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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
SPACE & FREEDOM
David Hewitt, a senior partner in a Belfast law firm, was a founding member and is now President of ECONI. Former chairman of City YMCA and former Independent Assessor of Military Complaints Procedures he was appointed to the Parades Commission, set up in 1997. In 1996 David Hewitt was awarded the CBE for services to the community. He is married with four grown children and four grandchildren and is an elder in Bangor Road Presbyterian Church in Holywood.
Tell us something
about your background: what were the strongest influences on you growing
up?
I come from a large family. My father was one of twelve children, nine
of them boys. Seven of them played representative sport: four were Irish
rugby internationals, one at soccer and two Ulster rugby players. My father
was
a leader in the local Brethren Assembly so my background was very much
conservative evangelical – the Brethren did not identify comfortably
with other denominations and they were not happy with clericalism. But
it wasn't a negative evangelical background. I was encouraged to be involved
in
Scripture Union and Crusaders and other interdenominational evangelical
movements.
So the two big influences were conservative evangelical piety and sport. Indeed, those were in conflict at times in an earlier generation. My father and my uncle Frank both retired from international rugby in their early twenties – really at the prime of their playing careers – because of their personal Christian convictions: they did not find it easy to involve their discipleship with their sport.
It was a sort of family tradition that you went to Inst in Belfast and tried to pass exams and play rugby. I played in the Schools' Cup Final and in 1957 while at University, I was chosen to play for Ireland and in 1959 toured Australia and New Zealand with the British and Irish Lions.
Did you experience
a conflict between your personal faith and your sporting interests?
Well I think there is always a conflict between one's following of Christ
and one's living in the real world, which you would expect. But I don't
think that necessitates that we withdraw from the conflict. My father
never sought to discourage me from being involved. He encouraged me to
be a Christian in the context of the rugby world.
What have been
the milestones on your faith journey?
Probably the first significant milestone would have been the Christian
Union at Queen's University where I discovered Christians from all of
the mainline denominations who had a similar evangelical belief and conviction
to my own. Some of those in leadership who came from denominations that
the Brethren probably thought least likely to produce evangelicals were
the most impressive. Also at that time, Berry Street Presbyterian Church
had the benefit of the ministry of the Rev Glynn Owen and I and many,
many other students came under the influence of his expository Bible teaching.
That had a very significant impact on the lives of many of us.
Another influence was the Portstewart Convention to which, as Crusader leaders, we took groups of young people. Those house parties were very significant times of deep Bible teaching and I can recall their impact. As well as being a Crusader leader I led Scripture Union camps. I enjoyed the fellowship of Christian work and the responsibility of leading young boys into their faith.
I inherited from my father a love of reading and I read a lot of Christian literature and biography. The writings of John Stott, Jim Packer, David Watson and others had a huge impact on my thinking.
The social dimension of the gospel was something that grew on me as well and I became involved with Tearfund, YMCA and the Evangelical Alliance – gradually coming to grips with that wider dimension of the teaching of Christ. We are real people living in a fallen world – Christian faith is not just pietism in our own hidden, cosy enclave of fellowship – it has to have some impact on the society in which we live.
How did you become
drawn into dialogue about politics?
Working in the centre of Belfast, in the middle of the troubles at their
worst, was a time of great tension. I was brought up on the protestant
and unionist side of the fence. I was comfortable there and like the rest
of my colleagues on that side we had our suspicions of the other side.
Indeed, there was a sense of unionist superiority. Then a solicitor colleague
confronted me gently. I didn't know him very well, all I knew was he was
a catholic and quite a strong nationalist and was involved in the early
civil rights movement. He confronted me with the question, "What
can we do about this situation?" We decided to form a little group
made up of lawyers representing both sides, to discuss the issues, with
the intention of coming up with an agreed constitutional settlement that
both sides could buy into.
When did it start?
That would have been in the early 1980s and went on for some years –
prompted originally by the hunger strikes when tension was at its height.
