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Editorial
Alwyn Thomson
Comment:
Failed Politics?
Norman Hamilton
From
the Director: Words and Deeds
David W Porter
Loyalism
and Me
Philip Rankin
Real
Life
David Campton
Policing
Matters
Sam Pollock
The
Crisis Within
Eddie
Kinner
Loyalism
- The Issues
Mervyn Gibson
Scapegoating
Billy Mitchell
Review...Beyond
Retribution
Stephen Graham
Down
to Basics
Malachy
O'Doherty
Faith
in the Future
David
W Porter
For
God and His Glory Alone:
Study 1: Love
REAL LIFE
There is a
scene which appears in many guises in a number of slapstick comedy films,
from the silent era onwards. In it a character is standing on two moving
vehicles, on land or on water, at the same time, and they are moving apart,
resulting in the person having to do the splits... In cartoon versions
the individual involved is able to contort themselves in all sorts of
bizarre ways, sometimes even splitting themselves in two... But in live
action versions the individual has to rely on the two vehicles coming
back together in order to avoid disaster...
I sometimes feel as if I am standing on two vehicles simultaneously... Sometimes more than two, in a high speed game of 'Twister' .... Trying not to be split in two or to fall on my face... Only it's not funny in real life.
Let me explain...
I'm a Methodist minister. And I'm a Methodist minister with two churches
to look after... hence I'm torn in two... And one of my churches has a
large community project attached to it, and almost by default I am the
chair of that project... Another conflict of commitment: Church and Community...
But then that church straddles the peaceline between the Protestant and
Catholic West Belfast, and the community project works on a cross-community
basis, and in order to work effectively we have to maintain good relationships
with the communities on each side of the wall... And that wall has just
got 30 feet higher.
I can live with the
tensions of having two churches... It isn't ideal but, given the current
shortage of Methodist ministers, it isn't going to change in the near
future. I can also live with the church/community tension... Indeed, the
only way to resolve such a tension is to concentrate on one or the other
and I personally believe that that approach is not biblical... but this
is not the place to go into that.
It is the third tension
that is most painful however... A tension that shows itself in the belief
that if you do something to help one community you are opposed to the
other. A tension that produces a feeling that if you try to
express the perspective of 'the other side' then you are 'the other side'.
A tension that produces the feeling that if you talk to them then we won't
talk to you. Someone once described Methodists as 'the friends of all
and the enemies of none'. In my situation you can quickly become the friend
of none and the enemy of all, especially where you might have difficult
things to say on one side or the other.
In my particular
area, the tension is largely between the nationalist/Catholic community
and the loyalist/Protestant community, but I have experienced it between
the different loyalist factions and between both loyalists and republicans
and the RUC/PSNI. It is vital to my role to keep avenues of potential
communication open, not in order to mediate disputes, I leave that to
those much more experienced and skilled than I, but simply to understand
how people are thinking and feeling at any particular time and respond
effectively to that situation. But it isn't always possible.
Assumptions are made.
If you are, as I am, a Protestant, republicans usually presume that you
are a unionist... If you are, as I am, a Methodist, loyalists usually
presume that you are an ecumenical sell-out. Whether either of those presumptions
are true of me is for me to know and others to guess at. However, they
are a reality in my relationships with both communities. Those presumptions
and doubts have always been there within the republican
community and naturally so, given the history of hostility between the
Protestant and Roman Catholic churches in the past (and the Methodist
Church was not guiltless in that). Currently there is extreme confusion
as to why Protestant clergy are not unequivocally condemning recent loyalist
attacks. Meanwhile, within loyalism, scepticism regarding the role of
the church in working-class Protestant communities has been growing. Within
the church we tend to presume that such communities have turned their
backs on the church, but within those communities many feel that the church
has actually turned its back on them. It isn't speaking their language,
dealing with the issues they feel need dealt with, it isn't addressing
their feelings, their
hurts, hopes and fears. Some within that community see the church as yet
another body out to get them, and that isn't wholly due to paranoia. That
is even more so where the church involves itself in community relations
work,
which has always been seen as Protestant-bashing in loyalist circles;
telling Protestants that they are inherently sectarian and that Irish
history is full of Protestants doing bad things to Catholics. The sad
thing is that some community relations work has contained an element of
that in the past.
So how do you resolve
the tension? Well, some people opt for one side or the other. Identify
with one community or the other, hopefully still maintaining the ability
to engage critically with that community and not simply act as spiritual
apologists for it. That is what the clergy intimately involved with the
Loyalist Commission have to do. Their identification with and engagement
with the loyalist community has to be unambiguous.
Others maintain a
certain detachment, engaging with both communities at a consultative level,
but operate at a safe distance, choosing when to engage and when not to.
To a certain extent this is how ECONI operates, and has to operate in
order to do the type of work it is doing. However, there is a danger that
we might opt for these 'safer' projects, operating by remote control,
rather than projects working in contentious areas, promoting continued
contact and dialogue.
Which brings me back
to my own situation, with one foot on either side of the Springfield Road
peaceline. It isn't easy to maintain such a precarious stance, and at
times our weight has been more on one foot than the other... And generally
when we have leaned one way rather than the other it has been towards
the nationalist communit, who have, as I have already stated, been generally
more accepting of community relations work. But for there to be
improved community relations in our area there needs to be an engagement
with both sides, and a lot of hard work has been done in our area to do
just that, both at a local level through ourselves and a newly established
community group on the Protestant side of the interface, and more strategically
through the work of Springfield Inter Community Development Project. The
fact that there has been relatively little interface violence in our area
over the
past 18 months when other interfaces have been ablaze is testimony to
the success of that engagement.
So we will continue
to try to keep straddling that peaceline and invite others to join us
in the black comedy we call peacebuilding... It may be a somewhat uncomfortable
position, but then again, the Saviour we follow assumed a much more uncomfortable
position to make peace between us and God.
David Campton is minister of Sandy Row and Springfield Methodist Churches and is a member of ECONI.
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