Churches in Ireland

Ecumenical Review, The, April, 2001 by Geraldine Smyth

Journeys in Identity and Communion

Sectarianism and the dangers of ecumenism

Northern Ireland is now approaching the next summer in which the Loyalist (culturally Protestant) community and the Nationalist (culturally Roman Catholic) community prepare for the annual siege. Centred around a church on a hill near the town of Portadown, the annually repeated conflict -- involving a war of words, political brinkmanship, physical violence and loss of life, and failed attempts at mediation -- is a classic case study of a sectarian interface where contested ethnic politics configures around hardened denominational identities, and issues in violence.

Both groups will disclaim responsibility for the violence as being neither of their making nor their intent. The dispute continues as a symbolic siege in which neither "side" will give way. On the one side the pro-British Orange Order takes its stand on the Protestant heritage of civil and religious liberties. For the Orangemen this translates into the inalienable right to march past a Roman Catholic, Irish Nationalist housing estate, beating political drums and singing Christian hymns with all regalia and ritual. On the other side of the road, the Nationalist inhabitants claim their right to withhold consent to this march, asserting that despite the fact that it is preceded by a Protestant memorial service of the war dead of the Somme, the march is sectarian and oppressive of their dignity and freedom.

At one level, the scene portrays a classic instance of a clash of rights, rooted in conflicting memories of resentment and blame, conflicting histories of victimhood and oppression. Attempts at reconciliation have failed, repeatedly, despite efforts by official and unofficial mediating bodies, including church leaders. Following last year's outbreak of violence and the deepening feeling of impasse, the Orange Order leader spoke out against the enemies of Orangeism. He reserved his strongest epithets for church leaders seeking to dissuade young people from supporting the siege and the thinly disguised paramilitary mobilization behind it. Such church leaders, he claimed, were "corrupting our young people with ecumenism". From the Anglican Archbishop Robin Eames, Mr Gracey's "dangers of ecumenism" speech evoked a ringing riposte in The Irish Times. Archbishop Eames's position is embarrassed by the fact that, despite his best efforts and statements from his own church synod, the local Church of Ireland minister has overtly supported the Orangemen's right to march following the service at his church, and their prolonged siege-like stand on the hill beside the church until the Lord opens the way before them.

The archbishop underscored the reality that it was in fact certain local leaders who were sinfully corrupting another generation of young people, inciting them to street protests that led to violence and destruction. Ironically, in his inveighing against ecumenism, the Orange leader invoked the "e" word four times in as many sentences, apparently innocent of the fact that his overmuch protest served to re-inscribe what he so repetitiously rejected. To those of us who are guilty by association with the "e" word, the accusation of being "dangerous" actually makes a welcome change from the frequent charge against ecumenism as a "harmless hobby" or as "standing for nothing". Does this discourse of "danger" signal that ecumenism is actually up to something more radical -- a force to be reckoned with? It is better surely to be deemed "dangerous" than consigned to the grey zone of mediocrity. Perhaps ecumenism in Ireland is coming of age, and now being noticed for its subverting of closed systems whether in church or society. But, as we shall contend, ecumenism here is still a minority discipline.

The above illustration brings us into that magnetic field of "identity politics" and "cultural religion", and offers an opportunity to reflect -- in the light of the Decade to Overcome Violence -- on such conflicts where religion, ethnicity and politics intersect, violently or with the potential for bringing peace. In addressing ourselves to the Ecumenical Decade to Overcome Violence, we note the call to Christians of different confessional beliefs to sojourn together across the boundary of historic divisions. The dynamics of sectarianism, identity and religion can be related to the tension in the Hebrew Bible between the doctrine of the election of Israel as God's chosen people (through Moses), and the universal covenant with Abraham and Sarah and through them with all nations.(1) In Christian theology, one finds the same double-edge. The gospel according to Mark -- the starkest of the gospels -- evokes the sense of otherness and dread in the face of the foreign territory at the other side of the lake. This is a helpful starting point for Christians who seek to be ecumenical in the context of a society divided along ethnic and political rifts -- and where these rifts have also served as identity markers of Protestant and Roman Catholic Christians and churches.