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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
DEEP QUESTIONS
My own personal contact with ECONI is largely through its literature and various collaborative encounters with staff members. Northern Ireland is a small community and in the churches' sector many of us wear a variety of hats! I have always appreciated the encounters and contacts and have been enriched by them. The Christian witness in the public square is essentially collaborative because, whoever we are and whatever part of the Christian spectrum we represent, none of us as persons or organisations has the total perspective. From my own ecumenical perspective I have welcomed the contribution of ECONI and staff members towards the wider witness to faith, peace and reconciliation in the public place. The contributions have been important.
I was fortunate to have a more in-depth contact with ECONI some years ago when, on behalf of the Community Relations Council, I conducted an independent and external evaluation of ECONI's work. This provided first hand experience of a variety of projects and emphases, and meetings with a wider group of ECONI personnel. I was impressed not only by the quality of programmes, but also by the organisational systems in place and the evidence of a committed team at work. I wrote what I believe was a fair analysis and positive report on the organisation. At any rate, the funding was renewed!
I will reflect more on some of the literature shortly. I am personally grateful to have received much of what ECONI has published. Since the evaluation some years ago I have regularly been sent a copy of Lion & Lamb which may indicate gratitude for the report or concern for my spiritual development! Seriously, I am grateful for each copy and have found the various reflections on themes and issues helpful in my own work of teaching and facilitation.
Fifteen years of existence is getting on towards a generational perspective. Much has changed in Northern Ireland during that time. However frustrated we may sometimes feel about progress, we do well to reflect, recall and bank the significant changes that have taken place. We are not where we were in 1987. Given that change comes from a generational vision and imaging and building the future is a generational task, the contribution of ECONI has got to be seen in such a context. The contribution has been significant. Within the rich diversity of initiatives, projects and programmes for change, ECONI has its place and stands with integrity.
Arising from the concerned reflection of committed evangelical Christians that the evangelical expression of Christian faith had been historically overlaid with sectarianism and forms of nationalistic ideology, ECONI was birthed to address the evangelical constituency within the Protestant churches and to challenge and critique the civil religion that much evangelicalism had become. This was no small challenge in the context of at least two centuries of evangelical history, which was largely a politicised history. This was also true of Protestant churches in general. Much anti-Home Rule theology equated the "crown rights of Christ" with the "crown rights of Empire". God was the patron of Unionism and prayer was the "vital breath" of the Unionist cause. Irish Catholicism was a mirror-image in relation to Irish nationalism. Not only was this civil religion, it was classic idolatry as defined by scripture. Even scripture was read from a partisan, sectarian perspective.
ECONI has not flinched from addressing this crucial issue which is about liberating God from sectarian political control. There has been much opposition and criticism for doing so, not least because it is subversive of a dominant Protestant politico-religious worldview. If some feel uncomfortable with describing this as the liberation of God, it, at least, has helped liberate considerable numbers of evangelical Christians from the chains of sectarianised and politicised faith.
ECONI's publications have played no small part in this. For God and His Glory Alone was ground-breaking work within the evangelical constituency in Northern Ireland. It was a critique of evangelical Christianity and its identification with a particular political outlook, and an invitation to look afresh at the Bible to identify some principles leading to a resolution of deep community problems. Here was a call to relate the Bible to a confused and confusing situation. The ten selected biblical principles offered a manifesto or framework for active Christian involvement in the community.
Another significant publication was A Future with Hope: Biblical Frameworks for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland. Not only did this publication helpfully address the significance and four key characteristics of evangelicalism, but from a biblical perspective, through evangelical lenses, addressed the key issues of culture and identity, land and nationality, rights and responsibilities, equality and social justice, to name a few. Evangelical withdrawal into a comfortable religious world was challenged and evangelical Christians were given a stirring call:
The commitment to serve this community in the struggle for peace, justice and reconciliation, can no longer be an optional extra for Christian people.(p 25)
Not a few evangelical Christians have been empowered for a new vision and engagement with society. Careful research on human rights and the collection of papers on forgiveness continue to enlarge the evangelical vision and commitment to a more just and peaceful society.
