Forgiving and Remembering in Northern Ireland: Approaches to Conflict Resolution

Forgiving and Remembering in Northern Ireland In memory of David Stevens Forgiving and Remembering in Northern Irel...

Author: Graham Spencer | The Lord Eames of. Armagh

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Forgiving and Remembering in Northern Ireland

In memory of David Stevens

Forgiving and Remembering in Northern Ireland Approaches to Conflict Resolution Edited by Graham Spencer

Published by the Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London New York SE1 7NX NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com This collection copyright © Graham Spencer, 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission from the publishers. First published 2011 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-4411-9547-0 Typeset by Fakenham Photosetting Limited, Fakenham, Norfolk, NR21 8NN Printed and bound in India

Contents

Acknowledgements vii Foreword by the Rt Revd the Lord Eames of Armagh, OM viii Introduction: Forgiving and Remembering in Northern Ireland – Graham Spencer 1 1

Forgiving: A Doubting Thomas – Brian Lennon SJ

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2

Reconnecting the Rhetoric and Reality of Forgiving and Remembering – Michael Jackson

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3

Home Before Dark – Ruth Patterson

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Forgiving as Command and Process: The Problem of Destination over Journey – Timothy Kinahan

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Memory and Forgetting in a Contested Space – David Stevens

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5

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Forgiving and Church Responsibility – Aidan Troy

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On Fire with the Justice of God: Re-Reading Romans as a Political Proclamation Towards a Desired Future – Johnston McMaster

129

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Contents Building Space: Regeneration and Reconciliation – Glenn Jordan

149

Rewriting Our Stories: Narrative, Identity and Forgiveness – David McMillan

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Forgiveness Through Post-Traumatic Growth – Michael C. Paterson

187

The Transformational Possibilities of Forgiveness – David Bolton

199

Understanding Through Collaboration and Friendship: An Interview with Jo Berry and Patrick Magee

221

Developing a Forgiving Spirit: A Personal Story – David Clements

241

The Possibility of Forgiveness: An Interview with Duncan Morrow

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The Struggle to Forgive – Chris Hudson

271

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The Release and Gift of Forgiving: An Interview with Richard Moore

285

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Conclusion List of Contributors

299 303

Acknowledgements

This is an opportunity to thank the many people in Northern Ireland who over the years have shared their stories with me about what conflict has meant to them. I cannot thank those people enough for their time, honesty and courtesy. Without the help of people who have lived in and worked with conflict, my understanding of Northern Ireland would be shallow. On a personal note deep thanks go to Keith Tester and I am indebted to Karen Cray in more ways than I can say. The book though is dedicated to David Stevens, former leader of Corrymeela, who tragically died before this book went to press.

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Foreword

Reconciliation has become the most used yet most misunderstood word in the vocabulary of architects of peace-building of our generation. The cry for reconciliation is heard on all sides as though it represented a New Jerusalem which, when reached by whatever means, is the ultimate solution to all human problems. It is viewed as a simple entity, symbolizing some historic landmark in a postconflict era that, once achieved, allows a myriad of other dimensions of behaviour or attitude to complete a jigsaw of human need. This is often the cry of those who have failed to analyze the ingredients of conflict – give us this reconciliation, but don’t expect too much from us . . . In this significant book Graham Spencer has given us the opportunity to consider an aspect of the process of reconciliation which seems to have fallen behind in current discussion of peace-building – forgiveness. There are many reasons for this apparent lack of attention. As one who has been involved in Christian Ministry in Northern Ireland for over four decades, I approach the subject of reconciliation as a practitioner who has seen much of the tapestry of the human side of conflict and post-conflict situations at first hand. I have witnessed the success yet failure of attempts within the political field to produce peace – success in achieving working arrangements between conflicting political ideals, yet failure to produce complete reconciliation where it matters most – on the ground level of actual human viii

Foreword ix experience of everyday living. I am in no doubt that from a Christian standpoint, what constitutes forgiveness remains a priority not just as a point of achievement in definition of reconciliation, but as a progressive contribution to the achievement of lasting community peace. And there lies the problem. Reconciliation can never be imposed by legislation or by political working arrangements. Politics can provide frameworks which encourage understanding and co-operation. But something more is needed if a post-conflict situation is ever to be translated into human stability and community peace. Something is needed which translates a desire to end conflict into a condition of common understanding among divergent and traditionally opposed communities. Among such needs an understanding of what can succeed, when more traditional bridge-building methodology seems impossible, is essential. How does society deal with its past? How do we approach past failure? How do we regard that most sensitive yet significant human ingredient – memory? Without an attempt not only on the personal level but as a community to work out the role of the past in our attitude to the present and aspirations for the future, we are bound to repeat the failures of the past. We are bound to make the same mistakes. We are bound to restrict the possibilities of a more stable or peaceful future. That attempt constitutes the most complex and undoubtedly the most divisive problem in peace-making. It is within that area that forgiveness provides the most dramatic yet most noble of means to progress. There will always be deep differences on how to deal with the past. For some, nothing will satisfy except detention and conviction, nothing less than ‘justice’ in terms of knowing who did what and who was responsible. For many the past can never be left behind unless they have full knowledge of how or why atrocities occurred. For even more, a full account of responsibility on both a personal and a group level is essential before they can move on.

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Foreword

For still others, the recognition that endless questions will never be answered leads to a weariness and a desire simply to forget. Forgiveness in whatever form is becoming one of the few ways of unlocking the mystery and opening a window on the future. In this valuable book Graham Spencer and his contributors grapple with that question. In these pages there is a refreshing attempt to define forgiveness as well as a real effort to compare the personal act of forgiveness with the communal. Coming from a wide spectrum of experience and expertise, those who have contributed provide us with a genuine attempt to understand the widely divergent definitions of forgiveness. They also give us much food for thought on how forgiveness, like reconciliation itself, is a fragile process which requires constant review. Graham Spencer has provided a fascinating chart for all who struggle with the demands of a post-conflict situation. But more importantly he has produced an analysis of one of the great human yet spiritual graces – the ability to respond to a past which can never be re-written or the wrong which can never be undone – forgiveness. As these pages disclose, forgiveness is itself costly, but the consequences of such an act are endless. In fact, forgiveness is emerging as the most hopeful approach to reconciliation when all others fail. The question remains after reading this book: how does a society become convinced of the value of forgiveness when it has yet to understand the meaning of reconciliation? This is where that other dimension to the process of reconciliation assists in understanding the role of forgiveness: experience. In these pages there is a refreshing evidence of experience which gives weight to a valuation of the power of individual and collective forgiveness. The chapters combine the theoretical with the practical, and the practical acknowledges that an act of forgiveness is not immediately feasible. There are those for whom forgiveness is a mountain which can only be viewed from a distance. It presents the unthinkable. Indeed, it does not even present a possibility. Such is the emotional backdrop of their memories and their experience.

Foreword xi The truth is that any discussion of forgiveness cannot ignore the fact that to ask for an action or attitude of forgiveness is some admission of failure or surrender. It is perceived by many as a sign of weakness. To argue, as some maintain, that reconciliation like forgiveness is weakness is to fly in the face of experience – experience of what forgiveness can lead to. The experience of those who have written in these pages is to point to the possibilities of great and immense strength, both personal and communal, which forgiveness, in time, can represent. Perhaps that is the most valuable achievement of this book. Forgiveness works. For the Christian experience of the past in human terms points beyond the agony of memory to the central message of the Crucifixion and in so doing provides us with the fact of God: ‘Father forgive them – for they do not know what they do’. Robin Eames The Rt Revd the Lord Eames of Armagh, OM

‘Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing’. The Shawshank Redemption

Introduction: Forgiving and Remembering in Northern Ireland – Graham Spencer

In the Consultative Group on the Past Report published in 2009, which sought to mark out a route for the development of a peaceful and stable future for Northern Ireland, two sections hold particular interest. The first is on reconciliation, truth and forgiveness and the second on remembering. In the former of these two sections the authors of the Report claim that ‘reconciliation requires for its integrity and success two other elements, namely a willingness for mutual forgiveness and a willingness to address the truth of the matters to which the mutual forgiveness is to apply’. On this point they continue ‘The most common and self-defeating misunderstanding of forgiveness consists in thinking that it can be done unilaterally. It is simply not possible to complete an act of forgiveness unless a wrong is acknowledged’. Therefore ‘both sides must somehow be enabled to reach agreement that there was wrongdoing on both sides’ since ‘only then is mutual forgiveness possible’ (CGP 2009: 54). From this perspective forgiveness is seen as the product of dialogue and an inclination to understand the story of the other. It comes, in other words, and as the Report puts it, not from ‘either side admitting to being always and entirely wrong’, but from ‘an admission that, just as rights were present on both sides, so also wrongs were committed on both sides’. The Report goes on ‘if parties could agree that they are dealing with genuine moral agents like themselves, people who can make mistakes in their moral decisions and who also have the 1

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moral stature to move beyond them’ (ibid: 55) then the opportunity for forgiveness and reconciliation becomes possible. Notably, it is emphasis on the ‘mutual’ (or inclusivity) which supplies the referent for progress and it is the ‘mutual’ which is used to try and press home the point that since all sides are contained within the boundaries of conflict and there is an inclusive association (however envisaged) with that conflict, so there is an inclusive responsibility to try to end that conflict. Significantly, the idea of the ‘mutual’ does not connote neutrality in connection to conflict, but involvement, experience, suffering and opinion. The ‘mutual’ in other words, exposes the complicity of participation in conflict (even to have no comment on conflict is to take a position), and with this exposure demonstrates that some engagement with conflict is inevitable. This inevitability is not always obvious, differs in impact and is rarely static. At one end of the scale, it may take the form of aspiring to uphold a communal identity through ideological conviction or symbolic attachment, whilst at the other, it may lead to paramilitarism and murder. Whichever level this involvement might take it is evident that the ‘mutual’ brings with it the idea of inescapability and that those who live within the conflict situation are inextricably linked to the pressures and expectations that conflict produces to a greater or lesser extent. In relation, the idea of the ‘mutual’ being concerned with facilitating debate and action that will end conflict (or at least prevent its return) is envisaged as a space where a collective non-destructive participation in dialogue becomes possible. By asserting that forgiveness cannot (or is less likely to) work without engagement and commitment by both sides who recognize the linkage of each to the other, the CGP Report strives to provide a starting point for discussing the common problem of divergent fears and assumptions without disrespect or insult. Although one might see the generalised notion of the ‘mutual’ as too ambiguous for specific and clear understandings of what must happen for forgiveness and reconciliation to take place, it is precisely this ambiguity which enables all sides to engage without bigotry and prejudice in response to divisions and oppositions: note how

Introduction 3 crucial ambiguity was in the politics which shaped the peace process (Spencer 2010: 443–445). The value of the Report then lay in articulating the possibility for dialogue through a non-discriminatory space within which conversation and argument can be contained and where contestations and differences can be explored without recourse to the predictability of exclusive, conflict-based positions (although this will probably happen this does not amount to a credible argument for not following up the potential advantages that might occur). But before we get carried away, what must happen if the recommendations provided by the CGP Report are to have resonance and grip? To begin with, perhaps we would be well advised to open up possible significations of the ‘mutual’ in order to further a social conversation about what the ‘mutual’ might mean as responsibility and action. Two questions immediately arise. First what do we mean by ‘mutual forgiveness’ (and the ‘we’ in this context presumably means some majority agreement over that definition across both communities), and second is a ‘mutual conviction’ from both sides about such meaning achievable? It is here, with these two questions in mind, where we run into difficulties because what becomes noticeable quite quickly is that to move towards a ‘mutual’ acceptance on any issue of social or political concern means changing the ideological structures that define one community as separate from and superior to the other. In other words, the mechanisms and language of polarization have to be challenged and re-defined by mechanisms and language that move communities towards ending polarization. Transformation in this context means changing patterns and structures of power and domination which have created and sustained the polarization. This shift is more than a process of gestures towards ‘normalization’: the concept of ‘normalization’ itself a confused symbol of change which arises from particular social and political ambitions likely to be used and abused by different communities. It requires moving outside the exclusivity of the ‘us and them’ categorization (the victim or perpetrator) towards an ‘all’ categorization (both

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victim and perpetrator together). In the process this re-orientation not only points towards the common humanity of all those who have lived in and through conflict, but it enables seeing ‘them’ in ‘us’ and ‘us’ in ‘them’. Difficult though this perception may be for those who did not take to violence but bore its consequences, it is more likely that positive dialogue will emerge from a vantage point of some commonality rather than well-entrenched ideas of difference and inferiority/superiority demarcations. Without an overarching sense of common humanity (and regardless of the shortcomings of such a position), there is a real danger that issues like forgiveness will become absorbed into conflictive discourses and fixations about those who deserve it and those who do not. Recognition of how such imaginations invariably separate human beings into those who are worthy and those who are unworthy is touched upon by Judith Butler, who in her work on grieving observes how ‘lives cannot be apprehended as injured or lost if they are not first apprehended as living. If certain lives do not qualify as lives or are, from the start, not conceivable as lives within certain epistemological frames, then these lives are never lived nor lost in the full sense’. In response to the question: What is a life? Butler answers that ‘The ‘ being’ of life is itself constituted through selective means; as a result, we cannot refer to this ‘ being’ outside the operations of power, and we must make more precise the specific mechanisms of power through which life is produced’ (2009: 1). It is through the circumstances and conditions of power that lives are made not only more or less precarious, but more or less possible. And as far as forgiving is concerned, we might reasonably insist that if acknowledgement of the benefits of forgiveness is to move beyond the actions of a few, then the responsibilities and obligations of social and political action must be dealt with. Without social and political support which develops public awareness and debate, it is hard to see how a culture of forgiveness can materialize. What is already well known is that although many social and political institutions cite well versed articulations on the merits of peace, far less is said on how public receptiveness towards tolerance rather than intolerance

Introduction 5 (the conventional and historically ingrained response) might be developed; a reflection, perhaps, of the desire to use difference for specific interests, political or otherwise. One of the weaknesses of the CGP Report is that it does little to advocate how those in positions of influence and power should work to facilitate space and attention to discussion of such issues. On a wider level, this action would stand as a recognition (rather than avoidance) of the need to confront the corrosive and divisive consequences of pain which conflict imposes. But here again, socio-political realms must also bear responsibility for historically conditioning individuals to expect to be the recipient of suffering or the protagonist who inflicts it (for somebody must be responsible for my pain), thereby making the suffering of others a legitimate and understandable response to one’s own vulnerability and suffering (Vetlesen 2009: 129). The decision of not wanting to impose pain even when one has received it remains central to the forgiving act. But the forgiving act at once arises as a dilemma in relation to social expectations, which view the imposition of pain (envisaged more often as the removal of freedom) – or more specifically punishment – as a legitimate response to violation. To forgive challenges this assumption because it makes punishment secondary to the relationship between perpetrator and victim. Whereas punishment is important for social order and stability it offers no such comparative comfort for the victim, whose loss is probably made no easier by the perpetrator’s punishment. It should be said here that forgiving does not give grounds for the state not to exercise punishment and see that the perpetrator be brought to book for what he or she did. The point is that the victim’s suffering will most likely not be alleviated or helped by this action. In this instance what can be done? Forgiveness, in contrast to the legal system, offers the victim some power of decision over the perpetrator which enables the victim to live better. Justice symbolizes state power, but not individual power, yet to forgive allows for control over suffering and so returns the victim that power. A forgiving spirit does not amount to freeing the perpetrator from punishment and so avoiding the responsibility of his/her actions – as C. S. Lewis

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put it ‘Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment’ (1944: 118) – but offers the victim the opportunity to be less bound to the actions of the perpetrator for the rest of his/ her life. Forgiving thus allows some freedom from the effects of violation which punishment alone cannot provide. And though legal punishment and justice takes care of the state’s relationship with the perpetrator, it does not take care of the victim’s relationship with the perpetrator. The individual’s relationship with forgiveness and what it means to forgive – perhaps it would it useful here to try to make some distinction between forgiving as an act and forgiveness as a process of influences, moments, decisions, understandings, feelings and possibilities which shape the possibility of that act – must reflect different communal instincts and social expectations. So while we might find ‘mutual forgiveness’ a useful concept, we need to address communal differences of interpretation about forgiving to see how useful the ‘mutual’ framework actually is. And here we come up against a significant problem for if one community (Catholic) views forgiveness in terms of its communal importance and the other (Protestant) views it as an extension of individual responsibility, then the possibility of ‘mutual’ discourse about forgiveness becomes itself highly contested, principally because the locus of meaning evolves from a different point of understanding. The potential antagonism between communal or individualistic emphasis which has been much used to mark out political and religious difference in Northern Ireland (Mitchell 2006: 59–68) highlights how social action is received and interpreted differently through the sharp relief of an individualistic or communal-based appreciation of social life, as well as used to reinforce separation and de-legitimize the other (Spencer, forthcoming). On the face of it this may render the argument for a ‘mutual’ debate pointless but what is of particular interest is that personal (or individualistic) and communal (or social) outlooks are both important elements for reconciliation (along with the inter-personal and political), with each working as

Introduction 7 integral parts of an overall process (Clegg 2008: 82–83). So although the apparent separations of the individualistic or communal-based viewpoints have historically been used to reinforce opposition, both become the main focus for working towards social reconciliation and both become the means for possible change. Forgiveness can be seen to help break the cycle of legtitimization/de-legitimization and enable the victim to live with past violation without at the same time being constantly dominated by that violence (Sacks 2003: 179). Because it stands as a rejection of the social call for reciprocal action and returning pain through revenge, the forgiving act is seen to re-orientate the relationship between victim and perpetrator away from hate towards compassion. For Sacks, this new relationship, at best, ‘is a process of shared mourning between those who commit and those who suffer the consequences of wrong; the former for harm done, the latter for harm suffered – and like all acts of mourning it is the only bridge from the pain of loss to reintegration with the present and its tasks’ (ibid: 188). What emerges from this perspective (and this finds come consistency with the CGP Report which expresses forgiveness in terms of both parties coming together) is that forgiving is conditional, and that this conditionality rests upon the involvement of both parties in the forgiving act. However, we need here to recognize that with forgiveness comes blame and that for some perpetrators blame points towards personal responsibility which may not be palatable (I would not have acted in this way if it were not for the conflict. So it is the conflict that made me act in the way I did). On this point the forgiver is asked to move towards understanding this resistance through empathy and ‘to try to stand in their shoes, and to appreciate the sort of pressures and influences that might have brought them to do what they did’ (Tutu 2000: 219). In the process of doing this the forgiver is seen to show ‘faith in the future of a relationship and in the capacity of the wrongdoer to make a new beginning on a course that will be different’ from the one which caused pain (ibid). It is through such interaction that the act of forgiving becomes a new beginning and where without forgiving such a future is denied; this, at least, is

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the thrust of Tutu’s argument about there being no future without forgiveness. Yet, as Vetlesen argues, when looking at resentment and the work of Holocaust survivor Jean Amery ‘The question of moral urgency cannot be made into a function of biological time: the truism that the future, per se, as it were, carries more importance than the past is both blatantly untrue and blatantly immoral. Quite the contrary, what the human being craves to safeguard his humanity is the suspension of time’ (Vetlesen 2006: 33–34). Understanding forgiveness and its moral consequences is surely more than any generalized claim that forgiveness promises a better future for the victim and society. Literature which addresses the problem of forgiveness with relation to the Holocaust offers a necessary counter-argument to that posited by Tutu, suggesting that resentment can be a dignified and justifiable response in the face of extreme suffering. Drawing from the writings of Holocaust survivors, the work of Brundholm (2008) Vetlesen (2006) and Murphy (2005) has made a vital contribution to understanding unforgiveness and addressed the question of whether resentment is as morally defensible and acceptable – or even as humane – as the tendency to forgive. Or, as Brunholm puts it ‘in some circumstances, the preservation of outrage or resentment and the refusal to forgive and reconcile can be the reflex expression of a moral protest and ambition that might be as permissible and admirable as the posture of forgiveness’ (Brundholm 2008: 4). Vetlesen describes the value of resentment a little differently when he views it as an ‘emotional product of a specific intersubjective social relationship, exhibiting what the one did to the other within it, for all to see, for all to know and to remember’, a manifestation of dignity and self-worth (Vetlesen 2006: 42). Moreover, he notes that resentment ‘may serve as an experiential precondition for the identification of affliction-involving situations, situations involving others. In this way, far from diminishing the moral domain, resentment carries a potential to enlarge it’ (ibid). For Vetlesen, resistance to the importance of resentment is connected to its demonstrative proof of one’s vulnerability, a weakness, while forgiveness, in comparison, is more often seen as