The group became known as the Northern Consensus Group, we issued pamphlets
and lobbied political leaders. The thinking of that group was basically
along the lines of what eventually came out in the Anglo-Irish Agreement
and in the Good Friday Agreement because the same basic principles of
power-sharing and the principle of consent become apparent when you begin
to debate these issues.
How did that impact
on your personal faith?
The significant point of all of that for me was that it introduced my
thinking to Irish Nationalism. I was listening for the first time at a
fairly deep level to Roman Catholics, green nationalists expressing their
views and their concerns. I came to respect them and it probably brought
out in me a much greater sense of my own Irishness. However, there was
still the evangelical protestant concern about Roman Catholicism and some
aspects of the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, the influence it
had in society and so on. I still held the suspicions I had grown up with.
And again it was a personal encounter, this time with a friend who had been brought up, like myself, evangelical which led to a change in my thinking. He was meeting with Catholics in fellowship and that disturbed me. He invited me to meet with them, which I eventually did, with a certain amount of fear and suspicion. In those encounters I discovered Roman Catholics who clearly loved the Lord. It was a very liberating experience. I would have had profound suspicions about these people and the error in which they thought and lived, yet I discovered that they were actually more devoted to Christ than I was. When I got to know the character that the Spirit of God had produced within them, I realised that there was something profound that we had in common. I didn't agree with all that they understood from their church teaching, but we had central things in common, particularly a faith in Jesus Christ. For the first time in my life I was able to enjoy that freedom of fellowship while at the same time acknowledging and living with the differences on the secondary issues of doctrine and church government. I remember reading someone who said that "sectarianism is to say that my formulation of the truth is the truth and until you agree with my formulation of the truth I can have no fellowship with you. Biblical teaching says if you are in Christ you are my brother and in that relationship we can begin to handle the differences of doctrine and tradition that we have grown up with."
You were one of
the founders of ECONI. How did that come about? Why at that particular
moment in time?
Living through the troubles, particularly in the 1980s, any
Christian was bound to have asked him or herself, "What is the role
of an evangelical Christian in this situation?" Most people were
praying for peace but peace didn't seem to come – things seemed to
be getting worse. I think that prompted some evangelical Christians to
come together and to ask, "Is there something else we can do other
than just pray? Is there something we can do to promote peace? We have
to acknowledge that the religious element is a significant one in the
Irish problem and we can't say it is purely political, it is not".
I think a growing number of people were feeling that the gospel and the glory of God were not being enhanced by a close identification on the evangelical protestant side with the cause of unionism. A few of us got together, we held a couple of conferences under the title, "Word of God to Northern Ireland." We had some significant speakers come and address quite large audiences in Queen's University and then we published the papers. ECONI came about really as a follow-on from that. We were asking, "What should we be doing to raise the voice of evangelical Christianity?" in a situation where perhaps the perception of evangelical Christianity was that it was fairly narrow, pro-Ulster, anti-Irish. We wanted primarily to raise the discussion and hopefully change what seemed to be an unfortunate trend which was leading evangelicalism in a particular direction politically. ECONI came into being in the publication of For God And His Glory Alone.
Why publish An
Evangelical Contribution on Northern Ireland? What were you hoping
to achieve?
I suppose it was really to try and provide a platform for the many people
who were expressing these concerns but who weren't quite sure how to go
about doing something. Clergy, church leaders can often be very vulnerable
in a situation like that. If they were to take a risky path they could
split a congregation, they could lose their livelihood and therefore there
was some safety in a movement that was a mixture of denominations, and
a mixture of leaders, but primarily lay led. The For God And His Glory
Alone booklet was published to address the situation on biblical principles
subscribed to by the names of some 200 recognised leaders in evangelical
circles.
Was it hard to
convince people to become involved?
When we set out to publish the booklet, knowing that we wanted to get
the target number of 200 names, we obviously were going to go to people
that we suspected would be sympathetic. I don't recall detail, but I know
that there were a number who declined for one reason or another, but the
vast bulk we went to were sympathetic and, in fact, very positive indeed.