ECONI has, therefore, been one of the change agents, particularly within its evangelical constituency, and within parts of the wider spectrum of Northern Irish Protestantism over the last fifteen years. Local church history will note its contribution.
As with every initiative and organisation there are some shadow sides. I intend no begrudgery (a Northern Ireland disease) in these more critical comments, but an outsider's perspective. (As a Methodist I cherish my evangelical and ecumenical Wesleyan tradition. At its best it is both, though not as a confessional model).
In addressing the evangelical Christian community ECONI has alienated not a few, especially fundamentalist Christians. Indeed, there has been a failure to sustain dialogue with this sector, a failure which those of us committed to ecumenical relations also share. Dialogue with fundamentalist Christians, and for that matter, fundamentalists from other religious traditions, remains more than ever a key challenge of our time, locally and globally.
ECONI has placed a heavy emphasis on being biblical and textual references abound in the literature as well as describing frameworks as "unashamedly biblical" (A Future with Hope, p 9). The constant appeal to biblical authority sometimes has the effect of putting the claim made beyond question, if not even at times suggesting an infallibility of interpretation. What is offered is always an interpretation of the text which does not close the text to other readings. The authority of scripture and the authority of our interpretations of scripture are never the same. That more critical perspective is not always evident in the ECONI approach.
The impression is also sometimes given that evangelicals are the only people who take the Bible seriously. This is not the reality. Very few Christians from any tradition would have difficulty with ECONI's emphasis on biblical perspectives. The reality is that on the Christian spectrum there are diverse reading and interpretative strategies. To acknowledge this is not to sink into abandoned relativism, but to recognise that we all read out of a tradition and that includes an evangelical tradition(s). We read and interpret from a variety of standpoints and with diverse presuppositions including biases. There is no total perspective from any one point on the theological or confessional spectrum. There is wisdom in Archbishop Rowan Williams' insight that "religious and theological integrity is possible as and when discourse about God declines the attempt to take God's point of view" (On Christian Theology, p 6). Few of us have resisted the temptation to equate our perspective, including our biblical perspective, with the divine point of view.
In its fifteen years ECONI has not engaged adequately with the ecumenical perspective. This may have been a constraint imposed by the Northern Ireland Protestant and evangelical context, which in turn may have more to do with the politicisation of religion than with any spiritual integrity. I have heard and read ECONI comments on ecumenism which perpetuate a distorted stereotype and which are uninformed. Evangelicals have suffered the same fate from illiberal ecumenists. One of the basic fundamentals of ecumenism is the search for roots and truth across the denominational fragmentation, antagonism and culturally diverse religious traditions. The search for truth includes the truth about the "other", being informed of the "other's" truth. The integrity of truth is not served by ignorance, prejudice or distorted, stereotypical images. There is need for mutual healing through evangelical-ecumenical engagement and dialogue.
Given evangelical history in Ireland and elsewhere, the reluctance to engage too overtly with those from the Catholic tradition is understandable, if not ultimately justifiable. ECONI seems to have had a selective involvement with Catholics. Yet the peace and reconciliation at the heart of the Christian faith is not selective. It is indivisible. Calling for peace and reconciliation in society while remaining ambivalent about peace and reconciliation between and within churches undermines the credibility of our peace witness.
I am happy to have been invited to write this reflection which is offered in a positive and affirming spirit for fifteen years of committed and faithful witness.
As Northern Ireland
continues to change there are deep questions for all of us who claim to
follow Jesus. A society in transition and in the process of generational
change challenges the faith community to new models of engagement. ECONI
has its own particular challenges, some of which are presented by its
shadow side. Other questions are:
Has ECONI gone
as far as it can with the evangelical constituency?
Are there new models of Christian engagement required?
Does the future require greater collaboration and partnership?
In the light of gospel values are there elements of ECONI that need to
die?
Does ECONI now need to radically reinvent itself holding the inevitable
tensions between continuity and discontinuity?
Reponses to these questions are beyond the scope and competency of this reflection.
REV DR JOHNSTON McMASTER is Lecturer and Programme Co-ordinator of "Learning Together: Education for Reconciliation" – The Continuing Education Programme in Northern Ireland at the Irish School of Ecumenics.
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