Introduction 9 strength, an overcoming of one’s vulnerability in the face of expected paralysis. But in contrast and as Murphy points out ‘Those who have vindictive dispositions towards those who wrong them give potential wrongdoers an incentive not to wrong them. If I were going to set out to oppress other people, I would surely prefer to select for my victims persons whose first response is forgiveness rather than persons whose first response is revenge’ (2005: 35). Resentment for Murphy has value because it stands as a mark of self-respect and regard for moral order. Forgiveness, on the other hand, risks sending a symbolic message that the act of the perpetrator is endorsed, reducing the victim to an object of the perpetrator’s whims and desires. Not to make a stand against such action, Murphy contends, risks becoming complicit in the actions of the perpetrator and so reinforcing the legitimacy of wrongdoing (2005: 36). Unforgiveness compares to forgiveness because while the former is seen as associated with ‘destructive emotions’ the latter is seen as associated with ‘constructive emotions’. As Worthington explains ‘Unforgiveness is a cold, emotional complex consisting of resentment, bitterness, hatred, residual anger and fear’ in contrast with forgiveness which is ‘a juxtaposition or superposition of a strong positive emotion over the cold emotions of unforgiveness . . . forgiveness is the emotional replacement of hot anger and fear by those positive emotions’ (Worthington 2001: 172–73). The existence of what Worthington calls ‘cold’ emotion is, not surprisingly, largely conceptualized as a negative phenomenon, even though such emotion is imperative to the act of the forgiveness because without it forgiveness would mean very little. This connection, between unforgiveness and forgiveness, is important and the depiction of one stance as necessarily negative against another which is necessarily positive does little to help advance debate about the struggle that exists between these two extremes; a struggle that is imperative for forgiveness to have meaning. How emotion plays out and how the struggle to forgive wins out over the struggle not to forgive signifies a complex range of inter-related influences and forces which fluctuate in connection with one’s own perception of what forgiveness means

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and what one is measuring that against. Viewing forgiveness as part of a relationship between victim and perpetrator gives substance to the claim that there has to be an acceptance of forgiveness for forgiveness to take place: if the perpetrator does not know he is forgiven, what does this mean for the generosity of the victim who offers it or the act itself? But might this relationship also extend to a recipient of forgiveness being imagined as much as being identifiable and aware of being forgiven, and if not, does this not add further suffering to those who lost loved ones but have no knowledge of who perpetrated this loss? Such questions pervade the forgiveness debate, shifting our understanding from the determinate and observable to the indeterminate and the imagined. Although studies of forgiveness have addressed its significance from psychological, social and political directions, much of the work on the possible benefits of forgiveness has emanated from theological discussion (Jones 1995) where forgiveness has been examined from perspectives of struggle, process, decision and moment (we should also bear in mind that the CGP contained senior religious figures). More philosophical accounts, concerned primarily which what forgiveness is and means, note how the effort to understand wrongdoing can be taken as a form of forgiveness in itself, and strive to interrogate distinctions between the forgivable and the unforgivable (Jankelevitch 2005). This consideration of the unforgivable (which immediately poses questions about the moral legitimacy of an appeal to forgive in exceptional circumstances) is imperative to the forgiveness debate since we have to acknowledge that it may also be the case that action against victims has diminished them as persons so much that to forgive ‘may be more psychological and spiritual capitulation to a powerful other than real forgiveness’ (Staub and Pearlman 2001: 208). Alongside this route of enquiry, we might alternatively choose to conceptualize forgiveness through psychological theory and research where the ability to forgive is considered against possible benefits for mental heath and psychological wellbeing (Watts and Gulliford 2004). Whichever way we decide to go, these theological, philosophical and psychological approaches to

Introduction 11 forgiveness not only highlight the difficulty of understanding what forgiveness is and does – Loewen, for example identifies four kinds: supernatural (divine), religious, social and self-forgiveness (1970) – but again demonstrate that the notion of ‘mutual forgiveness’ can only have real importance as a setting or context within which to debate these differences. Variations in the forgiving process not only raise problems for agreement on what forgiveness is but show that the idea of the ‘mutual’ is at best a basis for questions rather than answers. Because of this and regardless of how such a debate may or may not be reduced to an extension of conflict tendencies, it would appear that the importance of the CGP Report lay in its recommendation that an agreed inclination to deal with the problem of forgiving can at least direct us toward a framework within which wider understanding can take place which avoids becoming an extension of divisive or confrontational attitudes. If we agree with Arendt’s assertion that forgiving ‘is the only reaction which does not merely re-enact but acts anew and unexpectedly, unconditioned by the act which provoked it and therefore freeing from its consequences both the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven’ (Arendt 1958: 241), then we must also go along with the suggestion that ‘forgiving and acting are as closely connected as destroying and making’ (ibid). But the process of freeing oneself from the consequences imposed by another is also a relationship which requires moral repair (Urban Walker 2006). Freeing oneself from another, in other words, is largely about ending a destructive relationship (certainly at least ending its most destructive aspects) which has been imposed through re-negotiation of moral certainties about ‘them’ and ‘us’. It is how we live with that imposition and change our relationship with it that encourages us to think about the role of remembering. To changes one’s association with another through forgiving requires a change in the narrative of experience away from resentment, pain, anger etc. towards strength, compassion and understanding – a narrative, in other words, which is shaped less by attention to the self and more by attention to the other. As Griswold explains, this

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transformation signals a shift away from the ‘why’ of the victim to ‘why’ from the perspective of the perpetrator (Griswold 2009: 105) and so becomes an opportunity for movement from the internal to the external world. Note here also that in comparison to resentment which strives to isolate the victim from the perpetrator but creates a situation where through anger and other emotions the victim remains attached, forgiving recognizes the need for repair and engagement as a means for transformation (ibid: 109) and it is this re-orientation which allows negative thoughts and behaviour to be re-interpreted from the perspective of positive thoughts and behaviour. This change in relations between the remembered self and the remembered other opens up the possibilities of understanding not just the individual importance of remembering, but its social importance – for as Volf rightly points out ‘Since others are always implicated, remembering abuse is of public significance’ (Volf 2006: 12) – thereby making the social responsibility of memory a key consideration of personal interpretation. On this relationship, the CGP Report stresses that ‘All remembering should be conducted from the perspective of our common humanity and of the best and the worst in all of us’ (CGP 2009: 96), and in this emphasis interprets personal remembering in a wider context of public remembering. It is public remembering after all which is seen to provide ‘a way of rebuilding, pointing to the shortcomings of the past and shaping resolve for a different future’ (ibid). Rather like conceiving forgiveness in terms of ‘mutual’ significance, the Report seems to view remembering as a process which can contribute to a common space, within which alternative forms of remembering connected to storytelling, days of reflection and memorials can be articulated and expressed. The Report envisages storytelling as a vehicle which can shape ‘narrative and moral reassessment’ through the inter-related processes of listening and telling, and it is in the relationship between listening and telling where new narratives can be established to bridge divisive relations and contribute to healing (ibid: 98). The Report goes on to say that ‘Only by listening to the perspectives of others who were involved in the conflict can we move

Introduction 13 towards understanding their moral truth and towards some form of reconciliation’ but that this should ‘take place in a context where the experience of those involved can be validated’ (ibid: 99). Such validation, the Report proposes, might take place in the presence of an ‘authoritative listener’ (although quite how this would work is unclear) where telling and listening can be understood not to bring potential prosecution or retaliation, but healing and reconciliation. Although supportive of a national Day of Reflection and memorials which might assist the path to non-combative dialogue, these areas are less elaborated beyond recognition of their possible contribution. In the case of memorials, however, the Report is aware of how memorials may lead to enshrining the ideological tensions of conflict, therefore not only maintaining divisiveness, but ‘serving to perpetuate sectarianism’ (ibid: 102). Interestingly, on the point of memorials the authors of the Report conclude that they do ‘not believe that a shared memorial can be agreed at this time. It remains a contentious issue for many and poses many challenging issues around which we could not see any consensus’ (ibid: 104). What we might reasonably deduce from this is that although memorials of conflict are important as forms of remembrance, there is also a danger that they will celebrate the past and in that sense glorify the very actions which inhibit healing. Memorials then risk mythologizing and legitimizing social and political division and re-affirming conflict identities. The inability to recognize remembering as both part of conflict and its transformation is to fail to see that ‘for societies to be cut off from memory makes them myopic. For societies to suppress memory can make them dangerously explosive’ (Schreiter 2008: 9). This power of memory is well explored by Schreiter, who notes how a continuing ‘dialectic of remembering and forgetting’ (ibid: 10) functions to create both a selective fading and prominence of imaginings and emotional connections. Schreiter also observes that relations with the past alter over time depending on emotional intensity and relationships. That most individuals are able to live with the impact of loss and adapt to deal with that loss is taken as

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evidence of how memory moves and changes over time. However, where Schreiter is surely right is to claim that to forgive does not mean to forget but (and taking a lead from Volf) ‘to remember in a different way’ (ibid). This difference comes from a change where one is no longer frozen or weighted down by loss but engaged in a process of healing that depends on admitting the pain of loss, working to make new connections and relations so the gap of loss does ‘not consign past relations to reassure and oblivion’, and adopting a new perspective which will allow the victim to find value and worth in social life (ibid: 13–14). This process of adaptation rests on the construction of a new narrative of memory, which views the past not as fixed but in flux and which through awareness of that movement can bring one to realise that the past need not entrap, but can act as a release. The development of a space which can facilitate this narrative, according to Schreiter ‘allows us to explore different dimensions of our identity, by seeing ourselves and others in interaction with different actors and situations’ (ibid: 15). Such a space does not only enable a new relationship with the past (and so the future) but can help ‘restore the capacity to trust’ and therefore help erase destructive or retributive inclinations (ibid). This space, to put it another way, can facilitate the imaginations of reconciliation (Volf 2006) and help re-think the social and ethical implications of memory through an emphasis on caring rather than anger and hate (Margalit 2002: 32–40); a new desire to understand one’s neighbour (ibid: 40–44); and an invitation to share memory rather than use it to isolate and divide. A past dominated by fear and suffering cannot be separated from this new space for it is part of it, providing the conditions of influence which one wishes to change. What seems fairly certain is that pressure to remember differently will not bring about such a change, just as pressure to forget will ensure one does not forget (ibid 2002: 560), but that change will emerge with dialogue, understanding and empathy. In that reconciliation evolves from the growth of new narratives (along with different experiences of telling and listening) it becomes not an end, but a new beginning or continuation (Urban

Introduction 15 Walker 2006: 160) of the past. The significance of this shift in relation to forgiving comes from being in a context which enables and facilitates the letting go of old relationships by introducing and exploring the advantages of new ones (ibid: 161). Although reconciliation requires a process to move the entrenched beliefs and assumptions of each group about the other (Hewstone et al. 2008: 200), it necessarily also requires ‘interventions directed at the psychological sources and consequences of sectarianism and bigotry’ (ibid), which, according to Liechty and Clegg, in the case of sectarianism operate as: ‘[A] system of attitudes, actions, beliefs and structures . . . which arises as a distorted expression of positive, human needs especially for belonging, identity and the free expression of difference . . . expressed in destructive patterns of relating: hardening the boundaries between groups, overlooking others, belittling, dehumanizing or demonizing others, justifying or collaborating in the domination of others, physically or verbally intimidating or attacking others’ (quoted in Hewstone et al. ibid). New structures and mechanisms to improve inter-group relations are therefore essential to overcome the segregations (psychological and physical) which maintain the sectarian and bigoted mind. Breaking the patterns which keep divisive attitudes in place means not ignoring or dismissing sectarian and bigoted tendencies, but transforming and ‘absorbing them so that they no longer diffuse into a continuing cycle of violence’ (ibid: 207). By finding similarities and commonalities in differentiation (viewing difference as representative of the human condition) and engaging more ‘not with the emotions we feel about them, but rather the emotions that we feel they are capable of experiencing’, movement away from entrenched positions becomes possible (ibid: 208). Schlink explains the process succinctly when he writes ‘In order to acknowledge the perpetrator as an equal and to reconcile with them, the victim has to understand the perpetrator, even if they can understand them only in disbelief or in disapproval.

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Reconciliation requires a truth that can be understood; it requires understanding’ (Schlink 2010: 81). Schlink continues, ‘the more one understands, the more one is enticed into forgiveness and led away from passing judgement’ (ibid: 82), and surely offers the better moral position (even if underplaying the complexities and obstructions) when he argues: Connecting ourselves with the thoughts and feelings of others, although they may be completely different from ours, establishes equality; just as interpreting their rationality in the light of our own, despite major differences, creates parity. Understanding allows us to see that we are equal with others and can experience, empathise and share in their rationality, empirical and normative expectations, thoughts and feelings. We make them equal to us and us to them; we build up society when we understand. Since understanding makes us more hesitant to pass judgement and more forbearing and tending towards forgiveness, understanding brings reconciliation a step closer. The foundation for reconciliation is laid by understanding because it works against all that separates us and towards all that would bring us together (ibid: 84). This book is an attempt to develop further some of the above points and build discussion of forgiving and remembering from initial proposals outlined in the CGP Report of 2009. As a starting point for debate about such areas, the Report represents a moment of opportunity which is too important to ignore, but which requires elaboration if the recommendations are to have wider social purchase and not fade from public view. How and why forgiving and remembering are important (however conceived) and what value public engagement may bring to each is the purpose of this book. Through a series of essays and interviews this collection seeks to incite wider conversation about forgiveness and reconciliation and consider how such areas might impact on progression towards a ‘post-conflict’ Northern Ireland. Drawing from a range of religious figures, trauma

Introduction 17 workers, psychologists and ‘victims’, these chapters indicate the kind of dialogue needed to shape the transformative culture required to overcome the conventional perceptions and stereotypes that perpetuate fear and division. The different emphases which look at forgiving and remembering from theological, social, psychological and political perspectives hint at the range of debates needed to embrace purposefully and constructively the wide-ranging nature of issues involved. The essays set out to deal not only with the dilemmas of forgiving and remembering, but the social and political responsibilities needed to address properly the concerns at stake. In that sense the book aspires to use the ideas explored as a basis for further social and political dialogue. Importantly, these contributions are not motivated by some primary objective of being theoretically impressive (although many are theoretically impressive). They are written by people directly involved in conflict resolution and who understand the implications of what is necessary to support the transformation away from conflict towards peace. Nor are the authors here unaware of the obstructions to forgiveness and reconciliation, since their writings and comments are shaped by experiences ‘on the ground’ which inform them only too well about what stands in the way of positive change. But in drawing from that experience they also know the efforts needed to convince others of the merits of the transformative road. It is this experience which gives particular substance to the arguments being proposed. Though by no means exhaustive, the chapters reflect different approaches to conflict resolution which mark a significant addition to emerging debates. Areas such as the use of geographical space, re-reading religious text, dialogue not based on forgiving, the gap between rhetoric and reality, stories as metaphor, church responsibility, accounts of individual loss and hope, as well as dealing throughout with the complexities of forgiving and remembering, combine to produce a point of departure which moves well beyond the CGP Report’s recommendations to begin the process of social and political engagement necessary for the development of a

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transformative culture. Throughout, what emerges is that acting towards forgiving and remembering is not a passive activity but demands confronting real pain and suffering (a number of contributors talk about their own loss and disability through conflict) from alternative perspectives which enable life and purpose to thrive rather than be defeated or destroyed. That there are other ways to deal with the consequences of conflict which can overcome its destruction and devastation and make life more bearable is surely a path worth pursuing. The struggle to find this meaning in the wake of such pain and suffering is what this book is about.

References Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brundholm, T. (2008) Resentment’s Virtue, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Butler, J. (2009) Frames of War, London: Verso. Clegg, C. (2008) ‘Embracing a Threatening Other: Identity and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland’, in S. C. H. Kim, P. Kollontai and G. Hoyland (eds) Peace and Reconcilation, Aldershot: Ashgate. Hewstone, M., Kenworthy, J. B., Cairns, E., Tausch, N., Hughes, J., Tam, T., Voci, A., von Hecker, U. and Pinder, C. (2008) ‘Steeping Stones to Reconcilation in Northern Ireland: Intergroup Contact, Forgiveness and Trust’, in A. Nadler and T. E. Malloy and J. D. Fisher (eds) The Social Psychology of Intergroup Reconciliation, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Griswold, C. L. (2009) ‘Forgiveness and Narrative’, in P. Godobo-Madikzela and C. Van Der Merwe (eds) Memory, Narrative and Forgiveness, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Jankelevitch, V. (2005) Forgiveness, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jones, L. G. (1995) Embodying Forgiveness, Grand Rapids/ Michigan: Eerdmans. Lewis, C. S. (1944) Mere Christianity, London: Harper Collins. Loewen, J. A. (1970) ‘Four Kinds of Forgiveness’, Practical Anthropology 11, 153–168. Margakit, A. (2002) The Ethics of Memory, Cambridge/Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Mitchell, C. (2006) Religion, Identity and Politics in Northern Ireland, Aldershot: Ashgate. Murphy, J. G. (2005) ‘Forgiveness, Self-Respect and the Value of Resentment’, in E. L. Worthington Jr (ed.) Handbook of Forgiveness, London: Routledge. Sacks, J. (2003) The Dignity of Difference, London: Continuum. Schlink, B. (2010) Guilt about the Past, London: Beautiful Books.

Introduction 19 Schreiter, R. (2008) ‘Establishing a Shared Identity: The Role of the Healing of Memories and of Narrative’, in S. C. H. Kim, P. Kollontai and G. Hoyland (eds) Peace and Reconciliation, Aldershot: Ashgate. Spencer, G. (2010) ‘Managing a Peace Process: An Interview with Jonathan Powell’, Irish Political Studies 25 (3) 437–455. Spencer, G (forthcoming) Protestant Identity and Peacemaking in Northern Ireland, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Staub, E. and Pearlman L. A. (2001) ‘Healing, Reconcilation and Forgiving after Genocide and other Collective Violence’, in R. G. Helmick, S. J. and R. L. Petersen (Eds.) Forgiveness and Reconciliation, Pennsylvania: Templeton Foundation Press. Tutu, D. (1999) No Future Without Forgiveness, London: Ryder. Urban Walker, M. (2006) Moral Repair, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vetlesen, A. J. (2006) A Case for Resentment: Jean Amery versus Primo Levi, Journal of Human Rights 5 (1) 27–44. Vetlesen, A. J. (2010) A Philosophy of Pain, London: Reaktion Books. Volf, M. (2006) The End of Memory, Grand Rapids/Michigan: Eerdmans. Watts, F. and Gulliford, L. (eds) (2004) Forgiveness in Context, London: T&T Clark International.

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Chapter 1

Forgiving: A Doubting Thomas Brian Lennon, SJ

Fifteen years after the 1994 ceasefires, Northern Ireland remains deeply divided about the past, the present and the future. In response to the Consultative Group Report on the Past which had called for recognition payments to be made to all who had lost loved ones in the conflict (2009), First Minister Peter Robinson insisted on a hierarchy of victims: ‘Innocent victims who lost their lives in countless horrific incidents during the Troubles such as at Enniskillen or in the La Mon bombing bear no relation whatsoever with the terrorists intercepted by the legitimate forces of law and order at Loughgall or the likes of the Shankill bomber who was killed himself while murdering and maiming innocent civilians’ (The Irish Times, 19 November 2009: 10), a position which republicans would deeply oppose. The DUP and Sinn Fein remain locked in a dispute over the devolution of policing powers from the Westminster Parliament to the Stormont Assembly in Belfast. Peter Robinson’s latest move has been to link the issue to agreement over the routes of disputed Orange parades. It is possible that the dispute will lead to a collapse of the devolved government. On the future, both unionists and republicans still hope for different outcomes. Many Christians respond to conflict by working for ‘forgiveness’ or ‘reconciliation’, or both. These words can mean many things: healing, moving on, not being dominated by the past, ending violence, forgiving, repenting, truth, justice, re-establishing relationships, starting new relationships, trauma counselling, storytelling about the 21

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past, reconstructing society after conflict or moving on from conflict without any repenting, among others. In the Northern Ireland conflict, while I believe individual forgiving and elements of communal forgiving have played a role, other factors were more important both in stopping the violence and in building the political structures which may help us to move beyond the past. In this chapter I will look first at personal forgiving and ask what it means and what impact it can have on communal healing. Next, I will raise some questions about communal forgiving, including issues about communal guilt. I will then consider some issues about dealing with the past, and end by trying to weigh the merits of alternative strategies to forgiving.

