Editorial: Spring Fever
Anna Rankin

Comment: What is Reconciliation?
Michael Whitley

From the Director: Ireland is changing and so are we!
David W Porter

The Whole Gospel for the Whole World (and beyond...)
Johnston McMaster

Rwanda Ten Years On
Earl Storey

Anglo-Irish Relations
Russell & Katherine Norton

The Hard Gospel
David Chillingworth

Interview with Robin Eames: RECONCILIATION - A View from Armagh
Anna Rankin

Interview with Sean Brady: RECONCILIATION - A View from Armagh
Anna Rankin

Church-based Peacebuilding
Maria Power

Evangelism & Reconciliation - are they irreconcilable?
Patrick Mitchel

Dogville and the Drama of Redemption
John Kiess

Blessed are the Peacemakers?
Drew Gibson

Review: Bitter Fruit
David Buckley

Review: The Colour of Darkness
Jacqui Livingstone

Review: The Lost Message of Jesus
Ben Walker

Review: The Futures of Evangelicalism
David J Montgomery

Review: Evangelicals in Ireland: An Introduction
Stephen Cave

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EVANGELISM AND RECONCILIATION
are they irreconcilable?

THIS ARTICLE looks at the place of evangelism in the context of a divided society like Northern Ireland. It does not pretend to offer any easy answers or quick-fix solutions but I hope it may stir some discussion. I confess that, in part, what I write is motivated by a vague sense of unease at what I perceive as to be a downplaying of the traditionally central evangelical characteristic of evangelism. Let me explain what I mean.

To be evangelical is to be evangelistic
Jesus’ ‘Great Commission’ of Matthew 28:18-20 to ‘go and make disciples’ implies that the first step in the journey of discipleship is becoming one. Jesus’ command assumes that there is a definable message to proclaim and that must be heard before a response can be made (see Romans 10:14-15). In other words, this ‘gospel’ ( euangelion from where evangelicals get their name) has an objective content that can be passed on from generation to generation. Without this core content, the gospel message would remain culture-bound to the Jewish world of the first century. Jesus’ parting instruction to his followers to go to ‘the ends of the earth’ implies that the gospel message can, and indeed must, be translated to other languages and cultures. By association, it also implies that the Christian message will inevitably at times be confrontational, revolving as it does around the absolute truth claims of the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of the Son of God.

As historians and theologians of the evangelical movement have noted, of one of the marks of historic evangelical faith has been a practical commitment to evangelism. One of David Bebbington’s four well known historic ‘markers’ of evangelicalism is ‘conversionism’ – representing an emphasis, expressed in evangelism, on the necessity for personal spiritual conversion to faith in Christ.¹ More recently, Rob Warner, in an astute study of contemporary trends within evangelicalism, argues that an emphasis on conversion is indispensable to the movement. If conversion is denied, whether formally by rejecting its necessity or informally by downplaying its significance, the result is the same, a departure from recognised evangelical faith.

... when some populist leaders insist that ‘social action is evangelism’, and that there is no need for a narrow emphasis on personal saving faith once the church has recovered a broad socio-political agenda of ‘extending the kingdom’, it seems that a Rubicon has been irrevocably crossed ... an activism that abandons any emphasis upon personal conversion has little claim to be an authentic inheritor of historic evangelicalism ... .²

The 1970 Evangelical Alliance Basis of Faith (EA-1970), which John Stott had a major influence in drafting, stresses that belief in the core doctrines of the Christian faith ‘should issue in mutual love, practical Christian service and evangelistic concern’ (my emphasis). This point was repeated in the recent basis of faith produced by Evangelical Alliance Ireland (EAI-2004).³ Perhaps the theologian Donald Bloesch sums it up best when he says an evangelical Christian is:

one who affirms the centrality and cruciality of Christ’s work of reconciliation and redemption as declared in the Scriptures; the necessity to appropriate the fruits of this work in one’s own life and experience; and the urgency to bring the good news of this unmerited grace to a lost and dying world ... we must also be fired by a burning zeal to share this salvation with others. To be evangelical therefore means to be evangelistic.⁴