Was there much
negative reaction at the time?
There was some negative reaction and I think it was entirely predictable.
It didn't surprise me because that's where I came from originally. Had
I been presented with this booklet ten or fifteen years earlier in my
life I probably would have reacted very negatively myself and I would
have reacted probably on what I would have thought were sound biblical
principles. But the booklet presented biblical principles applied to a
real situation and the little footnote questions on each page of the booklet
were designed to draw out the practical implications of these things and
to ask some searching questions.
Was it costly
for you personally to be involved in this movement?
Well, it took a lot of time, but costly? Not really. After I was publicly
identified with it, there were some within family and church fellowship
who didn't agree but there was nothing very significant – a certain
coolness in relations from some directions – but again, that shouldn't
have surprised me. It was a little disappointing at times, there were
places that I might have been asked previously to go and speak from time
to time and invitations dried up, but I just thought, "So be it."
ECONI has now
been around in one form or another for fifteen years – is that a
surprise to you?
Yes! Because we set out to do one thing and that was it – the booklet.
It was to give people a platform to identify together – it wasn't
to start a movement that would be ongoing. So yes, it has surprised me
that it has been going for this long and the size to which it has grown.
On the other hand, as things moved along I realised that the ability and
commitment of those who became part of the full time staff of ECONI –
which did not include me, of course – indicated that there was a
real future for the movement.
You have watched
ECONI grow and change over the years. What is your sense of what ECONI
has achieved?
ECONI has
given Christians a freedom and space to cross bridges that previously
were difficult to cross. ECONI has helped to validate the evangelical
position in Northern Ireland, to give evangelicals a credible voice –
not only in the Christian world, but in the wider community in Northern
Ireland – without forfeiting their basic evangelical position. That,
for me, has been an exciting tension.
Another achievement is the body of written material that ECONI has produced. The research material and the books are helpful resources. Many church leaders have acknowledged that the publications, and the thinking that has come from ECONI, have been helpful to them in their leadership roles.
ECONI has had input to political and civic leadership thinking through friendships that have been made with people who are significant in our community as well as providing input for those in Christian leadership.
There is also the impact in the community of individual people who have been directly involved in ECONI, on its steering groups or committees or whatever. They themselves have played significant roles in the peacemaking in our community, whether in policing or parades or education or in other areas. There are many significant Christian individuals impacting on the community and its problems who have taken strength from ECONI.
I also think there is a lot that it has stimulated and caused to happen, both in Christian fellowships and in individual lives that we will never ever know about.
Are there areas
where you think it has struggled to achieve what you would like to see?
I don't think ECONI has had a major impact with the groupings from which
I came – the pietistic, conservative circles – because they
don't really see faith issues as being particularly relevant to the real
world. They are not opposed to ECONI, but they don't see it as terribly
relevant. I think ECONI struggles also to bring the biblical theory to
where the rubber hits the road – but I think that is a problem for
Christians everywhere. It is comparatively easy to grasp the teaching
of Christ. It's a harder thing, I have found anyway, to actually practise
it in the real world. ECONI, I think, will always struggle to see its
impact in the most troubled situations in our community. Yet increasingly
its members are playing significant peacebuilding roles at interface areas
in Belfast and elsewhere.
Looking ahead,
do you still see the need for ECONI? What are the challenges and opportunities
facing evangelical people in Northern Ireland in 2003? How do you see
ECONI's role in helping evangelicalism face those challenges?
Well, I certainly see a need for ECONI or something like it to continue,
because the problems of our community from which ECONI emerged are still
there. The serious violence of 15 years ago, thankfully, has greatly reduced,
but the tensions between people, the suspicion and divisions have not
gone away. I think Christian leaders who want to be involved in peacemaking,
and the risks that that involves, are very happy to rely on an independent
body like ECONI – to use the resource material and allow ECONI to
come in to work with their groups, their church or clergy fellowships.