Individual forgiving What is involved in forgiving? Many assume that if we forgive people we thereby let them off punishment. This is not true. It is perfectly conceivable that we might still call for punishment because of the need for order in society or some other reason. Second, although we are all linked in society, forgiving principally concerns those who have suffered most. Third, we cannot forgive unless a person or group has done wrong to someone else. This seems obvious, yet people often talk of forgiving or repenting without asking who did what wrong to whom? If wrongdoing is absent, forgiving is not appropriate. The corollary of this is that if I forgive someone I am naming him or her as a person who has done some wrong to me. He or she may not agree with this. Christians place a lot of emphasis on the need to forgive. This puts a demand on people who have been wronged. It is important, then, to be clear about what we are asking people to do, so that we do not add unnecessary burdens on those who have already suffered an injustice. I suggest that there are four elements in Christian forgiving. To forgive I need to: 1. recognize my anger and accept it as legitimate;

Forgiving: A Doubting Thomas 23 2. let go of the desire for revenge by separating myself from the wrongdoer; 3. develop a degree of empathy with the wrongdoer; and 4. wish the wrongdoer well.

Recognizing my anger and accepting it as legitimate The natural response to being wronged is anger, including a desire for revenge: we have been hurt wrongly: we want to hurt back, to give the wrongdoers a dose of their own medicine. There is nothing wrong with angry feelings as an initial reaction. Acting out on my feelings is a different matter: that may get me arrested. But most people who have been badly hurt need to find a way to express their anger.

Letting go of the desire for revenge by separating myself from the wrongdoer Forgiving may have a somewhat similar dynamic to bereavement. When we lose someone close to us the loss dominates our lives. We spend most of our waking moments thinking about it, experiencing the gut-wrenching absence and silence. But gradually, over time, most people find themselves thinking less about their loss. The pain begins to ease. Over a period of years, the adjustments that we are forced to make in our day-to-day lives – going for a walk on our own, the demands of work or family – gradually begin to dominate our lives. At some point we realize that we are no longer thinking about the dead person as much. We then face a choice: we can try to freeze our life as it was before the death, or continue to let go slowly. The analogy with forgiving is that initially our mind – and our body – is completely focused on the wrong we have suffered and on the person who caused it. But as time goes on we find other things come into our focus. At those moments we can choose to go back to the wrong we suffered or we can choose gradually to let it go. In each case, of course, these are not once-off choices. They are a series of up and down, back and forth movements in which we gradually move in

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the direction of no longer being dominated by our desire for revenge, or else we move in the opposite direction of holding on to the hurt, nourishing it and helping it to grow. An important part of the journey to forgive is the focus on separation. When I am focused on revenge, the other person is in the centre of my head. I think about them every moment of every day and every night. My guts are in turmoil. My sleep is disturbed. My appetite may be affected and there is evidence of other physiological damage that the long-term desire for revenge may have, and of the positive effects of forgiving, (Friedberg J. P. et al., 2009). This is a dead-end for me and separating myself mentally from the wrongdoer is the only way out of it.

Developing a degree of empathy with the wrongdoer If the previous stages of forgiving seem difficult, and they are, then this one for many seems completely impossible. Empathy appears to be at the other end of the spectrum from revenge, from a desire to destroy. Normally empathy can only be considered long after anger has been expressed, desire for revenge has gradually been given up and the wrongdoer is far out of our head. Only then can questions come up such as: ‘I wonder why they did what they did?’ ‘What pressures were they under?’ ‘How are their lives different from mine?’

Wishing the wrongdoers well It needs a lot of freedom to wish people well when they have hurt us badly. Yet it is also a sign of that freedom. It does not mean that we want to excuse them punishment, or to minimize what they did. It means hoping that they will come to their senses, recognize the harm they have done and its consequences, repent and reform their lives. There is a surprising conclusion from this overview of personal forgiving. The language suggests that the person wronged does something for the wrongdoer: ‘I forgive you’. In fact the above analysis suggests that when people forgive they do something for

Forgiving: A Doubting Thomas 25 themselves, not the wrongdoer: it is the people who are wronged who move towards freedom. It is they who get rid of the fire in their belly. It is they who are now able to sleep at night. It is they who are no longer dominated by the past or who define themselves in relation to a past event. Of course, forgiving can be a help to wrongdoers: it changes their context. But it does not bring them freedom. Freedom for wrongdoers comes only from repentance. That is something they do themselves, with the grace of God, in a Christian perspective. One view which has always puzzled me is the statement that people cannot forgive until the wrongdoer has repented. This puts the person wronged in a double bind: they bear the injustice and they are dependent on an action by the wrongdoer to complete the task of forgiving. I disagree. Forgiving is something that lies – with grace – within the heart of the person wronged and does not depend on a prior action, or a response, from the wrongdoer. There were many examples of individuals who lost loved ones in the violence and who either called for no retaliation or who publicly forgave those who had killed them. So frequent were these that some in the media – quite wrongly in my view – asked recently bereaved people if they had been able to forgive. (At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in S. Africa people who had lost loved ones were regularly asked the same question). Like others in the Faith and Politics Group during the Troubles, I stressed the need for reconciliation between divided groups and the importance of forgiving as part of this. I would be more hesitant now about doing this. I have had many encounters with individuals who feel guilty that they have not been able to forgive and it seems to me that I have added to their burdens by my calls. There may have been a different intuitive response to this issue among Protestants and Catholics during the Troubles. While obviously many on both sides did not fit the pattern, it is probably true that it was more often Catholics who called on people to forgive, Protestants for punishment. There was a political reason for this: Catholics were more likely to oppose the State, Protestants to support it. Those who oppose the State are more likely to look for people to

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be forgiven, supporters of law and order for punishment. This is only one of many pointers to the need for churches or interfaith groups to work together in conflict situations. They need to understand each other’s perspectives and the impact that public statements will have on groups other than their own. They also need to issue joint statements. Both forgiving and punishment are needed. I have no doubt that the actions of individuals in forgiving those who murdered their loved ones made a positive impact on the communal situation. At the very least it said to others: ‘Do not take revenge in my name’. Perhaps its impact can be seen most easily if one thinks of the impact of the opposite response: calls for revenge. Since killings by the other side in divided societies are always seen as representative, so also acts of forgiving at the very least helped restraint. As we have seen, a major block in focusing on forgiving or repenting in Northern Ireland is disagreement about right and wrong. For some the past was about terrorists causing murder and mayhem. For others it was about a noble group of warriors who refused to be cowed by the British Government and who fought a just war for their rights. Major agreement about the past is unlikely until the events of the Troubles are distant memories.

Communal forgiving It is perhaps worth asking the reader to give quick answers to the following questions: O O

O

O O O

Should the Jews forgive the Germans? Should the West forgive the Soviet Union for the horrors it imposed on the world? Should Muslims forgive the US for the thousands of people the US government has killed? Should the Irish forgive the English for the Famine? Should nationalists forgive unionists for discrimination? Should unionists forgive republicans or the people of Ireland for the actions of the IRA?

Forgiving: A Doubting Thomas 27 Of course some of these questions are loaded, but this illustrates that different agendas can be hidden under calls for communal forgiving – an apparently unimpeachable desire.

Difference between communal and individual forgiving Legally, the UK and other governments accept the concept of communal guilt. So, for example, under the UK Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act, 2007, a corporation is guilty if senior management organizes its activities in a way that causes a person’s death or breaches a relevant duty of care. In making a decision a jury may: consider the extent to which the evidence shows that there were attitudes, policies, systems or accepted practices within the organisation that were likely to have encouraged any such failure as is mentioned in subsection (2), or to have produced tolerance of it (UK Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act, (2007), 8 (3) (a). However, the Act also makes clear that no individual can be held liable for the actions of a corporation (ibid., 18 (1)). In the light of this, to show communal guilt we have to show that an organisation or communal unit exists and that it did wrong. In our Northern Ireland context it is not easy always to work out communal wrong. For example, we might ask: should the nationalist community say sorry to unionists for the actions of the IRA? To say they should is to argue that all nationalists were members of the IRA and they were not. The majority always opposed them. Similarly, if to argue that all unionists should apologize for past discrimination against nationalists we need to show that they a) there was discrimination, b) the unionist community acted as a unit, and c) that all unionists were members of it and could or should have known what was going on. During the conflict in Northern Ireland those of us in the Faith and Politics Group frequently accepted that ‘We all share the responsibility for creating the situation either by deed or by acquiescence’. In the light of the above issues which I have raised I would now be more cautious about statements like this. We need to

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be clear that we can establish corporate and/or individual guilt before we can either forgive or apologize.

Who represents the group? In the Northern Ireland context, Catholic bishops sometimes offered statements of repentance or forgiving to unionists and or British people. But whom did they represent? The Catholic Church is not a democracy. So while they spoke on behalf of the institutional Church they could not claim to be speaking on behalf of its members. ‘Membership’ is more difficult to define with Catholics than with Protestants. Many who have not attended Church for years still see themselves as Catholics but would be startled at the suggestion that bishops speak on their behalf. In summary, then, communal forgiving depends on the prior existence of communal wrongdoing or guilt. Without this there is nothing to forgive. Where the guilt is clear and agreed between the parties, communal forgiving and repenting can help. In the absence of this communal agreement it is unlikely to do so. Because there is little agreement about right and wrong in the Northern Ireland conflict, I suggest that working for communal forgiving or repenting in our conflict is not the greatest priority and there are arguably better ways of easing tension.

What other approaches helped peace? In the Northern Ireland conflict many factors helped to bring about the relative end of violence. One of the most important was the entry of Ireland and Britain into the European Community. When Ireland joined the then EEC in 1973 it became one of 12 states, each with equal status within the new community. Its trade diversified from being heavily dependent on the UK to a more equal distribution with other member states and with the US. Its civil servants began to have regular meetings with their UK counterparts and each side slowly built up a better understanding of each

Forgiving: A Doubting Thomas 29 country’s systems. It was also important that these meetings for the most part were not about constitutional issues, but about the myriad of issues that arise between neighbouring countries, such as law, economics, travel etc. EEC membership brought new-found wealth to different constituencies within Ireland. Between the new wealth and the new status, the old inferiority complex and resentments arising from colonialism gradually faded. No element was more important in achieving this outcome than membership of the EEC. Twelve years after joining the EEC, the UK and Ireland signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985. The Agreement was made possible both by an easing of Irish resentments and by an increased focus on the Irish question arising from the conflict in Northern Ireland, and the questions addressed to the British Government by other EEC member States and by the US. The Agreement transformed the understanding of Northern Ireland held by both governments. Where previously one side had defined the problem in terms of colonialism and the other as an internal British matter, now both agreed that the key issue was one of a double minority: nationalists were a minority within Northern Ireland, but unionists were a minority within the context of the whole island. Both countries agreed to work together to resolve the conflict. The Agreement also meant that a new framework was set up within which the political parties in Northern Ireland had to operate: if they wanted power devolved from the British Government in London, then the consent of both unionists and nationalists was now required. Majority rule was over. However, if nationalists wanted Northern Ireland to become part of a united Ireland, an overall majority in support of this within Northern Ireland was required. The fact that either side could only exercise power within Northern Ireland with the consent of the other took time to make an impact. Thirteen years were to pass before a multi-party agreement between parties within Northern Ireland to share power would be signed. Even then, the DUP, led by Ian Paisley, remained opposed. But in

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2007 they themselves joined the framework and shared a devolved government with their sworn enemies, Sinn Fein. Other factors besides membership of the EEC/EU helped bring a settlement. One was military: the British army and the IRA matched each other so that each side recognized that a stalemate existed for several years before the 1998 Agreement. Political opportunities opened up for republicans after the 1981 hunger strikes. Loyalist attacks on Catholics, sometimes certainly assisted by British intelligence, made the conflict look more sectarian and less like a pure struggle for national freedom, as republicans wanted to present it. (It turned out later that British intelligence penetration of republicans was far deeper than many would have guessed at the time.) In response to all this, key republicans made a vital decision to choose a political route rather than continue a dead-end conflict. Not only that, but having chosen the political route, they showed considerable skill in bringing the vast majority of other republicans along with them. The risks were high: failure would certainly have led to their deaths at the hands of their colleagues. As well as this, the British Government, perhaps for the first time, began to devote considerable resources to the problem. Both they and their Irish counterparts showed great skill in persuading paramilitaries and others to remain committed to the peace process, something which was difficult because of the emotive issues that they continually faced, but which was also difficult because the process seemed to take for ever. Church people and others played an important role, especially in the earlier stages, in mediating between divided groups that refused to meet each other. (When unionists and nationalists went to S. Africa at one point, President Mandela had to make two separate presentations because unionists refused to sit in the same room as republicans.) An improved economic situation also played a part in that some jobs were available for ex-paramilitaries. This was helped as Sinn Fein came into the process and some political patronage became possible. There were, then, multiple factors which helped Northern Ireland move from violence to an end of violence. I would

Forgiving: A Doubting Thomas 31 suggest that communal forgiving or repenting were by no means the most important. Nonetheless, individual acts of forgiving and communal calls for restraint, while their impact cannot be measured, must have helped the situation.

Understanding and recognition Another factor that certainly helped individuals become more open to peace was a growth in understanding and recognition. From 1998 to 2008, with others, I was involved in developing a dialogue process in which we brought together some of the most divided groups in Northern Ireland. It was not easy to persuade them to attend, but if they did there was a growth in understanding among the vast majority. This understanding had nothing to do with agreement, or forgiving or repenting. Rather it was about slowly getting to a stage where one heard the story of the other. When people tell stories things change between them. The best word I can find to capture the change is ‘understanding’. At some point participants realized that if they were in their opponents’ position they might have acted in the same way. They still saw their opponent as being wrong, but things had changed between them. That change made violence less likely in the future. Dialogue of this sort does not work if participants are completely closed, but it can work if they are pretty closed. There can be no guarantee of a political impact, but our hope was that if the individuals who took part were influential within their own community they could then take their new understanding back to their own group and this might lead to a cumulative impact. A second aspect of these dialogues was recognition. I have often told the story of the loyalist and republican who attended one of these events. They had not spoken during the first day. In a small group on the second day the loyalist turned to some young people in the group and said to them: ‘I want you to know that even though I am here in the same room as him’ (and he looked at the republican), ‘it has not been easy for me’. Clearly this was a statement that he had spent some time preparing. But he followed it with a statement that

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I suspect he had not prepared: ‘And, come to think of it, probably it has not been easy for him either’. This last statement was also made while he was looking at the republican, but he used the word ‘him’ rather than addressing him directly by using ‘you’. The republican responded by saying that it had not been easy for him either, but ‘I’m glad you are here’. At that point the republican put out his hand and the loyalist took it. For me this story shows nothing of repenting or forgiving, but a lot of understanding and recognition. Each was beginning to understand something of what life was like for the other. Each, in different ways, recognized the existence of the other. They were facing the reality that the other group existed, was going to continue to exist, and that space would somehow have to be found for the other group in the future. It may also be the case that promises about the future are more important than forgiving or repenting for the past. In reflecting on his year sharing power with Sinn Fein, Ian Paisley said: ‘What encourages me is the fact that, so far, the Sinn Féiners have kept their word’ (Irish American Information Service 18 November 09). Paisley’s attitude is reminiscent of a story told about a German ex-soldier who approached Jean Monnet, one of the original group who influenced the start of the EEC. The soldier said that he wanted to work with Monnet on the project. However, he wanted Monnet to know some things about his past before he decided whether or not to accept him. He told Monnet that he had been in the German army, that he had supported his country’s war aims, that he had been one of the troops who had occupied Paris and that he was not apologizing for any of this. Monnet, a Frenchman, responded that if he believed in their ideals for the future and wanted to commit himself to them, then he was welcome to join them. The two men moved forward, not by forgiving or repenting, but by finding a common ideal to work for in the future.

Forgiving: A Doubting Thomas 33

Communal resentment In Northern Ireland, communal resentment was – and is – one of the most important conflict issues, although it has arguably been more prominent among nationalists than among unionists. Deep in the nationalist psyche lies buried a resentment of the British: ‘They invaded us, colonized us and stole our land’. Such a response is common among colonized groups all over the world. Often, however, communal resentment is not specific about the wrong done, and an amalgam of myth and interests is built up over many centuries. When this is drawn under an umbrella such as nationalism, interests of otherwise competing groups, such as classes, get submerged, usually to the benefit of the middle or lower-middle class, and always to the disadvantage of those economically at the bottom. It took many years for communal resentment among nationalists to decline. As with other features of the peace process, the most important factors in this were political change. A republican said to me after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement between the two governments in 1985 that things were now fairer. I asked him what he meant. He was unemployed and it was clear the Agreement was not going to change this. His answer remained vague, that things had changed for the better, that the old order had gone, and he came back to the word ‘fairer’. His perception, then, was not tied to specific measurable benefits, but rather to a sense that his identity and existence was being recognized because a party with which he identified to a degree, the Irish Government, was being recognized as a partner by the British Government, a group to whom he was opposed. Gradually, as the peace process developed, nationalists got a greater share of the political assets that were available in Northern Ireland, until they got to the stage where Sinn Fein had outpolled the SDLP and ended up as the senior nationalist party in the powersharing Executive with their arch enemies, the DUP. At the end of 2009 it was quite conceivable that they could top the poll in the next election. It was that political progress which did most to end the resentment of republicans.

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Many years ago an early draft of Breaking Down The Enmity (1993), the first document issued by the Faith and Politics Group, had the following sub-heading: ‘Protestant and Catholic Fears’. My intuition told me that there was something wrong with it, but it took a while for me to see the problem. Yes, Protestants were afraid. But fear was not the dominant emotion in the Catholic community, resentment was. The mistake had come about because of the tendency of peace groups to look for synergy between divided groups and also to avoid being seen to take sides.

Communal fears Fear is more likely in a perceived dominant group – they have more to lose. The Northern Ireland process followed this dynamic. Protestants fears were easy to play on: Ian Paisley built a political career on doing so. Part of the problem was that there was an imbalance in power between the unionist and nationalist communities. To bring nationalists into the political system meant an adjustment which inevitably was seen to impact negatively on Protestant power. People care more about what they lose than what they gain. So despite Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK, Protestants had major difficulties because of seeing people they saw as murderers in government. There was a gasp among unionists in the Assembly when Sinn Fein named Martin McGuinness, former member of the IRA Army Council, as Minister for Education. Changes in policing were also a bone of contention for Protestants. For many the police were their major protection against terrorism during the Troubles. The Patton Report suggested changes which were mostly implemented, including changing the name from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) to the Police Service for Northern Ireland (PSNI), and introducing reverse discrimination to increase the percentage of Catholics. In this context it was difficult to convince Protestants that the peace process was beneficial to them as well. However, the logic of power-sharing gradually began to assert itself: one side could make no major change without the consent of

Forgiving: A Doubting Thomas 35 the other. So when Sinn Fein insisted on devolution of justice and policing powers from Westminster to the Stormont Assembly in Belfast, unionists were able to link the move to ‘confidence-building measures’. This meant, among other things, easing tension over Orange parades. Gradually the confidence of unionists increased.

Dealing with the past In Northern Ireland at the end of 2009 the two major approaches to the past were to look for denunciations of the security forces through legal action and for compensation and recognition for victims, but of course there was no agreement as to who was a victim. Legal inquiries into the past, while being the legal prerogative of individuals, are unlikely to lead to communal healing. This does not mean there should be no such inquiries. In my view we need a few more sample inquiries whose purpose would be to shatter the myth that the State acted within the parameters of Western democracy, because it did not. Exposing this might lead to a debate as to how the State might have acted differently and this might be useful in the future in Northern Ireland and also for other conflict situations. It would be an impetus to the unionist community to move towards a more balanced assessment of the past: the republicans were not the only ones who caused conflict. At the same time, if these inquiries exposed more about informers in the ranks of the IRA, the enthusiasm of republicans for such inquiries might be reduced. It might sully what they see as the great fight for Irish freedom. In the case of both traditions these inquiries might thus help to reduce glorification of the past and that might make future violence less likely.

