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Editorial:
"Know Thyself"
Alwyn Thomson
Comment:
Illiberal Democracy
Alwyn Thomson
From
the Director: Good News People?
David W Porter
Balancing
on the Edge
Tony Davidson
Grateful
to God
David McMillan
Space
& Freedom
David Hewitt
Imaginative
Engagement
Keith Getty
No
longer at ease with this dispensation?
Mike Wardlow
Living
with our deepest differences
Os Guinness
Deep
Questions
Johnston
McMaster
Steady
presence
Cecelia Clegg
No
longer lonely
Joseph Liechty
Something
to give
Ingri Sakaria
Bible
study series: Faith in the future
David
W Porter
Review:
The Elusive Quest, Reconciliation in N I by Norman Porter
Bill
Brown
Review:
Journeying Towards Reconciliation, A Song for Ireland by Ruth Patterson
Lynda
Gould
Review:
Islam in Conflict:Past Present and Future by Peter G Riddell &
Peter Cotterell
Alwyn
Thomson
Review:
The R Option - Building Relationships as a Better Way of Life by
Michael Schluter & David John Lee
Anna
Rankin
Review:
Blue Diary by Alice Hoffman
Glenn
Jordan
Summer
School Poetry
Various
For
God and His Glory Alone:
Study 6: Truth
FROM THE DIRECTOR: GOOD NEWS PEOPLE?
These two pages were meant to be a summary of the ECONI story that began in 1987, from someone who has had a privileged view along the journey. It can be said that ECONI has a past but has yet to have a history. My task was to begin turning a past into a history, the official version of course, by shaping and interpreting the story, at least in outline form.
Sixteen years and four strap lines at least point towards symmetry, a gift for the analytical approach if not in the best traditions of storytelling. What began as an Evangelical Contribution became Evangelicals Asking Questions as we moved from a statement of biblical principle to Action Packs provoking thought and involvement across our divided community.
By the time the peace process took root with the paramilitary ceasefires of 1994, the need to change tack was evident and in the fragile rollercoaster of the times, our contribution was now to resource Christians for a biblical response. At this point ECONI took on a more formal face, becoming a trust and employing staff to serve the growing number of requests for materials and support from across the churches. Since then some thirty-five people have worked with ECONI as employees or volunteers and twice that number as members of the Steering Group and Board of Trustees.
With the Belfast Agreement in 1998 we, like many others, faced significant change and sought to address the transition to a post conflict society with our emphasis on Thinking Biblically, Building Peace.
So . . . ten annual conferences, eleven ECONI Sundays, an established magazine, a variety of training programmes including a summer school (just having completed its eighth year), numerous talks and sermons, several major research projects, regularly published resources for study and reflection, an annual lecture in public theology and various attempts to model our commitment to the search for peace by actively engaging with the political process through the Christian Citizenship Forum and numerous private initiatives later . . . and have I mentioned the miles travelled, the articles written, the submissions made to government, the thousands of people who have been the focus of, and joyful participants in, all of this activity (well according to our well-enumerated statistics for various funders they have been numerous if not always joyful) . . . and I find myself still asking – "why?" and "what for?"
You know as well
as I do that there are many out there for whom that is easily answered.
Waste of time, energy and money are the more kindly comments, which normally
focus on being a subversive Northern Ireland Office government plot (I
wish the salary were that good), or being
betrayers of our Protestant and Unionist heritage (we talk to terrorists
and think Catholics might be Christian too – albeit in error, of
course).
But let us not get distracted by the statistics and the critics, or by giving the official account. All of us, those who applaud our effectiveness, those who dismiss our credibility and even those of us caught up in the finer detail of the ECONI experience, are in danger of missing the point. It was there in the introduction to For God and His Glory Alone in 1988. It is still there as we face the future and consider the credibility and relevance of the churches as communities of those who follow Christ in a world of conflict and hopelessness.
The question is simply this – in Northern Ireland is the presence of thousands of professed followers of Jesus experienced as good news for the community? In other words, are we the people who we say we are, people of the evangel, the good news of Jesus – gospel people?
Nothing can be more searching for the church to consider. It is what we are for and as far as I am concerned is what I and all of us involved in ECONI have been for – bearing witness to Jesus the prince of peace, the healer of wounds, the one whom we call Lord and who calls us friends. It is in relation to Jesus that every thing else takes it meaning, not least our cultural, political and even theological loyalties.
The good news of Jesus calls people to repentance and faith. The problem is that this radical life affirming and community changing message has been domesticated. Personal piety constantly risks being reduced to Jesus for me and mine. Worship, prayer, the study of the word, fellowship, communion and even personal evangelism are all very well provided they remain within the comfort zones of our inner life as people or congregations.
Yet do you wonder
why they can become routine and stale? Without the context of being in
the world and even being for the world, being not of the world becomes
self-indulgent escapism. This good news is the redemption of the world,
all of it and expressed in terms meaningful to the immediate need of our
part of it. For us that means the
healing of bitter and broken relationships must be to the fore –
reconciliation and peacemaking matter if the gospel is to be experienced
as good news in our community.
There is however an apathy abroad on this issue. Where there is energy it seems to be driven by a programmatic pragmatism. Yet the frantic activity around being purposeful in church life highlights a more profound felt need that is rooted in anxiety. An anxiety that senses the world around us is changing and that change brings significant threat to the future viability and contribution of the church. This activity is increasingly focussed on securing the boundaries of our faith communities.
Of course it is also our experience to devalue the gospel by our political ideologies: captive to hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. The good news of Jesus requires disciples to be involved in the political sphere as much as any other arena of human community. We are to seek the welfare of the city in which we find ourselves and to fail to do so is to betray the church as much as it is to abandon the community.
However, we do not
engage as others. We are held to account to different values – those
of the kingdom of God – and this heavenly citizenship puts in context
all demands of human citizenship and political affiliation. There is another
question that cannot be avoided – is the high
number of Christians, particularly Evangelicals, involved in our political
system, experienced as good news by their colleagues, opponents and the
wider community?
All of us in the
church, however we participate in politics – as voter, party member
or politician – are called to exhibit gospel requirements that in
this community call into question not our doing of politics as such, but
how we do politics. That means we must continue to resist being the
religious cult of our tribes, to be neither Nationalists nor Unionists
at prayer, not even chaplains to the peace process. And we must work relationally
at turning our enemies into friends for this is the gospel of Christ.
If disciples of Jesus fail to be good news to our community in how we speak, act and engage then we are right to ask what are we for. Our calling is to live as redeemed people and so demonstrate the redemption of God in Christ. The gospel is about the redemption of broken and hurting people and communities. At this point in Northern Ireland if we cannot be a sign of where redemption lies, who can be? Looking at the priorities of your life, your church.s life, and your denomination.s life – can anybody tell?
How lovely on the mountains are the feet of those who brings good news, announcing peace, proclaiming news of happiness – Our God Reigns!
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