Virtual Methodist

How to deal with the past in this wee province of ours is a persistent problem. This week has seen two further illustrations of why it is important to do this in a systematic, cost-effective and yet healing fashion. The launch of the Rosemary Nelson enquiry , which, with its 170+ "witnesses" threatens to be yet another mini-"Bloody Sunday" inquisition, giving lawyers a license to print money, and telling no-one anything that they hadn't already expected. Meanwhile the son of Constable John Larmour , who was shot dead in Belfast in October 1988, has suggested in the wake of a report by Police Ombudsman Al Hutchinson, that a Special Branch informer was involved in the murder of his father, and that information to that end was not disclosed to the investgating officers. The quest for the truth by the families of these, and countless other victims of the troubles is entirely understandable. But whether that truth will be reconciling or divisive is very dubious, and ...

Yesterday I was back on my old stomping ground of the Springfield Road for an event at Forthspring, where they hosted the President of Burundi, Mr Pierre Nkurunziza. The purpose was, as I have stated previously, to explore the relationship between dealing with community hostility and social disadvantage. For those who don't know, Burundi is a tiny republic in Central Africa, which has experienced recurring ethnic tensions, largely between the traditionally dominant Tutsi's (who controlled the army) and the majority Hutu. Since the assassination of a former Hutu president, Burundi has experienced unrest which has resulted in at least 300,000 deaths, putting our little local difficulties in perspective. Pierre Nkurunziza was at one time a rebel Hutu leader, though in interviews he emphasises that he was forced into this when the army came to kill him in his University post in the first throws of the unrest (His father had been killed in earlier conflicts in the 1970s). As the cul...

For five years I was minister to a congregation on the longest peaceline in Northern Ireland, snaking for 3 miles from near the centre of Belfast to half-way up the Springfield Road, keeping the Catholic/Republican community of the Falls Road and greater west Belfast separated from the Protestant/Loyalist community of the Shankill/Woodvale, and in the process it divided the premises belonging to Springfield Road Methodist in two... leaving their front door on the Catholic side of the wall and most of their members on the other! The ironic thing is that the wall only became a permanent structure AFTER the paramilitary ceasefires, and specifically, because of President Bill Clinton's visit to the area in 1997. The old corrugated iron fence was taken down and it was replaced by a much prettier, but infinitely more permanent brink wall... And since that time the wall has been extended with a 30 foot wire mesh fence on top, to prevent stone-throwing and petrol bombing... At the recent c...

During the conversation on Theology and Practice of Reconciliation last week the lead participant from the activist side was Dr. Duncan Morrow, the Chief Executive of the Community Relations Council, while his correspondent from the theological perspective was Professor Drew Gibson, a specialist in practical theology from Union Theological College in Belfast. Drew argued vociferously for a Christian ethos based upon a theology of the last times, or eschatology to use the technical term... Just as he was standing up to make his response to Duncan's initial paper, someone who was clearly as desperate for caffeine as I was said "I can hear a trolley coming..." What we hear, or want to hear coming, can sometimes drown out what people are saying now... Causing us to miss the opportunities of grace that God has for us here. Yes, there is an extent to which our theology should be future-focused, but it should never make us so heavenly minded that... well, you know the rest... In...

I said I would post more on what Duncan Morrow had to say at our recent meeting... And let me assure you that there will be much more. He generally says more insightful things in a talk scribbled on the back of 3 crumpled pieces of paper than I do in reams of closely reasoned and carefully prepared material. But anyway, our discussion was generally about the theology and practice of reconciliation (although after he left it majored on the theology and practice issue, without really focussing on reconciliation... dodging the issue again perhaps!) Duncan's thesis was largely that the western world in general, Northern Ireland in particular and the church par excellance were governed by 3 broad principles in dealing with current problems: Distraction Containment Denial I may come back to comment on the first 2 at some point, but what was most memorable for me was his assertion that while the church finds its origins in the confession of Simon Peter, its experience is reflected much mo...

Recently I was at an event where the Rev Leslie Griffiths (or Lord Griffiths of Burry Port if I were to be official about it, and name-drop with an enormous "clang") told those present that he lived and worked surrounded by a significant graveyard around Wesley's Chapel in London. This, he affirmed, served to remind him not only of the past, but of the future... the future for all of us. His comment reminded me of the fact that in my first station, a rural one, I was the only minister in the local clergy fraternal who didn't have a graveyard around my church buildings, a fact for which I was perennially thankful, not because of any squeamishness but because my colleagues lives seemed to be dominated by the petty politics involved in administrating grave plots. Yesterday I was back in the same room as the discussion with Leslie Griffith, but this time the speaker was Duncan Morrow (many more postings will probably stem from what he said, here and elsewhere...). During...