Victimhood Victimhood is a serious temptation for groups focused on either resentment or fear. It is bad for those who are caught up in it, but the temptation facing groups or individuals to immerse themselves in it

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can be great because of the intense and shocking suffering that arises from bereavement or injury in a conflict. ‘Victim’ is an identity word. By calling ourselves or others victims we take one or more events from the past and define ourselves or others by these events. Other identities, for example spouse, partner, parent, friend, sportsperson etc, tend to be subsumed by the one identity of victim. A change in the international context has made it more likely for people to define themselves as victims. In part this has been influenced by attitudes towards the Holocaust. The immediate response of Jews who moved to Israel was silence. Survivors wanted to normalize their lives, so they did not want to talk about it. It was impossible for them to connect their experiences during the Holocaust with their experience of life after it. They married quickly to show that they could get on with living their lives. Other people did not want to hear about their experiences. The new State of Israel was fighting for its survival, and many saw the survivors of the Holocaust as weak people who had allowed themselves to be massacred. After the 1967 Yom Kippur war, more began to see the Holocaust sympathetically. The fall of communism allowed Jews to visit their former homelands and this helped conversations about the camps to start. In these conversations Jews gave themselves permission to explore their suffering. All this helped the growth of an international context in which victimhood was seen not as something to be honoured; which demanded a response from others. There have been many good results from this: care for those who have suffered, trauma counselling, some reparation, storytelling etc. But a disadvantage is that victimhood as an identity has become more rather than less appealing. The result is that more are tempted to define themselves in this way and thus remain stuck in the past. Victims’ groups face a difficult dilemma: how to provide necessary support for their members while at the same time helping them to move forward. The focus on right and wrong, good and evil, implicit in an emphasis on forgiving and repenting, has also helped victimhood. Seeing one’s opponent as immoral is more likely to produce a victimhood response than seeing one’s suffering as part

Forgiving: A Doubting Thomas 37 of the general run of bad things that happen to people all over the world.

Scriptural imperatives At first sight it seems that Jesus’ teaching on forgiving is clear: ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you’ (Luke 6: 27–28). We have received forgiveness freely from God for great offences; it is unjust of us not to offer forgiveness to those who have offended us, as Jesus argued in the parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16: 1–12). He asks us to treat others as we would want to be treated ourselves (Matthew 7: 12). His own example on the Cross was one of offering forgiveness for those who killed him. ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’ (Luke 23: 34). His example was taken up by Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who died praying for his killers (Acts 7: 60), and by countless martyrs since. When his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray Jesus taught them the Our Father, the basic prayer of all Christians, which includes the phrase, ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’ (Luke 11: 4). Yet Jesus also showed anger on many occasions: when he called the Pharisees ‘whited sepulchres’ (Matthew 23: 27) (a modern translation might be: ‘you dirty, rotten, heap of stinking bones’), when he called Herod ‘that old fox’ (Luke 13: 32), when he walked away from the Pharisees (Mark 8: 13), and when he drove the sellers out of the temple (Luke 19: 45). However, the anger of Jesus is never destructive revenge: he wants the best for the wrongdoer. That is why he calls for repentance, which is the opening cry of the Gospels (Mark 1: 15). If it takes us a long time to move towards completing the stages of forgiving, and if this takes us longer than Jesus, that should not surprise us: we are not Jesus! But we are called, however slowly, however painfully, to move in the direction he showed us. And of course that is the only way, in the view of Christians, to move towards full human freedom. But the fact that Jesus calls us to forgive and to repent does not answer the question of how we are to relate our politics to our faith.

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We can too easily assume that the relationship between God and us is to be the model of our political relationships, without giving due space to the autonomy of the secular. Secular politics has and should have its own space. To apply a scriptural value to politics, Christians need to show a) that a particular value is scripturally important; b) that it should be enshrined in political life; and c) propose ways in which this can be achieved practically. In doing this we need to show whether a particular injunction is addressed to us as individuals or as groups. It is clear from Scripture that God’s call is addressed to the people as well as to individuals, so it might seem appropriate that the same applies to us. But to assume this is to jump from the context of the Chosen People searching for God’s call to them, to our pluralist – and often secular – world. Christians can and do have valid disagreements about political issues. When they do not it is often a symptom of a narrow community who are using religion to support exclusivist political positions rather than allowing Scripture to challenge their views. For all these reasons I find it easier to apply scriptural imperatives to our actions as individuals rather than as groups. For example, to show that Irish Christians need to forgive the people of England for the Famine one would need to go through several steps, including: O

O

O

showing that the British people as a whole did wrong to the people of Ireland at the time of the Famine; that the people of Britain had responsibility for doing this wrong and knew what they were doing; that the people of Britain today have inherited some of the responsibility of their ancestors because they are still gaining from it and have done nothing about this.

I think each of these steps is tricky, so I do not think that Irish Christians should forgive English people of today for the Famine.

Forgiving: A Doubting Thomas 39

Conclusion Individual and communal forgiving and repenting depend on the existence of right and wrong. We cannot forgive what is not wrong. I have suggested that individual forgiving primarily benefits the person wronged: he or she is freed from resentment and is even able to wish the wrongdoer well. In Northern Ireland there have been many examples of people who have done this. They have had an impact on the conflict because they called for restraint and opposed acts of revenge. I have suggested that the benefits of communal forgiving or repenting in ‘the Northern Ireland case’ are less obvious. For it to be beneficial several things need to be in place. First, we would need to be clear about what wrong was done by which group to whom. Second, the perceived wrongdoers need to be open to the suggestion that they have done wrong. Third, issues of who belongs to a group need to be addressed (members of the IRA, republicans in general or nationalists who support aims similar to those of the IRA; in what way a group persists over time; – the British Government and the Irish famine). Fourth, communal forgiving and repenting are more likely to be possible and beneficial at the end of a conflict (for example the Irish Government began to take an interest in the Irishmen who died in British forces in World War I only in the 1990s when tensions between the two governments had eased). Fifth, I have suggested that two key elements in our conflict, communal resentments and fears, were better dealt with through bringing in new political structures, and through a dialogue which helped understanding and recognition. It may be argued that forgiving and repenting are more important when a society is in transition away from violence, but here, as I have indicated, the problem remains of disagreement about the past. It may also be that promises about the future are more important than forgiving and repenting for the past. Finally, I suggested that while it is tempting for Christians to apply Our Lord’s call to love our enemies through communal repenting and forgiving, caution is advised: we need to look at other words and

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actions of Our Lord, and we need to be careful about the jump we make from scriptural sayings to our concrete political context. So, let us, in so far as we can without harming them, help individuals to move towards the freedom that forgiving can offer them. But in our Northern Ireland context, while there may be some merit in looking for opportunities for communal forgiving and repenting, I believe that there are other and better ways to let go of our resentments and fears and thus move slowly towards a society not dominated by the past.

References Breaking Down the Enmity (1993) Belfast: An Interchurch Group on Faith and Politics. Consultative Group on the Past Report (2009) www.cgpni.org. Friedberg J. P., Suchday S. and Srinivas V. S. (2009) ‘Relationship between forgiveness and psychological and physiological indices in cardiac patients’, International Journal of Behavioural Medicine,16(3) 205–211. Irish American Information Service: www.iais.org. The Irish Times, 19 November 2009. Towards Peace and Stability: A Critical Assessment of the Anglo-Irish Agreement (1988) Belfast: An Interchurch Group on Faith and Politics. UK Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007, London: HMSO.

Chapter 2

Reconnecting the Rhetoric and Reality of Forgiving and Remembering Michael Jackson

The combination of forgiving and remembering is not the most selfexplanatory of combinations. In situations of conflict we are more accustomed to the following combination: forgiving and forgetting, or remembering and resenting. If this cycle simply continues in the emotional intelligence of an individual or a community, then the cycle of past hurt will continue to tarnish the present and prevent the future. This combination of forgiving and remembering takes us into the sphere of religion and into what I can only call a lazy world of religiosity. In Northern Ireland in particular, the old soundbite which is still doing the rounds is that as religion is part of the problem, so it has to be part of the solution. My own understanding is that already there is a more radical reversal of fortunes than this. Philosophically the world has changed and even though we are less convinced of globalization than when we first embraced it, globalization still forms the horizon of our imagination. The popularity of travel is showing no signs of waning even if airline companies are experiencing difficulty in maintaining schedules. Ryanair is itself a contemporary philosophy; democratization and deregulation of something once deemed exotic, namely foreign travel, has helped

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to turn people generally into being their own ‘market’. In most cases hierarchy of seating on board is a thing of the past. Every child in Africa still needs clean water, food and education but I suspect that most children in Africa now want at least one mobile telephone. Instantaneous communication runs in tandem with the availability of travel, for those who can afford it and the aspiration it creates for emulation in those who cannot. A regular pattern of response to this on the part of institutional churches is to seek to change almost everything in order to keep just behind the emerging consumer trends. I say: just behind . . . because caution and control remain characteristic of religions, however contemporary the packaging. But I no longer see the churches perceived as the first port of call for those in need of critical thinking about reality and perception; about confident action and hard choices; about belonging to a community without insisting too much on the small print right from the outset. This sort of openended approach, theologically called grace, still runs counter to the mindset of so much public religion in Northern Ireland. Perhaps what I have said above will seem to be a caricature of what many people still hold dear. Recently the Church of Ireland Hard Gospel Project researched and published a Report for the Church of Ireland Diocese of Clogher on the views and experiences of border Protestants entitled rather tellingly: ‘Whatever you say, say nothing’. The title itself heralds foreboding. The research is qualitative rather than quantitative and relates particularly to a specific geographical area of Ireland, incorporating most of counties Fermanagh and Monaghan along with smaller areas of counties Tyrone, Donegal, Leitrim and Cavan. While fully accepting that it is dangerous to widen the scope of generalizations beyond their source and context, a number of things point to an attitude which seems to be more than occasional. The church is described rather starkly as both a duvet and a flag, the former to give comfort and the latter to give identity. Although this insight comes from research in a border area, it pinpoints something about an old order which is passing away. It stands uneasily beside a new situation which needs

Reconnecting the Rhetoric and Reality of Forgiving and Remembering 43 to be addressed and which is articulated as follows in the Report: ‘Open and honest communication with friends and adversaries alike about difficult and contentious issues is widely acknowledged as an essential ingredient in such processes. The task facing the church, and indeed wider society, is arguably less about solving or fixing whatever the immediate issues might be and more about building a new preparedness and capacity to embrace such contentious issues in an on-going way. Perhaps the real challenge is to learn to walk towards rather than away from conflict and genuinely to see it as an opportunity rather than a threat’. To my mind it nails the issue and goes on to suggest in equally uncompromising terms: ‘The alternative is arguably a future built on continued avoidance and dishonesty’(Gardiner 2008). For religion automatically to offer itself, in its own unreconstructed terms, as part of the solution will no longer suffice. The contemporary world has become harder to convince than that! And this is largely because of the paradigm shift in terms of individual choice and individual control – along with the disaffection caused by alienation from a world defined institutionally. The triumph of the individual – visually, iconically, in terms of celebrity – along with communication and second-hand experience accessed virtually has resulted in a different understanding of personal authority and a cynicism about institutionalized power. This is where Christian churches are in serious difficulties. Many are resisting even the recognition of the difficulty. The world in which we live is ever self-renovating. This is where a particular danger lies for the churches. Because of the motive force of globalization and of choice, this world is increasingly valuefree and responsibility-lite. My personal authority is, in this climate, every bit as authoritative as is yours. Institutions, in this climate, take on the mantle of being both stagnant and repressive, and increasingly irrelevant and alienating. My contention is that too much genuinely theological language has been hijacked by the ‘two traditions’ for internal religious use. In Northern Ireland the word ‘religious’ is too often shorthand for ‘denominational’ and ‘sectarian’. Too much of this religious language

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has been sectionalized and by extension, whatever contribution theology now wishes to make to the public debate is compromized. Readers will recall the ‘test-case’ in England in February 2008 relating to another world faith, Islam. In a lecture given in The Middle Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested that in certain circumstances and situations Islamic community leaders might adjudicate by Sharia law particularly where cultural and ethnic sensitivities might play a major part. The reaction, however predictable, is interesting to analyze; outrage at the application of a foreign religious system of law in a western secular state, now nominally Christian but with an established church; a complete caricature of Sharia law without having recourse to the contexts and conditions in which it would be applied and why; the whole background of 9/11 and 7/7 which had already characterized Islam itself as anti-Western, terrorist-based and terrorist-driven. The findings of the Hard Gospel Report for Clogher Diocese: ‘Whatever you say, say nothing’ is as much a mechanism of defence as it is anything else. Within its painful limitations, it is an expression of honestly held opinions, hopeful aspirations and half-remembered prejudices. I suggest that this is where many of us are at any given time; that it is not confined to the geographical area after which the Report is named; that, though an aphorism of homespun wisdom, the title gives voice to a combination of decent frustration and lack of confidence on the part, at least, of the Protestant community which has taken the plunge in uncovering its identity. Forgiving and remembering: like all theological language with varied theological nuance, these words have both literal and metaphorical meaning. Another such word, loaded and charged in both literal and metaphorical directions, is: ‘sacrifice’. My own experience in Northern Ireland is that very often people feel that a self-evident meaning is growing away from them and therefore leaving them behind, when it is explored as metaphor. The strong tradition of biblical literalism in Northern Ireland aids and abets the instinct for literal meaning in relation to anything which matters. This has significant strengths along with obvious weaknesses. As

Reconnecting the Rhetoric and Reality of Forgiving and Remembering 45 religion becomes more privatized, owing as much as anything to its repeated incapacity to respond to hard questions coming from secular society, and as democracy as a process with real local expectations grapples with self-confidence, religion itself is searching for an identity. In many quarters that identity is becoming both more literally-minded and self-protective. Any objective exploration of forgiving and remembering – were it possible – requires a willingness on the part of churches to search together for the priority and the urgency of what unites over the refinement and particularity of what divides. Such a sustained quest will be something new for all the churches in Ireland, whether large or small, established or experimental. The post-modern temptation is to maximize one’s own sense of importance in what is seen as a marketplace without limits. Surreptitiously the world of ideas has been invaded and overtaken by the economic imperative. The proponents of this will say that such openness has led to a great amount of creativity. Those with longer memories and a deeper sense of tradition, with its responsibilities and its repetitiveness, ask real questions about the interconnectedness of all the novelty of today with what has gone before. Only the exceptional can hold together post-modern opportunism with critical appraisal of the tradition. The tradition which has always been the bedrock of the church’s response to changing situations and demands has in the popular mind become a place to which more and more people go for images. Such images are used without historical perspective and often to underwrite or to illustrate marketable products or newlyentrenched positions. Once again, this leaves any argument from tradition weakened because it is seen ultimately as without purchase in a modern context. Strangely enough, both forgiving and remembering bring us – theologically – not to ourselves, in the first instance, but to the heart of the being of God. Forgiveness speaks in a primary and fundamental sense of the action of God to remove human sin (literally aphiemi means: throw away). Like any other attribute or characteristic of the being of God which is expressed metaphorically in

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religious language, the freedom of operation of God as God cannot be controlled or confined by human thirst for self-justification. The circle of self-satisfaction is hereby broken and, whether it suits us or not, we are taken beyond what we consider to be fair and reasonable. Churches have tended, without perhaps even realizing it, to shape God in their own image and likeness. This means that churches are fast becoming brokers rather than bearers of salvation. Repentance which is intrinsic to lived dynamic forgiveness is itself a work of God and an expression of God’s loving power. Repentance is therefore a response. It recognizes God’s forgiving presence in a human individual working through a potent combination of faith and courage. Much of Christianity rightly centres on the person of Jesus Christ. In fact it has little option but to do so. Hence historical veracity is of vital importance to active discipleship. But here again there is a metaphorical as well as a literal reality. The person of Jesus Christ was a carrier of this dynamic relationship in his life and death, particularly through a medium largely forgotten in the institutionalized churches of today, namely the Kingdom of God. In St Matthew 26.28 and 1 Corinthians 15.8 one of the stated purposes of the death of Christ was this kingdom of forgiveness. St Matthew 12.31 which parallels this specifically identifies one particular sin which makes the receiving of forgiveness impossible – the sin against the Holy Spirit. This is ascribing and, indeed, handing over to Beelzebub the work of the Spirit of God. In other words only those who actively transfer allegiance to the anti-Christ logically and theologically wilfully set themselves outside the cluster of forgiveness, repentance and restoration. Popular theology is not debased theology. Rather it is practical theology which has a confidence to live outside the ecclesiastical packaging within which the like-minded are kept pure and undefiled from the very place which, as Holy Scripture repeatedly tells us, Christ came to save – the world. The selectivity is as striking as is the circularity. St Paul, by bringing together forgiveness and justice (a much more useful term, in my opinion, than justification, see Galatians 3.28), points clearly towards the continuing action of

Reconnecting the Rhetoric and Reality of Forgiving and Remembering 47 forgiveness in the life of the church as an outworking of the firmly divine character and origin of forgiveness in the person and body of Christ. The initiative remains with God, and the church historically is a vehicle of divine forgiveness, primarily through baptism and Holy Communion but also in many other ways. Whatever the church tradition to which any of us belongs, the importance of both baptism and Eucharist in relation to remembering/anamnesis is hard to underestimate. In my own Church of Ireland tradition, baptism provides public incorporation into the church of God. Participation in Holy Communion sustains full engagement in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Behind both of these lie the imperative to do these things given by Jesus along with the testimony of Holy Scripture. One of the things that always fascinates me is the changing timeframe which is clear in the New Testament itself. With fading hopes of the Second Coming/parousia, as something to happen within the lifetime of those who personally knew the Lord Jesus, a number of accommodations needed to be made. First, people were going to die before the promised return of the Risen Ascended Lord. Secondly, there would continue to be sinners. The emerging church would be full of them and would be constituted by them. Hence methods of confessing and forgiving needed to be established both for the individual and for the community. Although the Reformation brought a tremendous concern about how any church handles this in relation to the individual and the community, the expectation remains that living, enacted reconciliation requires a mechanism for presenting such a possibility as something realizable. It further has a direct perspective on society, whether that society defines itself in religious and theological categories or not. There is need of a politics of forgiveness so that societal implications of forgiveness will be felt. Can the church bring into a potentially hostile society the principle and practice of forgiveness? Anyone who retains even a nodding acquaintance with the life of the churches realizes that among the irreconcilable differences in the institutions of the church, local and international, is that of

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the Eucharist. Many Protestants feel that at the Reformation the battle was fought and won to enable the people to receive both bread and wine every time there is a celebration. For them this is an important distinction as the widespread perception (although it is not a stipulation) is that Roman Catholics receive in one kind only. Interestingly during the 2009 swine-flu pandemic when the bishops of the Church of Ireland issued guidelines about Holy Communion, there was really no support for any suggestion that for members of the Church of Ireland to receive Holy Communion in one kind, that is bread, was a valid participation in Holy Communion, precisely because of this deep memory and residual scruple. People overwhelmingly preferred to take the risk with the shared chalice and did not wish to move towards the individual cups of Calvinism or Lutheranism. Much of the internal anxiety of Christian denominations concentrates on public expressions of theological arguments which have been defined and redefined by centuries of divergence and division. Some of it is doctrinal, some political. Despite being a mystery to those on the outside and many on the inside, such conviction runs deep long after the arguments are forgotten. In this context it is important to realize that religion is much more important than theology in Northern Ireland. With religion there is a whole cluster of readily accessible issues which militate towards definition and expression of identity. At one end of the spectrum, this results in generous confidence; at the other, in rank prejudice. In Northern Ireland we see too little of the former and too much of the latter. To define religion in terms of identity-giving is somewhat to let it off the hook. The denominations in Northern Ireland express and voice the tension between what it is to be a member of an international family of churches against being a local expression. Those who wish to retain, develop and expand such international links have an uphill task in the refined parochialism and specialized exclusion which defines Christianity in Northern Ireland: the Presbyterian Church’s withdrawal on various levels from World Council of Churches, British Council of Churches (now Churches Together in Britain and