In short, evangelicals of many different hues affirm together the central importance of proclaiming and teaching the need for a personal response of faith in Jesus Christ. I would go further, and argue that mission needs to shape our individual and church lives. As the theologian Emil Brunner said, ‘The church exists by mission as a fire exists by burning’. Without a clear prioritising of mission, the church loses not only direction but ultimately its life. The God of the Bible is a missionary God. His people are to be missionary minded. What then are particular factors that may be hindering the task of mission in Northern Ireland? Several could be suggested,⁵ but I am going to focus on just two.

1. The bitter reality of sectarianism
Much water has flowed under the bridge since Jesus’ words to an unlikely crew of missionaries on a Palestinian hillside. Two millennia of church history have complicated the picture somewhat in comparison to the ‘virgin’ Gentile missionary field into which Paul so determinedly and successfully ventured. In Athens, Paul had to start from scratch to an audience who had absolutely no prior knowledge of what he was talking about. Patrick faced pretty much the same challenge in Ireland. Christians today, committed to an evangelical understanding of the gospel, by definition face the same call that Paul and Patrick did – to make the good news of Jesus Christ known to the surrounding world. However, layers upon layers of history, tradition, theological dispute, not to mention a thousand years or so of ‘Christendom’ and bitter Catholic/Protestant conflict in Europe (of which Northern Ireland for a variety of reasons has been an especially long-lived example) have accreted all sorts of connotations to the word ‘Christian’. It is my belief that often these connotations act as barriers or obstacles to effective mission. Why? Because they blur, distort and obscure what it means to be a Christian.

In Ireland, the task Christians face involves communicating the gospel to a ‘Christian’ culture familiar with Christianity since the 5th Century, surrounded by cityscapes full of steeples and soaked in recent memories of bitter sectarian conflict. It is an obvious point, but Northern Ireland is not ‘virgin territory’ for the gospel! It is, we are told, one of the most evangelised places on earth. But, paradoxically, I believe that the very success and power of the churches in the North, operating in a context of a political struggle for power between two ethnic communities marked by their religious affiliation, has become a profound hindrance to the advance of the gospel. The sheer depth of political division in the North makes it almost inconceivable to contemplate what mission across the ethnic, cultural and religious divide would even look like in practice, especially for ‘mainline’ denominations.⁶ Evangelicalism in Ulster, historically a Protestant movement, remains largely ‘trapped’ within the confines of its own ethnic group. Churches, both Catholic and Protestant, remain largely in the role of ‘chaplains’ to their own ‘sides’. Given the continuing, and perhaps even deepening, sectarian divisions during the ‘Peace Process’ era, the difficulty is that unless evangelism is ‘safely’ confined to ‘our side’ it will be perceived as a threatening attempt to extend political power. The difficulty of unravelling the message of the gospel from a political agenda is of course not a new problem in Ireland!⁷ But just because it has been around a long time does not mean it has lost any of its capacity to damage community relations while, at the same time, obscuring the message of the gospel.

2. A consequent (right) emphasis on the desperate need for reconciliation within the claustrophobically divided political context of Northern Ireland
Norman Porter’s book, The Elusive Quest: Reconciliation in Northern Ireland, begins with the words ‘Reconciliation matters’ and goes on to pursue the agenda that ‘reconciliation is a good thing which should shape the priorities by which we share our collective lives in the North’ and ‘is integral to the process of making Northern Ireland a decent society’.⁸ It is not my purpose here to discuss Porter’s vision of reconciliation save to say that given reconciliation’s deep biblical heritage most Christians would agree with his vision if not necessarily his method of getting there.⁹ As has often been remarked, Paul’s account of reconciliation in 2 Corinthians 5 has both vertical and horizontal elements. Christians are first reconciled to God through Christ (vertical) and are then given a ministry of reconciliation (horizontal). Both sides need to be maintained if a holistic biblical understanding of reconciliation is to be maintained.

