PEOPLE BUILDING PEACE IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERRELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE / Johnston McMaster (World Peace Convention 2018, International Symposium, Speaker 2)

World Peace Convention 2018,  International Symposium, Speaker 2.

Incheon Harbor Park Hotel, Grand Ballroom(2F)

29. Oct. 2018

PEOPLE BUILDING PEACE 

IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERRELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

Johnston McMaster

2. [Speaker2] Johnston McMaster.pdf

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The context for this paper is Ireland and given the dominance of the Christian traditions in Ireland for centuries and during the most recent phase of violent conflict, the paper will provide an overview of the role of the churches in peace building. It is only now when the dominance of the Christian traditions has receded and Ireland has become more secular, that interreligious dialogue between world religions is beginning to take place. Interreligious experiences in peacebuilding in Ireland mean inter-church experiences.

 

The Role of Civic Religion

 

From the 12C religion in Ireland has been closely connected with politics and power. The larger Irish churches have their foundations in two colonial invasions, a political invasion and in the 18C when Protestant Ascendency was at its height and penal laws repressed Catholics and Presbyterians. No Irish Church has been politically neutral nor held a politically neutral theology. One hundred years ago to be a Catholic was to be an Irish nationalist, wanting independence from the British empire, and to be truly Irish. To be Protestant was to be unionist, wanting to stay in the union with Great Britain and the empire, and to be British in identity. When the third attempt was made by the British government to give Ireland Home Rule within the empire, the Catholic Church was fully identified and supportive of Home Rule. The Protestant Churches were totally opposed to Home Rule and their leaders were among the first seven signatories of a Covenant, a solemn politico-religious document pledging the use of any means necessary to resist Home Rule. That meant guns and physical force. There were individual Catholics who were unionists and individual Protestants who were nationalists. But majorities and the institutions were politically aligned. This remained after the partition of Ireland in 1921 and has not changed much until relatively recently. Our religion can be described as civic religion, religion identified with oppositional politics, a religion of national flags and anthems, and a religion indistinguishable from a form of nationalism. Civic religion is not strong at building peace.

 

The Conflict and Ambivalent Churches

 

The most recent phase of violence can be said to have begun on 5 October 1968, fifty years ago. It lasted for over thirty years. The 1960s were promising as community relations appeared to be improving, some positive initiatives were being taken and it seemed that Northern Ireland could become a better place. It was a false dawn. Changes introduced were too little and too late. The problems and divisions between Catholics and Protestants, unionists and nationalists were too deep, profoundly structural and systemic. During the 1960s the churches tried to influence change, at least at the relational level. Theological and ecumenical dialogue was increasing, efforts at Protestant-Catholic reconciliation were being made, but the religious opposition was loud and threatening. Churches made significant statements. Opposition was expressed to all forms of injustice, inequality or discrimination based on creed, race or colour. In 1967 Protestant and Catholic Church leaders published a joint new-year appeal for peace. The most significant statement of all came from the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. It urged Presbyterians to ask forgiveness for any attitudes and actions towards Catholics and urged a resolution of conflicts of interests, loyalties or beliefs. That was in 1965 but it has never been repeated by the Presbyterian Church, nor forgiveness been asked by any other church.

 

When civil rights was organised in 1968 it was a largely Catholic movement, though Catholics and working class Protestants both needed civil rights. Civil rights marchers were attacked violently by Protestant police force. The Catholic Church came out in full support for civil rights and defended the organisation. The Protestant Churches tended to see only civil unrest and being pro-unionist one-party rule in Northern Ireland, invoked Paul's letter to the Romans chapter 13 that the ruling powers were ordained of God and should therefore be obeyed.

 

Civil rights was overtaken and eclipsed by violent forces and entering the 1970s Northern Ireland descended into a spiral of violence. The Churches condemned violence but were unheeded and Church leaders lost influence. The worst levels of killing took place in the early 1970s. There were several political initiatives but none successful.

 

The role of the Churches during the 30 plus years of violent conflict can be summarized as follows:

 

The denominations reflected their own political communities. The Churches were strong on the politics of condemnation but offered very little hard analysis of the violent conflict. They tended to be selective in their condemnation of killing, more of the other side, less of our own side. There was ambivalence towards violence. Relationships between Churches and communities were ambiguous. There was no shared vision for society. There was no self-critical evaluation or self-criticism. Churches were strong in pastoring victims of the violence but tended to do so out of political context. Churches were chaplains to their respective tribes. Throughout the violent years the Churches were in cultural and political captivity. As such Churches struggled to make peace. It has been argued that the Churches kept a lid on the violence, without the influence of the Churches, the violence might have been much worse. It is difficult to measure this or quantify the Church's influence. In 1968 they were caught out by the violence. When the ceasefires came, though individual church persons were highly influential in initiating conversations and dialogue between protagonists, and brokered peace deals and were independent verifiers of decommissioning of weapons and explosives, the churches as institutions were caught out by the peace.