Reconnecting the Rhetoric and Reality of Forgiving and Remembering 49 Ireland), Irish Council of Churches; the absence of both Presbyterian Church in Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church from ICC to this day, and the parallel structure of Irish Inter-Church Meeting to enable both to be involved without either being involved in ICC; the refusal of the Irish Baptist Union to be signatories of the (now archival) New English Bible; the anxiety felt in many parts of the Church of Ireland and – for quite different reasons – about its membership of the Anglican Communion over both the consecration of V. Gene Robinson to the episcopate in a quite other Province (The Episcopal Church) in 2003 and the involvement of members of the Church of Ireland in Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON) in 2008. Christianity in Northern Ireland finds itself again and again willing, if not eager, to ‘go it alone’ in relation to other parts of the international families of Christianity. To my knowledge there was no real thirst on the part of the Church of Ireland during the period of The Troubles to seek out comparative experience in Sri Lanka, South Africa or the Korean Anglican Province in addressing issues of societal collapse, violence and difference. Somehow Irish Christianities continue and succeed to be uniquely unique. Eucharist, Holy Communion, Mass, The Supper of the Lord – all of these terms which might seem interchangeable to an outsider are highly contested. Memory is integral to understanding eucharistic action. The memory is that of the saving work of Jesus Christ as divine-and-human Son of God for the world as the definitive initiative of God in solidarity with humanity. Creation and re-creation combine in the establishment of a new community of believers at the foot of the cross of Calvary. This community has grown and developed into the Christian Church worldwide. The cosmic importance and impact of Christ-focused redemption is also part of this system of belief. Bible, Eucharist and Ministry remain hotly contested in the institutions which have come out of this belief because of the individualized refinements which have brought into being the churches as we know them. For some, such memory is a real bodily re-enactment of the death of Jesus Christ in body and blood; for others it is a symbolic expression of that death; for

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others still it carries the weight of expressing the transformative and continuing work of Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit today. These are staggering truth-claims. Whatever the integrity and commitment of those on the inside of churches, their expectation to transform the world leaves the same churches in an ever more difficult place. With regular church attendance fallen substantially in the forty years of the Troubles, it no longer looks as if it is stacking up. In a postmodern world people are suspicious of a generalized meta-narrative, particularly one which, throughout the supremacy of Christendom, now well and truly gone, has for sixteen centuries expected the world to want to come to it. The anthropology of salvation as understood within Christianity is somewhat unexplored. A disunited witness on the part of Christianity actively alienates those on the outside and increasingly those on the inside. Institutional decision-makers will be the last to see this or to act upon it. The inability proactively to respect the memory of one tradition by another lies at the heart of the fragmentation of credibility in those institutions as exponents of the one religion. And this is not even to question or address the attitude of any of them to other world faiths in Ireland or elsewhere. The rhetoric of the clash of civilizations has suited all too well those who worry about empty pews and shrivelled numbers within. Three scriptural texts are pivotal for the church to present to the world a readily understandable version of what it does. They are St Luke 4 – radical fulfilment, St Matthew 25 – care and neglect of the needy and Philippians 2 – self-emptying in imitation of Christ. I have selected these for a particular reason in terms of memory and reconciliation. All of them root us in the person of Jesus Christ – divine and human – and in the imperative of the Kingdom of God, alive and at work in the world. Annually the season of Advent reminds Christians of the importance of being prepared for the Judgement of Christ. Perhaps understandably many Christians today shy away from the language of Christly judgement but it is deeply embedded in our tradition and has strong ethical implications in living, shared Christianity. Memory and reconciliation when used loosely imply wistful looking back and the restoration or reinstatement of a golden age.

Reconnecting the Rhetoric and Reality of Forgiving and Remembering 51 The theological anamnesis at the heart of forgiving and remembering offers something much more radical and perhaps more honest, namely the recognition that memory involves suffering and death (that of Jesus Christ primarily, but also the involvement in that of all Christian people for the world). Such memory involves anticipation of a second coming and in the present there is an urgent call to ethical behaviour every bit as much as to liturgical practice. Secondly, the danger in a lazy use of the word reconciliation is that there is in the past something better that simply needs to be warmed up in the microwave. The real question to be asked of exponents of reconciliation is: Was there any real relationship of understanding and respect in the first place? My continuing question of the churches in Ireland is this: Even if eucharistic anamnesis is foreign to the way in which you do your Christianity, are there not points at which you need to discover again and again proactive memory which creates a future where the person of Christ is dynamically present? Experience shows that many of the newer churches are freer and less encumbered in doing this than are the historically well-established and institutionalized churches. I fully realize that for vast swathes of Christianity in Northern Ireland, the basis of my exposition of anamnesis is very different from theirs. Within the Church of Ireland, radical transformation does not lie at the heart of everyone’s understanding of eucharistic observation. Zwinglian memorialism is closer to where many people are. They see bread and they see wine and that is what they continue to see. In my own tradition, however, there is no tyranny of thought or imposition of understanding. Our guiding principle remains that of Queen Elizabeth I: Christ was the Word that spake it He took the bread and brake it And what his word doth make it That I believe and take it.

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My suggestion is that in whatever form it expresses itself, a threefold core of anamnesis is essential to Christianity: O O O

representing the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ anticipating his Second Coming re-presenting both of these in religious observance and ethical action.

The alternative is that churches and denominations resist the unitive reality of the Word of God as both speech and action (saying something and doing something about it) in God’s name and in God’s urgency. Religion and religious practice do not exist in a vacuum. Churches are no longer seen by many as foci of justice in any instinctive way. The new theology on the street is environmentalism, outrage at ecological vandalism and climate change. The capacity which Western society has to control and to deaden time through technology, and the assumptions which it brings, has resulted in widespread apathy and fatalism to which the eschatological urgency of anamnesis is entirely foreign. Too much of Northern Ireland religious society works on the basis of ‘anti-definition’: I am not like them, I am like those who are like myself. This deprives the whole society of a range of experiences and engagements critical in access to God’s kingdom and able to open to public scrutiny the truth claims of Christianity. It is a strategic missing part of the jigsaw. In a less damaged society, this sense of urgency would simply be called mission. The sufficiency of the Bible is seen to have a wide currency in Protestantism. The sufficiency of liturgy is seen to have a wide currency in Roman Catholicism. These are in a sense caricatures with broad brush-strokes but are the way in which ‘both sides’ see one another. Scripture repeatedly tells us that God really is a God of and in history for both Judaism and Christianity; for the latter this happens supremely through the incarnation. Dynamic memory is required in reading Scripture just as it is required in performing liturgy. Neither aspect of worship can dispense with the remembering,

Reconnecting the Rhetoric and Reality of Forgiving and Remembering 53 in the context of salvation history, as a history of suffering that cries out for justice. And perhaps this is where religion really does hurt in Northern Ireland, because justice itself has become denominationalized. I remember vividly attending a seminar five years after the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and hearing someone say: ‘I do not understand your Northern Ireland society. I do not belong to either of your ‘two communities’. I am a French Algerian atheist – and I live here too’. Northern Ireland, not uniquely but specifically to its context, has suffered repeatedly and successively from the slanted rewriting and popular distortion of history. Issues of justice and injustice have become subjectivized either by individual and familial suffering and death or by institutional propaganda. The rhetoric of justice and injustice – heightened by political ideology and religious categories – abounds. However there seems little urgency in unlocking or disclosing the triad of memory/anamnesis of which I spoke earlier: O O O

what has happened – remembering what will happen – eschatology what we do – worship and ethics.

With all the religious backdrop, so long as this obtains, the society will simply tread water while others swim and ski! The second component eschatology – is the lifeblood of eucharistic life; it is what breaks through the repetitiveness of time as we know it because it anticipates and brings within the scope of our imagination the promised future justice of the oppressed, the hope of the hopeless and the success of the failed. It creates a new community of those cast to one side in the ebb and flow of life as we live it. This, of course, connects Christians vividly with the first component, the memory of the suffering of Jesus Christ. In these ways, what we do connects future and past. And what we fail to do keeps them apart for us and for those with whom we share a society or a community. So we return to the contemporary interest in and passion for ecology. Eschatological Christianity asks questions not about how effective

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the church is but about how much time humanity and the earth as we know it have left. The significant absence of justice issues within the churches is thus a scandal of unavoidable significance akin to the negative carelessness in the human sphere of Mattthew 25. In many ways, Judgement has already happened and is happening all the time and we are doing very little about it. Within this new, dynamic framework for Christianity, the remembering of the sacrifices of history can be a stimulus for acts of political solidarity in the present. But acts of political solidarity are hard to come by in Northern Ireland. It is at this point that we are faced with a thundering silence on the part of contemporary political leadership in Northern Ireland. It is at this point that the proper quest for healing through remembering is stymied at every turn by the absence of a readily discernible political will to envision and equip a future which matters. Perhaps it is because of generations of passive dependence economically and psychologically on a government in London now largely distrusted for different reasons by ‘both communities’ that this is the case. Whatever the reason, it is tailor-made for political alienation and disengagement and is a stimulus to emigration for any whose educational opportunities outside Northern Ireland give them scope to leave and to stay away. The danger in Northern Ireland is that we see ourselves as special because we are the people of Northern Ireland. Often this is far from helpful since it can create a very particular form of victimhood which, however unconsciously, excludes us from a life shared with others who are different. This has left us today in tremendous difficulty in holding together a recognition of common suffering with the parallel quest for a hierarchy of victims – and we seem to have no mechanism for resolving this. It is not so much a tension as a road-block. The key difference in a remembering of Jesus Christ based on anamnesis is that we let this memory form our thoughts and actions for the present and the future. In this way the future calls us now into itself and we are not time-bound in the past. This to my mind is the sort of leap of trust which Northern Ireland society needs to make

Reconnecting the Rhetoric and Reality of Forgiving and Remembering 55 and is still too fearful to make. This leap of trust will be facilitated by a society where religious observance and consciousness is still high by European standards, which grapples with anamnesis either biblically or eucharistically – or indeed both. Let us ourselves remember that for the people of Israel memory became more important as their experience of living history disintegrated around them, and was particularly dynamic to them when they were in exile. Such corporate need for remembering has made its way powerfully into the Christian tradition whereby members of the body corporate of Christ are ethical subjects in their societies, however repressive the regime, and therefore have ethical opportunity and responsibility to take into their societies the dynamic transformation of mature anamnesis. The tension between past and future is held in the memory of the present. Wherever anyone stands in the spectrum of eucharistic theology per se, memory is central to what happens. Even though this memory is descriptive of an historical event in the life of Jesus and is absolutely unrepeatable in any form, it has a continuing dynamic and transformative impact on life as we live it: Christian people cannot sidestep the impact of memory on the understanding of the church’s appropriation of the person of Christ for self-definition and therefore for what the church calls mission. There is no doubt that individual people have made significant and strategic contributions to forgiving and remembering, whether high-profile or out of the limelight. As people worldwide marvelled at the cynical contrivance of the Enniskillen bomb of 1987, so they marvelled at the forgiveness of Gordon Wilson. On the Sunday immediately following, he went to St Michael’s Roman Catholic Church, right beside his own Darling Street Methodist Church in Enniskillen, having lost his daughter Marie in the bomb. He did so for at least two reasons: to distance himself from any shadow of laying blame at the feet of the Roman Catholic people per se of Enniskillen and to express his forgiveness of those who had planted the bomb, whoever they were. The death of his daughter was, of course, something he would always remember – so he somehow

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held together the complicated cluster of ideas we have been considering. The meta-narrative of Christianity gives shape and direction to the idea that remembering envisions the future. It does not simply rehearse the past. This dynamic understanding of memory is at the core of theological anamnesis in that it transforms recollection into re-creation. Deep within Christianity is the ambiguity of the already but not yet, the kingdom of God which has current form and still is formative of the future here and now. This is eschatology and it lies at the heart of how eucharist turns the death of Jesus Christ to future event. In no sense need this be antithetical to understanding atonement as pivotal to divine action and human response; in fact it requires both working together. The reconciliation which lies deep within such atonement is about repositioning for the future those whom life has separated, driven apart and destroyed. Reconciliation, atonement and memory respect events as what happens in time; they do not pretend that nothing has happened or that what happened was not intentional; however, they manifest the God-given and God-driven imperative to transcend and transform the past in the present for the sake of the future. My point is not so much that theological argumentation can take a society where it does not want to go. Rather it is that the public voice of theology is not heard sufficiently in the churches. Apart from Poland, Irish society still claims one of the largest churchgoing populations in Europe. Admittedly this is showing marked and rapid decline, but the churches are insufficiently confident in offering into the public forum and debate a theological trajectory on reality which stems from what the churches hold dearest. The difficulty is that a potential combined witness, harmonious if perforce discordant, is impeded by the refinements of history which have created separate religious tower blocks out of an initial response to the saving work of Jesus Christ. Thus my contention is that once religion substantially loses contact with comprehensively critical theology, the outcome is by definition sectarian, as literally a part cut off from the whole, purporting to provide more

Reconnecting the Rhetoric and Reality of Forgiving and Remembering 57 than it can with credibility sustain – precisely because it is partial. Public religion has for too long been indulged in Ireland. Both for its good health and for the critical contribution it can make in radicalizing society, this needs to be turned around by the churches together. Throughout the period of the Troubles, the churches were searching for a role while a role was being imposed on them particularly by their own adherents. The difficulties occasioned by such a double bind are plain to see, and the temptation to continue to act as chaplain to insiders is a constant threat. Chaplaincy properly understood and appropriately offered is a good thing. It is a ministry on the edge, it lives dangerously with those who are difficult and with those who are in difficulty. Chaplaincy of insiders is quite different, as it finds increasingly that it is disempowered precisely at the critical edge where it needs to say difficult things in order to be truthful. And so it becomes comforting while ceasing to be critical, and walking with people to and in places where they have not gone before and would not go, had things been simpler. The same, sadly, can and does happen to mission. Apostolicity lies again at the heart of Christianity but the laziness which comes from generational institutionalization, along with the fearfulness of being radical, militate against a willingness to be sent (apostello) to where there are no securities and the future is, from our present perspective, impossible to chart. And so mission can all too easily become more about equipping those on the inside to be better versions of themselves. It closes down the traffic and two-way challenge of what it is to have outsiders coming inside, with a sense of joyful entitlement to be there and with the quite different perspectives which embracing someone or something for the first time are able to bring. Almost without realizing it, churches become places which exclude diversity and police difference – and it does not in fact matter whether, in contemporary parlance, they see themselves as liberal or conservative because each politically self-conscious position in the church regards itself as orthodoxy.

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Forgiving and Remembering in Northern Ireland Churches generally have failed to realize three things

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A divided Christian witness convinces only those who are already convinced by division. The information revolution has resulted in people generally having a wide-open access to information about religion as about everything else. This is as significant as was the invention of the printing press in its day and the production of literature for general consumption in the vernacular. People are largely free to interpret this information as they please. The churches have not sought to engage together with this new audience and new media in such a way as to interpret critically the information now available in terms of ‘value added’ to life whether in heaven or on earth. Arguments for Christianity from within the churches remain too specialized, too self-protective, too disconnected in terms of words and actions. Unity, interpretation, connectivity – in a world which changes all the time and where the myth of benign globalization has been shattered emotionally by 9/11 and there is a recognition that evil can far too frequently outrun evil when it comes to communication – are essential components in building a society which is self-critical and self-confident at the same time.

Applying any of these insights and impressions to Northern Ireland requires both sensitivity and strong-mindedness. My own experience is as someone who is a member of that society. However my own experience bears no resemblance to or comparison with the experiences – sustained or sporadic – of those affected most directly by the Troubles. My current experience, living now once again among people whom I have known all my life, is that too little radical thinking has been enabled to happen or issued in new perspectives during the ten years of ‘peace’. This, of course, has a ready explanation in terms of the traumatic impact of societal intimidation, violence and the dismantling of trust. As an enclosed society which in any event lived on its tensions long before the most recent

Reconnecting the Rhetoric and Reality of Forgiving and Remembering 59 Troubles, almost every decade since partition has had an accumulation of sorrow and mutual irrelevance. The communities North and South would probably never have begun to deal with this had it not been for the sustained Troubles kicked off by the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1966. The intimacy and claustrophobia of Northern Ireland society has slowly begun to be recognized. This has exacerbated the experience of the Troubles as relentless, and makes the combination of forgiving and remembering so difficult for many who want to get there. Northern Ireland remains a culture where church-belonging still has a greater currency than you might imagine. It is, however, anyone’s guess how long this will last or how comatose it is at this stage. Increasingly there seem to be more and more irresolvable issues and in a media-driven world these are more and more public. Education is, as I write, a battleground of both ideology and denomination, while behind the battleground there lies the genuine concern that a deeply secularizing ethos will achieve little more than to continue to divide society while progressively depriving its primary and secondary education of any religious content. ‘Forgiving and remembering’ asks also of Northern Ireland society that it find within itself something of itself to make it possible to be loyal to itself. There are currently too many foci of loyalty which contradict one another. The fledgling democracy which is devolved government presents this painfully on a daily basis issue by issue. The year 2005 promised a publicly visible shared future. Not only has that vision largely faded as people have settled into a benign sectarianism, but now the money has dried up. There is need nonetheless for a shared reality and a commitment to ‘make a go’ of Northern Ireland as a sharing society. Samuel Beckett described Waiting for Godot as a play in which ‘nothing happens twice’. In many ways this is more frightening as it could be a metaphor for the whole of Northern Ireland. The possibilities for religious encounter, not only across denominations but across world faiths in light of the history of destructive outcomes of definitions based on divisiveness, have yet to happen in Northern

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Ireland. Religion too readily finds itself confined within its own construct of what is real. It needs regularly and repeatedly to be rethought theologically both from the bottom and the top. ‘Forgiving and remembering’ held together in human and theological tension can reconnect rhetoric and reality. For this to happen, the various factors and factions in Northern Ireland today will need to learn, as have others countless times worldwide, that not everyone can have her or his own custom-built life all the time.

References Gardiner, D. (2008) ‘Whatever you say, say nothing’ A report on the views and experiences of Border Protestants for the Church of Ireland Diocese of Clogher 2008. The Report was commissioned by the Hard Gospel Project and funded by The Department of Foreign Affairs and The International Fund for Ireland. Morrill, B. T. (2000) Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory, Collegeville/ Minnesota: The Liturgical Press. Richardson, A. and Bowden, J. (Eds.) (1985) A New Dictionary of Christian Theology London: SCM Press. (Reference was made particularly to articles on anamnesis by A. Kavanagh and forgiveness by E. McDonagh) The Book of Common Prayer (2004) Dublin: The Columba Press.

