaps 60 per cent of the "protestant electorate" oppose the Belfast Agreement. Nevertheless, the official postion of the three "main protestant churches" remains strongly pro-Agreement. (ii.) In the 1998, as revealed in a leaked memo, the Northern Ireland Office perceived the main protestant church leaders as useful salesmen for government policies. (iii.) The Church of Ireland, Presbyterian Church and, particularly, the Methodist Church have been much more muted in their criticisms of the September 1999 Patten Report then any of the unionist parties.
3 Interviewed on the Peter Taylor BBC "Provos" Documentary on 23 September 1997 Mr Hume said that Stormont represented the, "worst injustice in Europe". See M. Farrell (1976), Northern Ireland: The Orange State, Pluto Press, London; E. McCann (1974), War and an Irish Town, Penguin, Harmondsworth; and P. Foot (1989), Ireland: Why Britain Must Get Out, Chatto Counterblasts, no. 2, Chatto, London. Some of the LEPU response to the perception of the "nationalist nightmare" is recorded in J.E.Birnie (1997), Without Profit or Prophets, Ulster Review Publications, Belfast.
4 For a discussion, see J.E. Birnie (1997), Without Profit orProphets, Ulster Review Publications, Belfast. Also, J. Dunlop (1995), "Northern Ireland the year after the Ceasefires: Taking responsibility", The British Irish Association Extracts from the Conference held at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, 8-10 September.
5 L. Berkhof (1984), Systematic Theology, Banner of Truth, Edinburgh. As a stylised contrast compare Berkhof to A. McGrath (1996), A Passion for Truth, Apollos, Leicester.
6 See A.Thomson (1994??), The Fractured Family: Fundamentalists, Evangelicals and ECONI, Pathways, ECONI, Belfast, for an example.
7 See A. Thomson (1994??), Beyond Fear, Suspicion and Hostility: Evangelical-Roman Catholic Relationships, Pathways, ECONI, Belfast for a useful summary of various approaches.
8 (1998), Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland 1600-1998.
9 I do welcome the recent Evangelical and Catholics Together statements in the USA which imply that some prominent American catholics, e.g. Professor Michael Novak whose views on the relationship between Christiainity and capitalism I have found very helpful, do seem to interpret justification in the way that Luther did. I am waiting to see how far these individuals reflect the Catholic Church as a whole. The 31 October 1999 catholic-Lutheran statement is obviously of note. Taken in isolation it is impressive and commendable. However, since it does not contain a repudiation of any other and contrasting catholic official teaching we have the very post-modernist prospect of catholicism living with contradiction. For a more sympathetic view see The Faith and Politics Group (1999), Self-Righteous Collective Superiority as a Cause of Conflict, Belfast.
10 Of course there are some representatives of CEPU whose politics show unreasoning fear and whose religion shows little Christian love. As a pro-Agreement UUP Assembly Member I have probably been on the receiving end from such persons more often than the average LEPU/ECONI supporter! 11 See J. Dunlop (1999, June 8), "Communities must protect minorities", Irish Times.