An exclusive focus on the individual’s experience of reconciliation with God will likely lead to a privatised faith, withdrawn from any costly engagement with the world. Such an attitude is all too frequent within fundamentalism and evangelicalism and is one against which ECONI and others have long argued.

In contrast, those engaged in reconciliation in the wider social and political sphere, contend that such reconciliation is not ‘a secondary issue, a diversion, for example from the task of evangelism’, but is a central requirement of Christian witness.¹⁰ In this view, the quest for political reconciliation, whereby communities can ‘live together with difference’, builds on the social implications of the biblical model.¹¹ Here, the opposite danger to an overly privatised faith applies. Where, however subtly, the primary emphasis on the vertical aspect is lost or downplayed, the end result can be an attempt to achieve communal reconciliation in a way virtually indistinguishable from that of pragmatic politics – ‘lets find ways to respect each other, and live together in peace’. In this scenario, the Christian notion of reconciliation can be emptied of its power. The need for evangelism may not be so much denied as quietly sidelined as ‘politically incorrect’. Instead, an emphasis on the catholicity of the Christian faith transforms reconciliation into little more than a quest for ‘inclusivity’.

Are then evangelism and reconciliation irreconcilable? No! I am not suggesting this or that those involved in the quest for political reconciliation inevitably lose a clear-sighted focus on the proclamation of the gospel. But the pressure is there, and, to be fair, one that many Christians engaged in peacemaking have recognised. Joe Liechty and Cecelia Clegg comment on how truth claims can become threats to building understanding and pressure is exerted to eliminate difference so as to promote a washed-out version of reconciliation.¹² The authors of A Time to Heal acknowledge how ‘reconciliation can be shamelessly misused to downgrade difference’.¹³ ECONI has consistently resisted any attempt to promote unity by a bland uniformity.

What I am saying is that the intertwining of religion within deep communal divisions makes the task of communicating the gospel in a way that is ‘heard’ much more complicated and difficult. It also applies pressure against any activity (like evangelism) that may be perceived harming the goal of reconciliation.

Back to the future?
In such a context, I wonder at times if, ironically, a more secular, pluralist, post-nationalist Northern Ireland would actually be a ‘good thing’! Would it help to level the playing field for mission? A brief glance south may help to illustrate this point.

Certainly the Republic of Ireland is a lot further down the postnationalist road than the North.¹⁴ Now of course, evangelical Christians in the Republic face their own significant challenges. I am not suggesting that an increasingly, and at times aggressively, secular society is an easy context for mission. Indeed, the great missiologist Lesslie Newbigin dismissed that there is such a thing as a ‘religiously neutral’ secular society.

What comes into being is not a secular society, but a pagan society ... which worships gods which are not god ... it is not surprising that the age which calls itself secular has produced an unprecedented crop of new religions. The secular society is a myth, and it has the power of a myth to blind people to realities.’¹⁵

It is remarkable how quickly and how far the imposing religious barriers of De Valera’s Ireland have fallen. But, as Newbigin predicted, now everything is up for discussion. The vacuum is being filled with a myriad of beliefs in just about anything. This has its own spiritual danger of course as ‘secular’ society ‘blinds people’ to spiritual realities. Nevertheless, there is a refreshing openness to ideas and discussion, free from the claustrophobic political atmosphere of the North, where everything seems somehow to come back to the constitutional question! Amongst these changes I believe that the message of the gospel is being ‘heard’ by many people, ‘free’ from historical and political connotations in which it has for so long been wrapped (often in a flag). Of course, this is a gradual process. It is impossible to communicate the gospel in a way completely detached from the divided legacy of Irish history. However, it does seem that people are at more liberty to encounter the message of Jesus on its own terms, at least somewhat detached from the cultural and political package in which it has historically been contained. It is thrilling to see signs of spiritual life as numbers of churches grow and develop, made up of people not only from Protestant and Catholic backgrounds, but joined by an increasingly multinational array of fellow Christians (Galatians 3:28). Are we getting back to a missionary context which Paul would much more readily recognise and feel at home? Is this already, or will it be, increasingly true for Northern Ireland as well? I, for one, hope so.