Chapter 3

Home Before Dark Ruth Patterson

Forgiving and remembering are huge topics and are ones with which all of us have issues of one sort or another. Most of our questions about and difficulties with forgiveness arise from what we remember, real or imagined. Some of us have difficulty in forgiving others. Some find it almost impossible to forgive themselves. Others have a pretty hard job in accepting the fact that God has forgiven them. Still others have become so at home in their hurt and refusal to forgive that they wouldn’t know who they were without the negative programming that such unforgiveness generates. There are those who have issues of forgiveness with their church community, their work mates, their parents and siblings, as well as with the stranger who planted the bomb or fired the gun or acted as informer. There are whole communities and even nations who need to address questions surrounding remembering and forgiving. There are even those who need to forgive God or, rather, the image they have of God and those things for which they hold him responsible. All of these scenarios and more are to be found wherever human beings inhabit the same piece of earth, and nowhere more so than Ireland, especially during the last forty years. For nearly nineteen years I have worked in Restoration Ministries, an inter-denominational organization devoted to healing and reconciliation, based in south Belfast. One of the on-going, quiet, confidential sides of our work is simply to provide a safe place where people can come to tell their story and be really heard. The vast 61

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majority of those who have crossed our threshold over all the long years have, in one way or another, had difficulties with memories and with forgiveness. Each time someone comes we metaphorically take off our shoes, for the place of their pain is unique and is holy ground. Sometimes we can feel a long way off – a long way off from where we would like to be, from a sense of belonging, from relationships that were important to us, from the dreams we once had, from loving that affirmed us, from someone who said hello to us with all that that greeting implies of dignity and respect. Sometimes we can carry the additional, almost unbearable burden that it was at least partly our own actions that put us into that far country of loss, regret and even shame. If that has not been our experience, I am sure that we know at least one person whose life script is precisely that. What is true for an individual is often also true for a community or even a nation. The underlying drumbeats that prompt the particular actions and reactions can bear a striking similarity to each other, whether manifested in one person or in the collective persona. Jesus told a story once which we have come to know as the parable of the prodigal or lost son. The story is very pertinent to us in Ireland. Actually it’s not about one son, but two. At different times both of them assume centre stage in the narrative, but the principal character, the one who is the constant, weaving it all together, is the third, the father. The young man in the story had everything. He had a good home, loving parents, a well-to-do lifestyle, but he wanted more. He wanted to experience life in the fast lane, on the other side of the tracks, out in the exciting world where the grass was greener, where he would no longer be bored and frustrated by the restraints of home. So he asked his father for whatever his share of the estate would be immediately, instead of having to wait until his father died. The father loved both his sons and would have found it hard to refuse. He certainly did not want to keep his son with him under duress, but it must have been with a heavy and broken heart that he divided his wealth between them, watched his younger one pack up and, a few days later, leave for a far distant land. At first all went well. The boy had plenty of fair-weather friends

Home Before Dark 63 who encouraged him in his wild lifestyle as long as his money lasted. But the money ran out sooner than he thought. As it slipped away through his fingers, so too did his friends melt away, like snow off a ditch. Around about the same time a great famine swept throughout the whole region. He was starving. He didn’t know where to turn until a local farmer hired him to feed his pigs. Desperation leads to desperate measures. To those listening to this story that particular job would have been the absolute pits! By this stage the basic need to stay alive was so great that even the pig swill looked good to him, but no one gave him anything. To date this story is one of loss and waste. Not only did the boy lose his inheritance. He lost any respect he had. He lost his dignity and sense of self-worth. He experienced rejection and extreme deprivation. As far as he knew, he had lost his family, his home, his identity. But it is also a story of redemption. One day, when he was feeling utterly abandoned and despairing, squatting among the pigs, he thought of home. He, as it were, came to his senses. He realised that even the lowest paid workers on his father’s land were well fed. So he made the decision to go back, to face up to what he had done. He would not ask to be received back into sonship, but to take his place among the poorest hired hands. So he set out on the pilgrimage back. Once the decision had been made, there was an urgency within him, a desire to be home before dark – home before the darkness of all that he had done blinded the eyes of the father to who he was; home before the darkness of shame overwhelmed him so that he could no longer find his way. While he was still a long way off, his father saw him. Every day the old man must have spent many hours anxiously scanning the horizon for his beloved son’s return, never giving up hoping, never stopping loving, always believing that one day he would come back. And then, one day, it happened! Away in the distance his father saw him. There is no more beautiful picture in the Bible than this, the picture of God running, arms outstretched, full of love and compassion, ready to embrace the one who has returned. There were no recriminations. In fact, the father hardly listened to the son’s confession. Instead he

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ordered a celebration. He commanded that his son be clothed with robe, ring and sandals – signs of honour, authority and sonship. The beloved had returned home before dark and a great party got under way; no stinginess here, but such generosity of spirit flowing from the forgiving heart of the father. Not everyone, however, has the generosity of spirit to rejoice unselfishly in the restoration of another. In this case it was the older brother who had obeyed all the rules, had done everything that was expected of him. He was absolutely outraged that his brother should have received such a welcome and was consumed by jealousy and resentment. He wanted to hold his brother to account for his waste and rebellion. They might have to live in the same house, but that did not mean that there should be open hospitality extended to him. In fact, according to the elder’s self-righteous assessment, the position of hired hand would have been too generous an offer to his wastrel of a brother. Maybe it was easier for the father to love the repentant prodigal than the self-righteous observer of all the commandments. But the fact of the matter is that both were equally dear to the father’s heart. It was just that the older one had never experienced his need of forgiveness, and therefore could not enter fully into a heart knowledge of how much he was truly loved. Therefore he could not celebrate. The younger could be part of the music and dancing and feasting for he knew what he had been saved from. He literally had been restored to life – lost and found. If one of the meanings underlying forgiveness is to ‘give’ something ‘before’, then in the case of both his sons, the father did just this. He pre-empted the confession of the younger by a tidal wave of welcome. Hospitality was restored a thousandfold to the wayward pilgrim. In the case of the elder, the father excused himself from the party and went outside, out to the land of resentment, anger and bitterness, absorbed the abuse hurled at him, humbled himself before his son and actually begged him to come in. His generous, loving heart reached out to embrace this son with a forgiveness he wasn’t even aware he needed. Even the reassurance of their close relationship, and the fact that all that the father owned was his, did

Home Before Dark 65 little, if anything, to soften the heart of this man. The negativity had probably grown over many years, fed and nurtured by his outlook on life. He had allowed his identity to be shaped by a sense of injustice, grievance and hurt, so much so that they had become his dwelling place. The younger son got home before dark. The welcome lights were on for him. The older never left home, but home for him had become the dark. During the last forty years of conflict and its aftermath in Northern Ireland, two of the issues that, acknowledged or not, have dominated our thinking and the way we have acted or reacted have been those of remembering and forgiving. Sometimes they have been sleeping dragons. At other times the passion they have engendered has threatened to consume us. To remember really means to put flesh again on to the past. Here in Northern Ireland we are experts at that particular exercise, but it’s ‘our’ past, not ‘theirs’. It doesn’t matter to us that our vision may be distorted or that we may be economical with the truth. It is our truth and our memory, and the deeper the historical wound that feeds it, the stronger the memory becomes. When tragedy and trauma hit, as they did so relentlessly, the deep and very real wounds created were infected by untreated poison from the past, often an ancient past. The trouble is that others have their truths that counteract ours so that again and again a state of impasse is reached. We have become uncomfortably comfortable in this place of shadows. Even after nearly twelve years of a rather fragile peace process, many still find it difficult to recognize the other as brother – or sister – let alone to party with each other. It would be simplistic, less than honest and perhaps even dangerous to identify one particular community with the younger son and the other with the elder. In Northern Ireland we have elements, not just of the two but the three persons in the story. Sometimes all three elements are found within each of us as individuals, as well as in our churches and communities. The years of conflict have been a story of loss and waste for everyone, on several occasions reaching the point of almost no return. The underlying resonances of squandering what was most precious are strong in terms of lives lost or traumatized,

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but so too are those of a lack of awareness of the importance of building a relationship with those who share the same bit of earth or of celebrating the diversity that enhances community. The story in more recent years is also one of remembering. Some have memories of the way we were before this present chapter in our history, and home for them would be to return to such a state, one which, thankfully, will never be possible. Others recall only the negative, holding on to the hurts and resentments of having been robbed of so much. Their dwelling place, that which they would call home, is one of bitterness and, sometimes, hatred. For many, remembering simply plunges them into confusion and anguish. They feel lost and perhaps don’t even think that they have anywhere to go back to, no place called home where, before tragedy struck, there was a sense of wellbeing, acceptance and normality. All of these and more form part of the story of the last years and are perfectly understandable, even, some might say, justified – in human terms. There is, or should be, no overt judgement or condemnation of the holy ground of people’s ‘homelessness’. But there is also a different story line, like a golden thread running through all the years and tears, through dashed hopes, broken dreams, shattered vision, through the lack of understanding, the violence, the misplaced aggression and the lust for power. It is a story about hospitality, welcome, generosity of spirit and celebration, all of which are key elements if we are to move forward to a new day in Ireland. In the parable the only one who had grasped the true concept of home was the father. He was the only one who understood it and who embodied the essence of it in his own being. Throughout the land, over all the weary years, there have been those, far more than are recognized, who have kept hope alive, whose lives have woven the golden thread that has kept us from utter despair. Throughout the years I have been privileged to walk with some of them. Some are well known. Many are simply numbered among the quiet in the land. They have never given up scanning the horizon for the first signs of a new day. It has cost them dear but they have grasped what ‘home’ is all about. They know where it is we all need to

Home Before Dark 67 return to, or perhaps arrive at for the first time, that place of shalom and well-being. They have not always been understood but perhaps what is more important is that they have understood the secret of redemptive remembering and have found the key that unlocks the prison of their own or other’s making, thus enabling those who wish to to come home. That key is forgiveness. They have discovered that forgiveness is not a feeling, that if they waited until they felt like letting go of the wrong done to them and allowing the other off the hook be that other an individual, a group or an institution, they could wait for ever and it still wouldn’t happen. They have reached the realization that forgiveness is a decision, an act of will and that it is their choice as to whether or not they enter into the process. For it is a process, a journey that may take a long time but at least they are on their way, no longer locked into the old feelings that had imprisoned them. They know that it has been important for them to embark upon this journey even if the ‘other’ neither knows nor cares about what is being offered, even if the other is dead. It may have been an enormous struggle but they have reached the point of recognizing that the only other option is to live a diminished life where the old wound festers and attracts to itself many other hurts, both real and imagined. In making the decision and embarking upon the journey they reach the point where they are able to remember without the sting. The father in the story understood the process. In fact he began it even before the younger son left home, freely letting him go without any strings attached. How far he had travelled in the process is evidenced by the fact that he didn’t wait for the son to come back to him grovelling. Rather, at the first sighting, a long way off, he ran, love and compassion giving wings to his aged feet, to welcome back the one who had wounded him so deeply. Having said that, it is crucial that people face the reality of what was done to them before embarking on such a journey. Someone has said that only realists can be forgivers. If we jump in too early, it may be that instead of facing the pain, we bury most of it. It does not go away. It simply waits, sometimes for years, to resurface with a far greater intensity and destructiveness. Sometimes we in the Church

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have almost forced people to forgive before they are ready to do so, thus heaping an added burden of guilt at their inability to let go upon already overburdened and anguished souls. The father forgave before he was asked. What of the one who seeks forgiveness? Countless people in our community have gone off in recent years to ‘distant lands’ of wild living. That wildness may have been encouraged by the years of conflict or may simply be the seduction of the times in which we are living. Whatever the cause, the outcome has often meant great pain and loss for others. If – or when – awareness of the consequences of their actions begins to set in, usually when they too see how their life has been diminished, the accompanying remorse, regret or shame can be crippling for them. But awareness is the beginning of repentance. One way of describing repentance is simply to see things differently. When that stage is reached, the desire to get home before dark and to put things right emerges and can become an all-consuming passion. It certainly starts the prodigal on a quest for forgiveness, a quest that requires conviction, perseverance and humility. For the one who embarks on such a journey, there can be no demand for either the creation or restoration of relationship or privileged position. Amnesty is not the same as forgiveness. Even when the former has been legally granted, it does not naturally follow that it will be accompanied by forgiveness. That depends entirely on the good will or the painful decision of a community or an individual. The unconditional love, the compassionate heart of the father in the story, the running to welcome and the call to celebrate challenge us. They are, with one or two notable exceptions, a bridge too far for us. But if our ultimate desire and hope is that, for the sake of generations yet to come and for the sake of the future of this island, everyone gets home before dark, then the decision at least to scan the horizon for the first signs of such a possibility becomes an imperative. One of the things that can really aid in the process of forgiveness is to understand where the other is coming from and even where we ourselves have come from. It does not take away the pain or sense of loss, but if we open the door to what may initially be an unwelcome

Home Before Dark 69 guest, we may gradually find an awareness like the first signs of a cold, grey dawn creeping into our thinking. That awareness can give us the courage to ask questions that we could never before have imagined, questions about where the other was coming from, what their story had been, what made them think and act in the way that they did. Several years ago we facilitated a series of difficult conversations in Restoration House. The people who came were drawn from different communities but had met together regularly at various gatherings and were growing in relationship. It soon became evident that while they knew each other on one level, they had not yet reached that level of understanding. They still wanted to be ‘nice’ and did not want to offend or hurt the other. But what a richness of ‘knowing’ developed when the risk was taken to tread the thin ice of previously unasked or unanswered questions. If we break up the word ‘understand’ it really means to stand under, to go deeper than the preconceived ideas we have had, the set opinions to which we have clung, usually out of a fear of the unknown. It means entering new territory where, at the very least, we recognize the concept of a common humanity, two of whose chief characteristics are brokenness and a deep desire to belong, to have an identity even if it is one that is negative. The father was equipped with such understanding. That, together with his love for his son, readily led to a forgiving and generous spirit. It took a desperate situation for the younger son to reach such a state. In utter abandonment and dereliction, he came to his senses. In other words he began to understand who his father was, what home was really like and, most importantly, to understand himself. For him, that led to him starting out on the journey back home where he would seek forgiveness and a tiny corner where he might recover a spark of the self-respect, dignity and worth that are the right of every human being. Over the years here in Ireland there have been many ventures in attempting to understand one another. This has involved remembering together, engaging in difficult conversations, listening to each other’s stories, all requiring of people the courage and the trust to be open and vulnerable before others, even risking the possibility of

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being hurt again. The understanding of the individual and collective other that has ensued, the fact of difference being something to be welcomed rather than feared that has begun to emerge have indeed been treasures mined from the darkness of bitterness, misunderstanding, bigotry and anguish. But there is still a long way to go in this process and the question repeatedly asserts itself, Will we get home before dark? And, even if we do reach home, will we find there another darkness awaiting us, that of those who refuse to understand at all and who do not see either the offering or receiving of forgiveness as even featuring on their particular radar screen? Such a one was the older brother in the story. He stood in as much need of forgiveness as his younger sibling but he didn’t know it. His offence was more subtle, covered in a mantle of self-righteousness. Nor could he enter into the process of forgiving his brother because he believed his position was entirely justified. For every prodigal in our society there is at least one – probably much more than one – elder brother and there are frightening elements of him in all of us. A lack of self-awareness, a refusal to recognize any inner alienation, an inability to reflect on one’s own personal journey, or even to understand that there is a journey to be made in the first place, all contribute to a rigid stance that refuses to embrace the other and that holds on to a sense of injury as if life itself depended upon it. Self-righteousness can prevent a person from hearing a different drumbeat from the particular one that has controlled them for so long. It can blind a person from seeing that there could be another way of looking at people or situations than the blinkered one that has controlled their thinking. Thus there can be no repentance, no recognition of the collegiality of the feet of clay. Consequently other vital elements that would contribute to the shalom or well-being of the ‘household’, of the community, are also missing. Chief among these are humility, a sense of humour that can laugh with others and sometimes at oneself, a generosity of spirit and an ability to let go and celebrate. The elder brother would have rejoiced if the younger had been turned away. His would not have been a celebration but an act of triumphalism.

Home Before Dark 71 It is significant that the word celebrate denotes not only holding festivities to mark a happy event or anniversary but also performing a religious ceremony. One of the most moving celebrations in which I have been involved was the first Day of Reflection initiated by the Healing Through Remembering Programme. Individuals and groups were encouraged to organise their own particular way and space for doing this. On 1 June 2007 we in Restoration Ministries held a service which we called ‘A New Beginning’. From every tradition and walk of life, we gathered to remember and to give thanks; to remember not only the last thirty-nine years that we had travelled, years that radically changed and shaped not only our own personal lives but the life and the face of this country forever, but also to remember the cost of those years and the lives of many whom we held very dear who were no longer with us. We gathered also to give thanks for the brave new beginning that seemed to have come too late for some but, whatever our personal feelings of pain or regret, has been something that has been given to us, a window of opportunity for us, for our children and our grandchildren. It was an evening of remembering, of letting go, of returning ‘home’, of coming in out of the dark, of celebration. A book referencing all the lives that had been lost lay open in front of a wooden cross. A large single candle burned. At one point people were invited, if and when they felt so moved, to come forward in the silence and light a small candle from the large one in memory of someone important to them who had been lost through the conflict. One by one they came, all sixty of them, men and women, old and young, Protestant and Catholic, grandparents, parents and children. I looked in awe at all the little candles bravely burning, representing hurt and loss, survival, letting go, journeying, restoration, trust and faith. A deep sense of peace pervaded the room and, in the silence of our poignant and positive celebration, I knew that the companies of heaven rejoiced. It takes a real generosity of spirit to rejoice in another’s restoration or good fortune. This the elder brother did not have. Instead he lashed out at the one closest to him, his father. The father epitomised welcome and hospitality. In his house there was room enough for all.

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He could not only accommodate diversity but actually rejoice in it. Both individuals were his sons, his children, and therefore brothers to each other even although they were estranged. We are not told in the story what happened after the big party was over. It is openended. Did the older forgive the younger? Were they reconciled? Reconciliation is not the same as forgiveness. It is so important to engage in the process of forgiveness whether or not reconciliation ensues. It is important for our own health and well-being, both individually and collectively, and for the power that is released in the unseen world all about us when such a step is taken. For in the end, like so much else, forgiveness is a mystery. We cannot plumb its depths and we cannot measure its effects. Unlike forgiveness, reconciliation takes two. For me it’s something to do with giving us back to each other or perhaps recognizing for the first time the gift that we are to one another. It is something about walking together again. It would have been the prayer of the father in the story that his sons would have walked together again. A prerequisite to that happening would have been reciprocal forgiveness. We don’t know if that ever happened. In 2010, twelve years into a still rather fragile peace process, we don’t know what the end of the story will be. It all hinges on where we want to get to. Have we come to our senses? Do we want to get home before dark, and where is home for us? Is it a community where there is room enough for all, a place where we move forward together with all our differences, recognizing that the call is to unity, not uniformity? Are there enough individuals, groups and institutions who will ‘run’ to welcome back those who have overtly caused the devastation and who will also go out, in a spirit of humility to beg the ‘righteous ones’ to come in so that we may celebrate diversity and home-coming together? In the conference room of Restoration House there hangs a large copy of Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son. It is a constant reminder to us of the journeys we are on and the journeys we still have to make, especially in terms of forgiving and remembering. I have just gone to look at it again and, as always, something new

Home Before Dark 73 has struck me. In Rembrandt’s picture there are the three main characters, but there are also others in the shadows. Who are they? Why don’t they step out into the light, say something? What part do they have in the story? And I am reminded of all those who still have a story to tell, those who still need to be heard, those who still have to reach the point of redemptive remembering, those who wish to understand, those who earnestly desire to forgive but cannot – as well as those who resist or simply do not care, one way or the other. I realize afresh what a long way we still have to travel, how much we still have to process. But I realize too with a new clarity and a hope that it is possible. Why? Because of the loving heart of the Father. The concept of God loving us so much that he scans the horizon for our return, so much that he runs to meet us, so much that he goes outside into the dark to beg us to come in is mind blowing to me. Even more so is the fact that he gives his son permission to leave his heavenly home and go to the far country, returning home by the way of the cross and the prayer of forgiveness, in order that humankind, in all its diversity, might get home before dark.


Chapter 4

Forgiving as Command and Process: The Problem of Destination over Journey Timothy Kinahan

When I was about half way through the first draft of this chapter, someone in my Italian-for-beginners class asked me what I was writing about. When I told her, her immediate response was to say ‘Teach me how to forgive!’ Her statement, although given spontaneously and lightly in the course of casual conversation, nonetheless held within it a germ of desperation. Those of us who think and write about these things can go on until we are blue in the face about the relationship between forgiveness and repentance, about how hard it can be to forgive – but on the mechanics of how we can bring ourselves to that point, we are strangely silent. This is not surprising, because the question goes to the heart of the individual personality. The path along which one individual will move to the place of forgiveness is not the path that another will take; and the things that can move one person both intellectually, spiritually and emotionally to that place are as varied as human circumstances and personalities themselves. Forgiveness, ultimately, is an intensely personal journey, just as the offence needing to be forgiven was also an intensely personal thing. We cannot generalize; we can only offer pointers. And pointers should never be confused with reality.

