 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
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
NO LONGER LONELY
VISITING NORTHERN IRELAND in the early 1980s, I concluded that in terms of peacebuilding, evangelicalism was the most self-satisfied, complacent, do-nothing sector of the Christian churches. Generally respectable, evangelicals could shunt any potentially embarrassing charges off in the direction of fundamentalism, giving them a comfortable scheme of plausible deniability. They had won few laurels to rest on, but rest they did.
In fact individual evangelicals were doing some of the bravest, most creative peace work I encountered. But these people often found themselves suspect in their own communities; what they regarded as biblically-derived Christian witness was treated by others as letting down the side. Consequently, they could easily be lonely, self-doubting, and even despairing. Encouraging them became a modest ministry: No, you're not crazy, the society around you is crazy, maybe even your church is crazy. Yes, if you really start thinking biblically, you.re likely to end up building peace.
The arrival of ECONI changed all that. One of the first effects, tangentially and happily, was to deprive me of my Ministry of Reassurance: evangelical peacemakers were no longer lonely. Now they had an organisation whose members shared their convictions and which framed peace in terms of the idiom and beliefs of Northern Ireland evangelicalism.
It was the first of many contributions. In fact ECONI models good peacebuilding practice in several areas, including the following:
(1) In the midst of conflict, we see more clearly what we have suffered than what we have inflicted or allowed. Combine this tendency with the scourge of what-about-ery, and most of us do more blaming than taking responsibility. But explicitly and implicitly, repentance has always been on the ECONI agenda. Not a supine, kick-me-again, guilt fetish, just a theologically and existentially sound awareness that we are all sinners, and the business of sinners is repenting.
(2) Peacemakers often see peace as involving compromise, everybody moving to the middle of the road for the sake of peace. And this is true, at least in part. Everyone should know how to compromise, and those who don't betray an egocentric immaturity. But compromise cannot solve every problem. In fact all people are likely to discover, when pressed in certain ways, convictions or commitments that they cannot compromise without fundamentally damaging themselves.if peace is to come, it cannot be by compromise alone. In aspects of their work, ECONI have modelled this essential skill of seeking peace without compromising core convictions.
In any conflict situation, every religious or political grouping requires an ECONI-equivalent, both to call it to repentance and to name the things that make for peace in the authentic voice of that grouping.
But all of the above, while my true convictions, is also a bit distant and structural. As much as anything, I have valued ECONI as a place where I have found many Christian brothers and sisters who have been my friends, colleagues, teachers, and sometimes even heroes. I wish them every blessing as they continue to walk in the paths God has set before them.
JOSEPH LIECHTY is the co-author, with Cecelia Clegg, of Moving Beyond Sectarianism: Religion, Conflict, and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland. Joe, an American Mennonite, lived and worked in Ireland for 20 years and has recently moved to Goshen College, Goshen, Indiana, to serve as Professor of Peace Studies.
 |
||
 |
 |
|