NOTES
1 David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989). His other ‘markers’ are ‘crucicentrism’, ‘activism’ and ‘biblicism’.

2 Rob Warner, Reconstructing Evangelical Theology (draft of doctoral thesis).

3 For discussion of this Basis of Faith see Patrick Mitchel (ed.), Together We Believe: a common faith, a common purpose (Dublin: Evangelical Alliance Ireland, 2005).

4 Donald G. Bloesch, The Future of Evangelical Christianity: A Call for Unity Amid Diversity (New York: Doubleday, 1983), p.17.

5 The impact of what Don Carson calls ‘philosophical pluralism’ – the insistence that the idea of ‘Truth’ is neither attainable nor desirable – is certainly another strong factor exerting pressure ‘within the camp’ of evangelicalism. Symptoms include a drift from its theological heritage, ‘selfism’, the pursuit of ‘relevance’ at all costs and paying mere lipservice to the authority of Scripture. For further discussion see The Gagging of God (Leicester: Apollos, 1996) chapter 11. If we accept the general thrust of his discussion, all of this has clear implications for evangelism. What sort of message will be left to communicate? What place, for example, do God’s holiness, our sin and his judgement have in our communication of the gospel? Unfortunately, space here does not permit opening this can of worms, but it is an issue that faces all of us living in a consumerist culture that worships at the altar of the self.

6 I am aware that some newer churches have intentionally attempted to build a non-denominational identity in order to foster a sense of welcome and belonging to people from whatever ‘side’ they originate. See for example Paul Reid, pastor of Christian Fellowship Church, A New Easter Rising (Leigh: Logikos Christian Publishing, 1993) pp.113-15.

7 Joe Liechty describes a fascinating example. In the nineteenth century, Lord Farnham, a leading lay evangelical who founded the Cavan Association for promoting the Reformation, argued (with considerable foresight it must be said): 1. The claims of Irish Catholics must be conceded if they continue in their present strength of numbers. 2. If conceded, the Church Establishment must fall. 3. The separation of Ireland and Britain would follow. Therefore, maintaining the political status quo depended upon converting Catholics to Protestantism. Catholics bitterly resented the political intentions of evangelism. ‘The Bible, without note or comment’, said one Catholic pamphlet, ‘is not less a means of Protestant dominion than the Orange Yeoman’s military array.’ Joseph Liechty and Cecelia Clegg, Moving Beyond Sectarianism: Religion, Conflict and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland, (Dublin: Columba Press, 2001), pp.88-89.

8 Porter, Elusive Quest, p.12.

9 See Stuart Noble’s review of Porter’s book in Lion&Lamb, No. 36, Spring/ Summer 2004, p.23.

10 Norman Taggart, ‘Christian Perspectives on Reconciliation’ in Lion&Lamb, No.16, Spring, 1999, p.5.

11 For a presentation of this approach see The Faith and Politics Group, A Time to Heal: Perspectives on Reconciliation (Belfast, 2002).

12 Joe Liechty and Cecelia Clegg, Moving Beyond Sectarianism: Religion, Conflict and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland, (Dublin: Columba Press, 2001), pp.43-44, 293. See especially chapter 6 for how an absolute truth claim can be held without necessarily being sectarian.

13 A Time to Heal, p.5

14 In saying this I am not making any value judgement about ‘the South’ being ‘more advanced’ than ‘the North’! Political circumstances have allowed the Republic to ‘move on’ towards a post-nationalist state while ‘the North’ remains locked in a struggle between two nationalisms.

15 Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (London: SPCK, 1997) p.220.

DR PATRICK MITCHEL is Director of Studies at the Irish Bible Institute, Dublin and is a Board Member of the Centre for Contemporary Christianity in Ireland.

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