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The history of the twentieth century – perhaps of any century – throws the whole concept of forgiveness into unforgiving focus. The very horror of events forces us to move beyond glib pulpit-calls to forgive our neighbours. The century into which I was born, and which has moulded my thinking, has taught me to be very careful about preaching forgiveness. Careful, but hopefully not shirking the topic entirely, because there is no escaping the fact that Jesus preached it loud and clear in a world every bit as brutal and as unforgiving as our own. Auschwitz, as Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz has put it ‘is the symbol of the systemic evil that combines to haunt all who have survived the Nazi era’ (Müller-Fahrenholz 1997: vii). It is the symbol that speaks of Gulag, of Rwandan genocide, of Darfur, of the killing-fields of Cambodia, of Congo. It is almost as though, today, Auschwitz has become passé and been replaced by these new horrors. It is certain that for the survivors of these genocides and traumas their own particular agony has been, and is, every bit as bad as Auschwitz. Pain and abandonment that are beyond our imagining. Northern Ireland has also produced deep pain. Numerically it may not be in the same league as those I have mentioned above, but for those who were intimate with its most brutal moments the scars are just as deep. Here in Northern Ireland we had the awful opportunity, as a community, to ingest the pain and hurt and anger of those most directly affected and make it, by proxy, our own. We could retreat into a sense of hurt-filled communal solidarity from which it is taking decades to emerge. Even a cursory scene-painting such as this shows that forgiveness is not easy. In extreme situations such as those described above, ‘easy forgiveness’ undervalues the enormity of the crime and the suffering caused. Well-meaning commentators and clergy have no right to talk of forgiveness as though it were the badge without which no-one can call themselves Christian. I remember some years ago, when we in the Faith and Politics Group had written on the subject, that I received a letter from a lady whose husband had been murdered. She felt that we could not understand her situation, and

Forgiving as Command and Process 77 was deeply grateful to her minister for never once broaching the subject. We, from our ivory tower (as she saw it), did not help her in her spiritual and human journey; rather, we made her angry through our perceived aloofness and insensitivity. And she had a point. On first examination forgiveness ought to be a self-evident good, at least from the standpoint of a biblically grounded faith. Yet it is not. Badly managed it can have the opposite effect from that intended and can even be destructive. Calls for forgiveness can, as we have seen, appear to be idealistic and unintentionally callous. They can be seen as exonerating the guilty party, ignoring the demands of justice. They can be seen as out of touch. Sin on this scale, sin as it affects me, it is felt, deserves to be punished: forgiveness is seen to bypass that. The offering of forgiveness is itself fraught with danger. If the ‘forgiven’ party feels he has done no wrong he can find himself having to deal with a whole range of conflicting emotions, from inferiority through anger to guilt. The person offering forgiveness can all too often feel morally superior, and thus come across as rather unpleasant. I remember some years ago seeing a drama by a touring group of young people from the USA, which left me cringing with embarrassment as one of the main protagonists ‘forgave’ the other in the most condescending of manners. It seemed to me to be an object lesson on how not to offer forgiveness. It was a forgiveness that was delivered from on high, and not lived. The way you tell them, as the Northern Ireland born comedian Frank Carson used to say, is all-important. Get it wrong and the problem is compounded; get it right, and liberation ensues. The offering of forgiveness can also be received as an exercise in the wielding of power, rather than the offer of liberation. Perhaps the most telling historical example of this misuse of ‘forgiveness’ as an instrument of power was Pope Gregory VII’s ritual humiliation of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa at Canossa in 1077, where the emperor was bound to servitude rather than freed from the consequences of his perceived sin. When it is offered in this sense it becomes a rather unpleasant exercise in accusation, self-justification and attack, as Miroslav Wolf has pointed out (Wolf 1996: 119).

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Another fundamental objection to an over-easy offering of forgiveness is that it all too often ignores the need for contrition. How can I forgive someone who has not said sorry? How can I forgive someone who does not recognize his guilt, let alone want to apologize? How can I forgive when I am not even sure who it is that I am meant to be forgiving? ‘There is no one I can walk across the room to forgive. No one has ever asked for our forgiveness’ (John and Elizabeth McAnespie in the Observer Magazine 13 March 1994). Others confuse forgiveness with forgetfulness, assuming that the act of forgiveness means that in some sense the ‘crime’ is no longer allowed to exist. How, they understandably argue, can you forget the murder of your son, or the rape of your daughter? And since I cannot forget it, ergo I cannot forgive. A false equation, perhaps, but one whose rationale needs to be taken seriously. These objections to forgiveness vary in their integrity, from being part of a genuine and deeply-felt struggle to being a mere excuse for refusing to move on and wallowing in the dubious pleasures of bitterness. Either way, they do need to be met, because they are not without their own internal logic and truth. ‘Forgiveness’, as Martin Luther King has said, ‘does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning’ (King, 1969: 48). Or as he has said elsewhere, it is not an occasional act, but a permanent attitude. Forgiveness, which in biblical thinking involves letting go or leaving behind, opens the door to the renewal of relationships, however tentative; it allows trust to re-establish itself, no matter how slowly. Forgiveness frees both the victim and the oppressor to live more fully. Frighteningly, perhaps, its main benefits are felt more by the forgiving victim than the forgiven guilty party, for forgiveness is in great part the letting go of bitterness and anger, which can be deeply corrosive to the personality and the soul. This, as Müller-Fahrenholz has pointed out, is ‘a complex process of ‘unlocking’ painful bondage, and of ‘mutual liberation’

Forgiving as Command and Process 79 (Müller-Fahrenholz, 1997:1) through which perpetrators can be set free from their guilt and its consequences, and the victims from their hurt and its destructive implications. It is an exchange of pain, through which that pain becomes cathartic, and both parties freed to move forward unencumbered by what has taken place. Both, indeed, can have grown through the process. How, then, can forgiveness be offered without exoneration? How can we both recognize the enormity of the crime and the destructiveness of its effects while at the same time forgiving it? Inevitably, this is for most people a journey. When we are feeling at our most vulnerable and bewildered, usually in the immediate aftermath of the event, it is well-nigh impossible to forgive. Many of those who have done so, or seemed to have done so, have had great problems living up to their public profession of forgiveness. Yes, when they said that they forgave, they said it from the heart. But then, later on, all kinds of negative emotions have inevitably arisen, and it has been problematical reconciling and processing those less than forgiving emotions with the publicly admired profession of forgiveness. The immediate problem is perhaps the reality that anger and the desire for revenge are entirely natural reaction to hurt. When we are attacked, the natural response is to retaliate, or to defend ourselves. To lie down and take it is not the best path to survival – and survival is what we are all programmed for at a very fundamental level. Forgiveness can seem, at least in the heat of the painful moment, a very bad strategy. But is it? Forgiveness can literally be disarming, and cause the perpetrator to ask himself questions. The recognition that my actions – that I intended to be destructive – have failed to destroy can be unnerving to say the least. It can be rather like having burning coals heaped upon our head (Romans 12:20) – burning coals of refinement and purification rather than destruction. Forgiveness, as a voluntary surrender of the right to revenge, can wrong-foot evil. That could suggest that, when offered in such a way, forgiveness is no more than a calculating strategy, a subtle weapon designed to cut the feet from under our persecutors and slanderers, which would

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make it rather unpleasant and manipulative. Yet there is a way in which forgiveness can and should be part of our armoury, rather in the way that St Paul lists a very unconventional suit of armour in his letter to the Ephesians (Ephesians 6:10–18). It can be a weapon that builds up rather than destroys, a tool of construction rather than destruction. Looked at in this light, forgiveness ceases to be a carte-blanche pseudo-justification for evil and becomes something that can force evil to re-examine itself and change. Forgiveness recognizes that there is something to forgive, and can thereby make evil feel uncomfortable. If genuine, it can also release the forgiving party from negative and destructive feelings. The sheer relentless, almost metronomic nature of continual forgiveness – until seventy times seven, as Jesus put it in answer Peter’s question as to how often he should forgive his neighbour (Matthew 18:22) – can have a huge effect. The crime does not disappear, it is not justified, but through forgiveness the barriers it created are lowered and will eventually disappear. Forgiveness, when eventually accepted, becomes a win-win situation for all concerned. Yet all this can be seen as bypassing the demands of justice. In the Northern Irish Protestant mindset justice (and therefore forgiveness) is seen more in legalistic and punitive terms than, perhaps, in the Catholic scheme of things. Thereby many Protestants have real difficulty in offering anything that might be construed as letting the criminal off scot-free. They are unwilling to offer absolution to the unrepentant sinner. The Pharisaical reaction that ‘no-one can forgive sins but God alone’ (Mark 2:7) is never far beneath the surface. This is a fraught and complex area, and there is space here to do little more than acknowledge the problem. In political terms there must always be a place for deterrence and punishment. Social stability to some extent depends on it. Indeed, the meting out of justice through the courts can actually help in the process of recognition and forgiveness: it can bring closure and a sense of security to the victim, and can also confront the perpetrator with the reality of what he has done. It can clear the decks and make a new relationship

Forgiving as Command and Process 81 possible. The judicial process can inject some much-needed reality into the situation. It can enable the victim to move on, while at the same time saying to the perpetrator that, although I can forgive, society still needs to go through the legal process in order that it might fulfil its own norms. The two are not mutually exclusive. Forgiveness is, in part at least, an unusually liberating way of dealing with the claims of justice, not through denial or absolution, but through recognition and letting go (Tombs and Liechty, 2006: 62). As Michael Welker has so aptly put it: ‘every act of forgiveness enthrones justice; it draws attention to its violation precisely by offering to forgo its claims’ (Wolf 1996: 123). Where the ‘forgiven’ party feels that he has done no wrong, we enter into another minefield. Sometimes that perception may even be right but, as is usual in most things, the reality consists of multiple rainbow shades of grey. Even if the ‘guilty’ party is genuinely free of guilt, that is not the perception of the aggrieved party, who may need to be gently moved on to the point where he/she can ‘let go’ of his or her feelings of hurt and/or betrayal. More often, the ‘guilty’ party may bluster a bit, assuming that his behaviour, because it seems normal to him, is always acceptable – as in the newly wed young man who goes out training three nights a week, and spends the weekend drinking with his mates, leaving his wife feeling abandoned and vulnerable and unloved, probably with a young child to boot. Others may feel that explosions of anger are always acceptable as ‘just letting off steam’; whilst others still may feel that dubious business practice is acceptable because they perceive it to be the norm, essential to maintaining the viability of the company and the jobs of the workforce. And in the wider public sphere the terrorist who feels that his actions, being political, are therefore not just excusable but actually noble . . . how can forgiveness be offered in situations such as these, where it will be either brushed aside or scorned? The first thing to recognize in these and other similar situations is that forgiveness is not so much about the guilty party, it is about the person hurt. It is primarily the person who feels hurt who needs to let go of that hurt and its attendant resentment. But if relationships

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are to be restored, each party needs to understand why the other feels the way they do. For the young couple whose marriage is on the rocks because of insensitive behaviour this will be a delicate two way process: the neglected wife will not be able to move on, and the relationship be renewed, unless her young man moves from bachelor behaviour patterns to a married lifestyle. The person who is negatively affected by someone else’s anger needs to be able to explain why such expressions affect her or him in the way they do. The dubious business practices need to be challenged. And the difficult process of talking with terrorists and their sympathizers and supporters is one that we in Northern Ireland are only too aware of. Aware of, but not necessarily any good at! Indeed, there are many who still object to it on principle. Immediately that moves us into dialogue, where we are into listening and relationships, none of which are easy, even at the best of times. Repentance and forgiveness may emerge during the process, but it is difficult (and not necessarily wise) to forgive someone who sees no need to change or apologize for their behaviour. We can let something pass once or twice, but recurrent patterns of negative behaviour are much harder to ignore. It is hard to forgive a person who shows no sign of wanting to change his or her destructive behaviour. It can be extremely hard to initiate this discussion without seeming unpleasantly self-righteous. The act of challenging someone opens us up to being challenged ourselves: indeed, it is a natural human defence mechanism to attack back, often with an unrelated allegation. That in turn can lead to conflict, which makes it unsurprising that most people do not even want to start the process and just let the resentment build up. It takes considerable emotional maturity to be able to handle these fraught situations positively. Even when the ‘guilty’ party recognizes that he has done wrong and says sorry, there are good and bad ways of offering forgiveness. The forgiveness that says ‘I forgive you’ from on high can be demeaning for the recipient and ineffective for the one doing the forgiving. Demeaning for the recipient because it sounds formulaic

Forgiving as Command and Process 83 and impersonal, as if dispensed meaninglessly from on high; ineffective for the one doing the forgiving because it is formulaic and impersonal: forgiveness is a multi-faceted thing that needs to involve a great deal more than words. Forgiveness needs to involve actions, embraces, smiles and a real-time dismantling of barriers. Words alone tantalize with unrealized potential, and therefore disappoint. Words alone can, in an extreme situation such as Canossa, convey the exact opposite of their dictionary meaning. At Canossa – and countless little Canossas throughout the centuries – the penitent was kept waiting outside in the freezing cold for several days, while Pope Gregory rubbed his nose into the glacial snows and made sure that his political power was broken, at least for a while. This was forgiveness that was anything but: it was an exercise in power politics that was designed to ensure that the world was aware of who was now boss. It was a deeply unattractive exercise in political and personal manipulation. It actually had nothing to do with either forgiveness or repentance. There are countless situations in today’s world where Canossas are all too possible. There are many in Northern Ireland who would rather their antagonists suffered ignominious defeat. As they see it, too much has happened for apology, repentance and forgiveness to have any meaning. Hurts run too deep, and forgiveness is seen as a betrayal of all those who suffered and died. These people cannot offer forgiveness, and their reasons are not without integrity. There are others who would like to assert their superiority by making the ‘other side’ squirm as Gregory VII did to Frederick Barbarossa back in 1077. But forgiveness as a political weapon achieves nothing except a deepening of resentment. It only delays the denouement till another day. And forgetting. Some big things are too big to forget, because they have so radically changed our lives and the lives of those around us. The Jewish people cannot forget the Holocaust. Rwandans cannot forget the Genocide. Cambodians cannot forget the Pol Pot years. Palestinians and Israelis cannot forget the indignities that they have heaped upon each other over the years. They are, as I say, too big

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to forget, because their impact was too enormous. Forgetting them would be almost impossible, at least to someone in their right mind. Forgetting them would be in some way to dishonour the victims. Forgetting them would make it completely impossible to learn anything from what has happened. The problem with that line of thought, valid though it is, is that people can all too often stop right there. I cannot forget, they say, therefore I cannot forgive. ‘I cannot forget’ – yes; but ‘I cannot forgive’. That line of thought may be thoroughly understandable, but it does not necessarily follow. Some things, because of their impact, can be extremely hard to forgive, but that does not mean that they should not be forgiven. Neither, perhaps, does it mean that they should be forgiven. Forgetting can also be interpreted as dishonouring the perpetrator, as it deprives him/her of the dignity of having to come to terms with the consequences of his/her own actions. If an event is forgotten, it cannot be forgiven. It was probably not that bad in the first place. But an event that is forgiven – or, more accurately, a person whose actions have been forgiven – is dignified with personhood and made to face up to what he/she has done. It may, then, be possible for the event to fade into the background, only to surface as a painful memory from which much has been learned by all parties. But if it is forgotten, nothing creative can come out of it. To those who survived Auschwitz or Belsen, and saw their tormentors remorseless in the face of all the suffering they caused, it is too easy to say ‘forgive!’ They may be – and in many cases were – able to let go of the trauma and move on. But whether they could ever be expected to have warm and fuzzy feelings for the architects and foot-soldiers of their agony is perhaps too much to ask. Cases such as this bring to the fore the danger of thinking of forgiveness as a purely personal and emotional thing. Of course it can be, and often is. But it is perhaps better thought of as a thing of two parts – the one empirical, and the other emotional. The empirical part of forgiveness is that which says ‘I cannot let what has happened stop me from living, I must learn to let go of it and the

Forgiving as Command and Process 85 resentment that is currently eating me up’. The emotional part of it is that which moves one step further and gets personal. The emotional part of forgiveness is that which works to restore relationships with an individual or a community. This may never actually lead to friendship, but it can and should lead to a breaking down of enmity. To take step one, to be empirical about our forgiveness, is vital if any sort of normality is to be restored for either party. Step two adds depth and permanence. In individual relationships – say, in a marriage or in an office environment – both steps are almost inseparable. In the wider communal context, as in Northern Ireland, the two steps may be years apart. Step one may be the best that we can hope for. Partial forgiveness is better than none. Forgiveness, partial or complete, is an essential ingredient of normal society. It has to be if the stresses and strains of daily living are not to lead to total fracture. Much of the time this just happens, unpremeditated, because it seems to be sensible thing to do. Much of the time it just happens without the label ‘forgiveness’ being consciously or unconsciously applied to it. It is part of the process of human living. It is arguable that it only becomes a problem when we start to think about it too much! John Keats, the poet, once said of poetry, that ‘it if (it) comes not as naturally as leaves do to a tree, it had better not come at all’. The same, perhaps, is true of forgiveness: it needs to be a natural thing that flows from an individual or a group in a spontaneous and unpremeditated manner. That may be true for some people. For some, to be forgiving is just a natural part of their character: it is the way they are. It involves no great agonizing. For others, who lie elsewhere on the Myers-Briggs continuum, forgiveness is the hardest thing in the world. For all, there is a nobility in their actions and attitudes, as Müller-Fahrenholz has pointed out (see also Tombs and Liechty, 2006:32). Amongst the former, those for whom forgiveness seems to flow naturally and without premeditation, I would have to place my own father, who spent much of the Second World War in a Japanese Prisoner of War Camp, first at Changi in Singapore, and then at

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Kanchanaburi on the River Kwai on the infamous Burma Railway. Yet he was never bitter, explaining Japanese behaviour as a cultural phenomenon (and pointing out that they treated their own wounded far worse). He also knew that war could result in inexcusable behaviour on all sides. So it did not seem to him to be worthy of comment that he was on holiday in Japan within four years of the end of the war. But that was just him; it was his approach to life, something that was either in his genes or nurtured in him during his upbringing. Harbouring bitterness seemed daft to him, so he just got on with life and did not allow his POW experiences, formative though they were, to embitter him. And he would have been appalled to be upheld as a paragon of virtue. He was just being himself. Others, of different personality traits, find his reaction to his experiences incomprehensible. While he was happy to buy a Japanese car or hi-fi as early as the 1970s (when they started to become widely available), they could not. Anything Japanese was boycotted on principle. Some remained bitter to their dying day. The danger with the Christian position – a danger, not a logical or necessary consequence – is that those who cannot forgive are stigmatized (or feel themselves to be stigmatized) as somehow being inadequate both in their humanity and in their response to the Gospel. That is both misleading and unfair. The Gospels do state that ‘unless you forgive men their sins, your father will not forgive you’ (Matthew 6:15) and that creates a problem. We can seek to mitigate the impact of what Jesus said by saying that He was challenging us with an (impossible) ideal, or that he was painting an (eschatological) picture of life in the Kingdom of Heaven. But I do not think that those explanations wash. Jesus has challenged us, both those for whom forgiveness is a natural part of living and those for whom it is a monumental struggle, to forgive. For some it will be a challenge too far; for others it will hardly be a challenge at all. It seems to me that for most of us, struggle is part of the response. To re-apply another question put to Jesus in different circumstances: ‘Lord, I want to forgive; forgive my inability to do so!’ (Mark 9:24). Or as Kathleen Gillespie, whose husband was turned into a human

Forgiving as Command and Process 87 bomb by the IRA, has been reported as saying, ‘I pray that God will forgive me for not being able to forgive’. (Kinahan 1998: 108). The words of Terry Anderson, hostage in Lebanon during the 1980s are also appropriate here: I’ll never love him – I’m not Christ. But I’ll try to achieve forgiveness Because I know that in the end, As always, Christ was right (Deane and Rittner 1994:18). To struggle with the dilemma shows that the command to forgive is being taken seriously. As with so many other aspects of Christian living, rights and wrongs are fraught with difficulty, and what on one level seems crystal clear is quickly nuanced into multiple and creative shades of meaning. To be struggling with the issues shows that we are already on the road: the intention to forgive is there, even if the ability to take the final step seems impossible. But maybe, just maybe, the process of struggle, of being annoyed at our seeming inability to forgive, is itself a form of forgiveness, as it is changing both us and the way we relate to the person or people who have injured us. We may, in fact, already have arrived. So, to the girl in my Italian class, whose cri de coeur (to shift languages!) was for me to tell her how to forgive, I can say only this: you are probably more honest than I am. You are struggling with the issues and the practical reality: I am my father’s son and find it perhaps too easy to forgive. Maybe it is I who need to feel things more deeply and to care more fully. Maybe it is you, Diana, who are actually more in touch with reality and will come in the end to a deeper, because more hard-won, level of forgiveness. I do not know. We are both struggling: I with fears that my forgiveness is too facile to be real, coming from an emotional immaturity that feels nothing with any great intensity, and you with fears that it is so hard as to be impossible. Perhaps, as is so often the case, the truth lies somewhere in between and we are both in a very similar place: a place where we can only leave our doubts, inadequacies and fractured relationships

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in the hands of God, and get on with the business of living as best we can.