But really, I think the challenges to the church in Northern Ireland are
no different now than they were 15 years ago or 50 years ago.
To some extent the need for ECONI will be assessed by outside funders and I think that is a healthy thing. ECONI has benefited to a large extent from community funding and the criteria on which they grant funding are quite stringent. The bottom line is they will not pay out public funds to groups that aren't making an impact. Therefore it seems to me that if outside observers assess that ECONI is making a relevant contribution to peacebuilding in Northern Ireland they will continue to fund it. I think that is a good indicator as to whether ECONI is necessary.
What are your
hopes for Northern Ireland and, in particular, for the church in Northern
Ireland?
On a personal level, I hope that my grandchildren don't have to grow up
in the same context my children have all grown up in, through the troubles.
I hope that the churches will feel more freedom in Christ to explore together the truths held in common. In so doing they can be an effective counter-culture to those aspects of society that they acknowledge to be the real enemy – which includes sectarianism, both in its bitter, stone-throwing variety and in its more polite cynicism. I hope that the church in Northern Ireland will identify the real issues that are counter to the kingdom of God and not waste its resources on the infighting that has been too much part of us in past years. At the end of the day, God's people are those who have most freedom and space to take risks – much more so than politicians. We are part of a kingdom that is not of this world and therefore we need not hold tightly to a constitutional tradition.
We can give others who are in political leadership the space to be progressive to reach out and to try and find the necessary compromises for peacebuilding here. Compromise is not a bad word. Compromise in a political context is necessary and good and I think we who are Christians, and who adhere to truths which cannot be compromised, have to somehow help those in political leadership to find ways forward that are for the better good of most people.
It can be difficult for church leaders too. I believe the laity in churches have a very significant role to play in giving their minister the space, freedom and encouragement to teach truths – even if they are counter to an ethos or a tradition of a particular fellowship – and I believe ECONI has opened the way for a lot to do that, because it has totally focused on the teaching of the word of God and has sought to apply it in relevant ways.
The changes in my thinking have been prompted by personal encounter with people – people of faith. I have gone to the scriptures and discovered the truths that validate my changed thinking. Scriptures that I have read many times before and not properly understood or seen the significance of, following the personal encounter, have led me to see, ".Ah yes, it's okay to do this, it's okay to think this. In fact not only is it okay, it is imperative!" Even the most far-reaching teaching of Christ – like loving your neighbour and loving your enemy – when you begin to think those through . . . People you didn't regard as your neighbour – you regarded as from the other side – by meeting them and discovering their common humanity and how much you like about them, realising that what they are saying is exactly what I believe because Christ is central and love of God and neighbour is central to it. Even though they may have a different political aspiration, a different church tradition, and use different phraseology. Biblically too, it seemed that many things happened first in personal encounter. For example, for Peter and Cornelius it was a personal encounter with someone from the other tradition – they suddenly discover that this is what the teaching of Christ is about.
In a divided society
that space for personal encounter can be quite limited or even non-existent;
how do we create those opportunities?
In Northern
Ireland the liberal wing of the church was into this before evangelicals
– before ECONI. And because they were, we were suspicious of them
and thought "If they are doing it, then it can't be right, so we'll
not do it." 'Dialogue' and 'ecumenism' were uncomfortable terms for
us. But ECONI has highlighted biblical themes that demand encounter like
love, reconciliation, forgiveness, peace and justice.
So all the time
you are coming back to those original biblical principles for engagement
. . .
Yes, the
ones that were picked out for the booklet. I collected the very first
copies of For God And His Glory
Alone from the printers and brought them round to my office. I was
loading them out of the boot of the car when this guy came round the corner
on a bike. It was Fr Gerry Reynolds of Clonard. He says, "David where's
the book? Where's the book?" I said, "What book?" He says,
"I hear the evangelicals are writing a book and I want it, I need
two copies." I gave him two and off he went. So Clonard Monastery
had the very first copies of a booklet written for evangelicals!
DAVID HEWITT was interviewed by Anna Rankin in June 2003.
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