What Is Wrong With Reconciliation?

 

Many individuals from the Christian traditions have been involved in peacemaking and peacebuilding. Some have initiated peace groups or organisations, others have quietly worked away within communities to build bridges, and others have reached out in gestures and acts of forgiveness or healing. Church leaders have made joint statements for peace and reconciliation and some have served on bodies dealing with decommissioning of weapons or dealing with the past, or how we might respond to victims of violence. There are untold stories, some may never be told and there are unsung heroes in a society where former combatants want the glory of the peace process. But the Churches still struggle with peacebuilding and reconciliation.

 

A problem Churches now have is that they are culturally disestablished, de-privileged and living through the separation of Church and State in Ireland. Ireland's version of Christendom has come to an end and the Churches struggle to work out a new relationship between Church and State, faith and politics. They either retreat into evangelical piety or sacramental piety, or take flight. The preoccupation with sexual and personal morality, some would say an obsession, and with family and church maintenance are all escape routes from the big public, social, economic, environmental and social peace and reconciliation challenges. In all of this there is a serious theological deficit.

 

In recent years the Irish School of Ecumenics carried out an extensive piece of research. Amongst other things the research found that most church people believe that reconciliation is important. They hold it to be a significant part of churches’ ministry. When asked to explain a bit more about reconciliation, the majority of those who responded saw reconciliation in vertical terms, the reconciliation of the individual to God. Where there was awareness of the horizontal dimension to reconciliation it was interpersonal; reconciliation between two or more people. There was nothing revelatory about this. It is and has been observable, recognisable as the prominent theology of reconciliation. We are after all people of the European enlightenment with its strong culture of individualism which we have accepted as the interpretative lens for reading theology and the bible. What that research makes clear is that we are so culturally captive to individualism with an interpersonal dimension, that it is difficult to make the move from individual and interpersonal reconciliation to social reconciliation. What reconciliation means in the public square is generally very different. We struggle with a public theology and part of that is our struggle with social reconciliation, which has a very different dynamic to individual and interpersonal reconciliation.

 

The research suggests that Irish church people, clergy and laity, are very strong on the individual’s reconciliation with God and reconciliation between two or more people, but we have a major gap when it comes to social reconciliation. We either don’t know how to bridge the gap or we are not even aware that there is a gap to be bridge to be gapped, or that social reconciliation is an essential ministry of the church. And this is part of a larger struggle to engage with public theology in a secular, pluralistic, democratic society, where religious institutions have lost the public and political power they once had, and certainly had in Ireland one hundred years ago during the crucial decade of conflict and violence in 1912-1922.

 

Social reconciliation is about addressing and working for the transformation of structural inequalities and power disparities. And this is our big gap and great struggle with reconciliation not just in Ireland but in other global conflict regions.

 

Social reconciliation has this very different dynamic and if we are intentionally to engage with it and move beyond our European enlightenment individualism, then we need to do theology and read the bible again for the first time. We will need a different hermeneutical key, a different reading strategy, a different interpretative method. And the key is there. It is a serious reading of the bible, our foundational documents, as a socio-political text. It can also be described as an awareness of the bible, of Genesis to Revelation, as a book written in the shadow of Empire, in the context of a succession of domination systems in which a minority faithful seek to live faithfully or ethically, or alternatively in the face of structural inequalities and power disparities.

 

Being Peacebuilders

 

If Irish Churches want to make a significant contribution to peacebuilding they will need to develop together a theology of social reconciliation. To do that they will need a different hermeneutical key, a different reading strategy when they engage with their foundational documents. The Hebrew-Christian Bible has a socio-political foreground and it's pervasive context is a succession of dominant empires or superpowers. Political injustice, economic oppression and military violence are on every page. Irish Churches may need to read the Bible again for the first time. Only with this hermeneutic will they shape a theology and praxis of social reconciliation.

 

Related to this and utilising the same hermeneutic is the challenge to develop public theology. Public theology is applied social ethics in relation to the big public challenges and questions of our time. These are the social, political, economic, environmental, cultural issues, the issues of poverty, violence, war, injustice, globalisation, geopolitics and gender justice. Doing public theology is about applying social ethics to these and other big public local and global issues. Such public issues include peacemaking, peacebuilding, social and integrated reconciliation and just peace. The future for Irish Churches is public theology or there may be no future. It is a theology of the common good. It is a theology and a future that waits to be embraced.