References Deane, E. and Rittner, C. (eds.) (1994) Beyond Hate: Living with our difference, Derry: YES! Publications. Kinahan, T. (1998) A More Excellent Way, Belfast: Corrymeela Press, Belfast. King, M. L. (1969) Strength to Love, London: Collins/Fontana, London. Müller-Fahrenholz, G. (1997) The Art of Forgiveness, Geneva: WCC Publications. Tombs. D, and Liechty, J. (2006) New Directions in Theology, Aldershot: Ashgate. Wolf, M. (1996) Exclusion and Embrace, Nashville: Abingdon Press.

Chapter 5

Memory and Forgetting in a Contested Space David Stevens

Introduction In Spain the past has been literally been dug up as the mass graves of those murdered by Franco’s execution squads were disinterred. Villages are having to confront painful issues of internecine conflicts because the Left was also involved in atrocities. And all the range of feelings emerge. In one village one woman says: ‘I can never forget what they did. The killers were all from the village. But I can pardon them. If we don’t do that, we end up being as bad as they are’. Another man says that younger generations have found it easier to bury the ancient enmities. Some members of the traditional rightwing families in the village have quietly expressed their regrets about the murder of his grandmother. For others in the village the tales of horror, despite the decades, produce rage1. How do we deal with the past after violent conflict in contested spaces like Northern Ireland? Dealing with the past will stir up a whole range of feelings and emotions. We should not assume there is some tidy, comprehensive process of clearing up the past available to us. There may be no closure available. Instead what we are in the midst of is tragedy, Virgil’s lacrimae rerum (the tears of things). This is an issue of real struggle: to know what is best to do or even what is possible to do. Should we remember? Should we forget? If we ought to remember, how should we remember and in what 89

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form? Do we seek truth? Or justice? Or both? Should we forgive? (Appendix 1). Dealing with the past is wider than meeting the needs of victims alone. The collapse of a society into large-scale violence is the responsibility of many people and affects everyone – the victims being only the most obvious manifestation. Dealing with the past is at the very least making sense of what happened and a recognition that peace alone is not sufficient. There is unfinished business to be attended to. The traumas of the past century have led societies to approach their past in different ways: by repression of memory, or perhaps less psychologically by drawing a thick line under the past (Japan, Ireland after the civil war and until recently France); by confession (Germany, South Africa); and by institutional ritualization of remembrance (Israel). Criminal prosecution has also been used (the former Yugoslavia).

Repression of memory or drawing a line It is worth noting that the whole idea that nations should systemically and publicly face up to their difficult past has been commonplace only since 1945. Before that, forgetting was encouraged. European peace treaties from one between Ludwig of Germany, Charles of France and Lothar of Lotharingia in 853 to the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 solemnly required an act of forgetting between former enemies. The argument has been that ‘humankind cannot bear very much reality’ (T. S. Eliot) and that amnesty and amnesia are the best approach (see Appendix 2). We decreasingly take this approach and promote remembering and seek truth and justice. An important cultural and moral change took place in the aftermath of the Second World War which moved the Western world, in particular, in this direction. It may be that the horrifying intensity of the Holocaust was a major factor in putting the emphasis on remembering and holding to account. Moreover, changes in media technology (e.g. the internet and the mobile phone) also make it less likely that things can be hidden or kept quiet.

Memory and Forgetting in a Contested Space 91 Nevertheless, there is a serious argument here. The American Eastern Orthodox theologian Stanley Harakas makes it very clear that there is a dangerous power of memory which can ‘overpower’ the present, even in people who think they are immune from prejudice: ‘Those who seek to foster reconciliation must understand that they are dealing with deep, ingrained and complex memories, identities, hurts and suffering. Often these memories become so dominant that they provide powerful reasons for maintaining divisions and antipathies long after they have taken place. Taking lives of their own, they colour emotions, attitudes and judgements. I am a first-generation Greek American. The bitterness of four hundred years of second class citizenship of my people under Ottoman rule is etched into my psyche. I remember stories told by my father, rejoicing at the expulsion of Turkish armed forces from his home island of Samos in the Aegean Sea. A few years ago, I was seeking to purchase a home. A real estate dealer showed me a home owned by Turkish Americans, decorated to reflect their homeland. I, who thought I was immune to prejudice, found myself agitated and unwilling to consider the home for purchase!’ (Harakas, 2002: 72). The argument has a further dimension. Managing a peaceful transition requires deals to be made, the pursuit very often of a very murky path of compromise, the prevalence of ambiguity and the loose ends of history to be left dangling. For instance, De Gaulle managed the transition in post-war France by pretending that all French citizens had been outstanding patriots; the sorry history of the Vichy regime and collaboration was swept under the carpet. What happens in such situations is that the issue of blame is avoided or displaced and the emphasis is put on the present and the future. The consequence is that the difficult moral issues in relation to the past are not publicly talked about.

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The Irish historian Tom Garvin speaks about what happened after the Irish Civil War: ‘. . . for a long time after the end of the Civil War, a lot of people didn’t like talking about it, a sort of conspiracy was entered into by a lot of people – to ensure that the bitterness of the Irish Civil War was not transmitted to a younger and possibly more innocent generation’ (Garvin, 1997). The construction of a State, the rebuilding of society, the need to work with former opponents, the compromises that an end to conflict requires, a realization that no-one has clean hands, fear of stirring up new bitterness, fears about the amount of truth that can be borne, the psychological burden on individuals, a wish that future generations do not bear similar anguish: some or all these things may seem to require a prudent silence or a determination to let bygones be bygones. Social forgetting (amnesia) is a refusal to reproduce the violence by talking about it publicly. It may well be that this approach can work. A generation could ‘background’ its hurt, pain and bitterness and carry them to the grave in order to avoid passing them on to a younger generation. The flow of memory may be turned off, the story not passed on. And thus a conflict may be laid to rest; the wounds healed over, reconciliation achieved by time and forgetting. For instance, some countries – France after the Second World War, Spain after Franco, and Poland under its first post-Solidarity government – sought to draw a ‘thick line’ under the past. In Spain it was called the pacto de silencio.2 In Mozambique the conviction was that ‘the less we dwell on the past, the more likely reconciliation will be’ (Hayner, 2001: 87). This solution – ultimately a wager that peace and stability and getting along with people do not require telling the truth about the past – may be available in particular situations, although it should be made clear that particular people and groups have carried the burden of making it work, e.g. victims and their families. In other situations the danger may be that if the demons of the past are not faced the

Memory and Forgetting in a Contested Space 93 pragmatic and necessary agreements made will be precarious, as present politics are plagued by past demons. There will be a constant danger of agreement breaking down and of the past repeating itself.3 Dangerous silences may be created which can break into the bitter voice of mutual recrimination, with the risk of setting off a new round in the cycle of conflict. Thus, the ‘thick line under the past’ approach has its dangers. By repressing the real history of the interethnic carnage between 1941 and 1945 in the former Yugoslavia, the Titoist regime helped to create the conditions for its return. It is extremely unlikely that either repression of memory or drawing a line under the past is going to work in Northern Ireland. What happened is going to come out, either piecemeal or through some structured process. So issues of dealing with the past are not going to go away. Perhaps then they can be dealt with through the criminal justice system?

Justice and criminal prosecution Punishment is the punitive aspect of justice. We cannot do without some form of punitive institutionalised response to wrong-doing, no matter how inadequate and imperfect it may be. Punishment of the perpetrator is a statement that the injured person matters, that justice matters. Through the criminal justice system the perpetrators are called to account and held responsible for their misdeeds. The truth of what happened is hopefully revealed and the victim’s story told. Carla Del Ponte, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague, said this: ‘For me, it started with the victims, continued for the victims and it ends with them. That is what I have to tell myself – if we have established the record of what happened to the victims then we have achieved something . . . At the end of all the trials, if we can say that we have established the fact of what happened, that will have been something’ (the Observer, 2 December 2007).

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The perpetrator pays for what he/she has done and this is reflected in the seriousness of the sentence. Retribution takes place. Punishment is one way respect is shown to the victims (and their families), and punishment helps restore the moral order of society. So giving up on punishment is not to be lightly done but may be required for the sake of peace and sometimes for truth. Criminal prosecution and punishment has been one of the important ways of dealing with the past (e.g. the Nuremburg Trials in Germany and the recent creation of the International Criminal Court). Is it going to have a contribution to make in Northern Ireland? Abandoning it is going to be highly controversial. The reality is that there is unlikely to be a large number of successful prosecutions. The Consultative Group on the Past, which was set up by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to bring proposals on ‘how to best approach the legacy of the events of the past forty years’, concluded that a general amnesty ‘would not be appropriate in the present situation’ (CGP, 2009: 132). It suggested that the proposed Legacy Commission ‘should make recommendations as to how a line might be drawn at the end of its five-year mandate’. How this could be done is another question.

Truth: exploring the past and exploring its injustices It has been argued that it is important for a public account to be rendered of what happened and who was responsible. Wrong-doing and injustice are publicly acknowledged. Building a trustworthy peace, it has been contended, requires honest discourse about the past; thus Truth Commissions have been established in such countries as South Africa, Chile, El Salvador and Guatemala. The aims were knowledge and acknowledgement. Of central importance is that these Truth Commissions were official attempts at truth-telling and truth-learning and they have tended to focus, although not exclusively, on the misdeeds of the State. They arise from, or are part of, a peace process and often incorporate political compromises. Thus in South Africa, amnesty was given to

Memory and Forgetting in a Contested Space 95 perpetrators in return for public disclosure. The perpetrators were held to account but they were not punished if they disclosed what they had done. Signs of contrition or apologies4 were not required, even though they did take place on some occasions. The victims were able publicly to tell their story, and for some of the families of victims there was the possibility of finding out what happened to their loved ones. Through these processes the victims and their families were given respect and the possibility of the restoration of personal and civil dignity. A process such as this may be sufficient for many people to put the past behind them. What was given up, however, was the possibility of punitive justice against the perpetrators. This was not uncontroversial. Some victims or their families were totally opposed to the granting of amnesty and challenged this in court. Truth has many layers. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission worked with four notions of truth: factual or forensic truth; personal or narrative; social or ‘dialogue’; healing and restorative. Factual or forensic truth: legal or scientific information which is factual, accurate and objective and is obtained by impartial procedures. At the individual level this means information about particular events and specific people: what exactly happened to whom, where, when and how. At the societal level, it means recording the context, causes and patterns of violations: an interpretation of facts that should at least erode any denials about the past. Disinformation once accepted as truth must lose its credibility. Personal and narrative truth is the integration of the experience of the traumatic events into a person’s own narrative: it answers the ‘who’ question. Traumatic events shatter personal and community narratives. The quest for personal truth aims at rebuilding these narratives and is a vital part of recovery for many people. Social truth: the truth generated by interaction, discussion, debate or dialogue by the conflicting parties. Conflicting views about the past can be considered and compared. It is the process that matters, rather than the end result. There may be acknowledgement that there was wrongdoing by one or both parties.

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Healing and restorative truth: the narratives that face the past in order to go forward. Truth as a factual record is not enough: interpretation must be directed towards goals of self-healing, reconciliation and reparation. This requires the acknowledgement that everyone’s suffering was real and worthy of attention.5 In these four notions of truth both truth-telling and truth-learning are involved. In truth-learning the truth of what has been done is confronted; in particular, we confront what we have done. But there is a further, deeper dimension to truth-learning: we confront the reality of (our) wrong-doing. Thus the issue of moral judgement has to be faced. For participants in a bitter and protracted conflict issues of truth-learning and the associated moral judgement are extremely difficult to face. Denial is the easier option. Truth needs to be publicly established. This is why the creation of Truth Commissions in some situations has been significant. Judicial inquiries and court cases have been important in particular circumstances. However, the difficulties, particularly in contested spaces such as Northern Ireland, need to be understood. It may be that a public account of what has happened and who was responsible can be rendered although it should not be assumed. However, rendering a public account of what has happened and who was responsible does not free us from conflicting interpretations, clashing memories, etc. about the past, or even disagreement about what the conflict has been about. There can be no ‘official’ interpretation of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Focusing on specific events may bring its own distortions and community anger (Why this event? Why not this one? etc.). ‘Truths’ about the past may continue to be disputed. Nor does truth-telling necessarily lead to healing and reconciliation (certainly not at once). Indeed, truth can be used as a weapon directed against political opponents and as a means to claim superiority in a political struggle. It can open up old wounds and reinforce division. What may be hoped for by rendering a public account is that the range of permissible ‘truths’ may be narrowed and particular lies, silences, fictions, myths and denials are effectively challenged and that versions of the past can be brought

Memory and Forgetting in a Contested Space 97 into conversation. After the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, no-one could honestly deny that apartheid was a monstrous crime. The Consultative Group on the Past takes the modern approach that the past is overcome by remembering, and proposes for Northern Ireland a Legacy Commission which would have the following functions: O

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helping society towards a shared and reconciled future through a process of engagement with community issues from the past; reviewing and investigating historical cases; conducting a process of information recovery; examining the linked or thematic cases emerging from the conflict (e.g. around paramilitary activity or alleged collusion).

The proposed Legacy Commission has many of the features of a Truth Commission.6 Whether the main political parties in Northern Ireland and the two governments have the capacity to find a consensus to move forward on such a recommendation, and whether the main state and non-state actors in the conflict would be seriously prepared to co-operate with such a Commission, remains to be seen. A particular difficulty in Northern Ireland is that there have been multiple sources of violence with the State being a minority source. Virtually all truth-type commissions have operated in a context where the state has been the overwhelming source of violence. Thus the issue of co-operation by non-state actors is of vital importance. Forgiveness: Remembering and Forgetting Forgiveness is not forgetting. Forgiveness requires some recognition of an offence being committed: forgetting is an omission; the offence is no longer important. Forgiveness offers a certain kind of remembering – a ‘good’ remembering not a ‘bad’ remembering. Janet Morris puts it this way:

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Forgiving and Remembering in Northern Ireland ‘Bad or unhealthy remembering is the kind which broods over the wrongs suffered, stoking up hatred of the other and refusing to look at any possible wrong in the self, or any interpretation of events but one’s own. This will harm the ‘rememberer’. However, good remembering is a realistic and healthy way of dealing with the hurts of the past. In this, nothing is denied or frozen into repression; feelings and actions are acknowledged, but choices are made not to be bound by them – to absorb them and move on, open to the possibility of restoration and a new future. Inherent in this is a loss of innocence about human relationships, but also a growing maturity in handling them; a maturity which can face up to pain and acknowledge loss, but also see the possibility of moving through it to deeper and richer friendships with other human beings – and with God’ (Morris, 2002: 7).

There may also be a certain kind of ‘good’ forgetting; forgetting not as amnesia but rather as a release from the full weight and burden of the past. In restored relationships there are some things that no longer matter.

Forgiveness and the political Individuals cannot be compelled to forgive or repent, even if there is a communal disposition towards forgiveness and repentance, a political settlement broadly acceptable to a large majority of people, an end to violence and a move towards societal justice. These may facilitate interpersonal forgiveness and repentance, but they do not guarantee it. Some may not repent and others may not be able to forgive. Not all the ends can be tied up. Thus we have to make room for the unforgiving and the unrepentant. We have to distinguish between interpersonal forgiveness and political forgiveness and also between different categories of victims. Victims can be divided into three groups which correspond to different levels of suffering:

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primary – those who have suffered direct injury; secondary – family and friends of primary victims; tertiary – the wider community, political society itself.

Interpersonal forgiveness belongs much more to the primary and secondary levels, political forgiveness to the tertiary. Political forgiveness is a process within a society involving political action, and makes particular sense in a context of political agreement. The American ethicist Donald Shriver argues that a process of political forgiveness is marked by forbearance from revenge, empathy for opponents, concern for moral truth and a desire for positive co-existence (Shriver, 1995). These are things for which our symbols, language, our politics, our legal, media, religious and academic institutions can create the conditions. Politicians in some situations can representatively express repentance and, in particular, apologize. It is less clear that politicians can representatively forgive. They can encourage forgiveness, by showing mercy, magnanimity and generosity to political opponents. They can pardon criminals. However, the speech act of ‘I forgive (a nation, a community) on behalf of (a nation, a community)’ is much more problematic. Forgiveness in its fullest expression is much more personal. However, individual acts of forgiveness can encourage and empower other people to forgiveness as well, so that communities and nations may change. Gordon Wilson’s response after the Enniskillen bomb had a restraining effect on loyalist paramilitary retaliation. Nothing, however, is guaranteed. The State may pardon wrongdoers. For this to remain a form of forgiveness, some recognition of the offence must remain. Otherwise it is institutional forgetting (see Appendix 2).

Overcoming the past by remembering: discussion The assumptions under-girding such an approach will be illustrated by the Report of the Consultative Group on the Past. The Report talks about ‘remembrance for reconciliation’ and says that reconciliation

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requires ‘a generous acknowledgement of the moral dignity of our common humanity’, ‘a willingness for mutual forgiveness’ and ‘a willingness to address the truth of the matters to which mutual forgiveness is to apply’. For mutual forgiveness to occur ‘both sides must be enabled to reach agreement that there was wrong done on both sides’. This requires ‘genuine conversation to establish, and as far as possible, agree what the truth is . . . between those involved in the conflict’ (CGP 2009: 53). It is this moral scenario which underpins the Report, and it is only such a scenario that would enable a remembering to overcome the past approach to work. What is required is a discovery of how we violate each other’s dignity and fail to engage with each other positively; ‘a stubborn will to understand those others whom history has made our enemies’ (Ricoeur 2006: 447); a discovery of human connectedness; a compassion towards those who have wronged us; acknowledgement and a willingness to own our own fault and admit our guilt before others – ‘It needn’t mean that we think that the enemy was right to do what they did. It just means that we weren’t entirely right in what we did’ (Biggar 2008: 55). We are in the world of forgiveness and repentance. We are on a journey towards the other where we must take into account what we have done to each other. The key issue is whether such a scenario can be made real, or sufficiently real. Otherwise remembrance simply continues the ‘legacy of suspicion, mistrust and hatred’ (CGP 2009: 52). Informationgathering (truth) and holding to account (justice) are not enough for people to live together after major conflict in contested spaces. The Consultative Group on the Past proposes a number of rituals around remembering: O

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Full support should be given by government, the private and voluntary sector, including the churches, to the continuation of the annual Day of Reflection. Each year, on or around the Day of Reflection and Reconciliation, the First Minister and deputy First Minister should together make a keynote address to the Northern Ireland Assembly and invited

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guests, reflecting on the past in a positive way and confirming their commitment to lead Northern Ireland society towards a shared and reconciled future. The Reconciliation Forum should take the lead in implementing an initiative, at the end of the five-year mandate of the Legacy Commission, whereby Northern Ireland, with the support of the two Governments and the Northern Ireland Assembly, should conduct a ceremony remembering the past and all those who suffered during the conflict.

Rituals of remembering are important to remind us of what happened and to point us towards a shared and reconciled future. What we might hope is for a genuine inclusion of tragedy within the polis and an opportunity for suffering and sorrow to be assimilated and absorbed. We get an ekstasis – a stepping out from our ordinary social and political world. This is a genuine cleansing. The danger is that remembrance is used for self-righteousness, selfjustification, point-scoring and what-about-ery. The community miasma around the past continues. Remembrance, if it is to be positive, must include all the tragedy, must be reflective and self-critical.

Remembering: a faith perspective The verb ‘to remember’ occurs no less than 169 times in the Hebrew Scriptures. Why? To quote the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: ‘The Bible tells us with absolute clarity, “You shall not oppress the stranger because you know the heart of the stranger, because you were once strangers in the land of Egypt” [Ex 23.9]. We are commanded to remember so as not to let history repeat itself. If we were once oppressed, we cannot become oppressors. And if we once cried for help and no one came, we cannot stand idly by when others cry for help. Memory is the driving force of morality’ (Sacks, 1995: 84).

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At the heart of Jewish faith is a people who escape – a people who were regarded as outcasts, strangers and scapegoats. And the man chosen by God to lead the Jewish people, Moses, was an outsider, raised as an Egyptian, looking, speaking and sounding like an Egyptian, and had the marks of a scapegoat, of difference – he was a man with a speech defect, a stammer, ‘slow of speech and tongue’. The Passover incorporates this remembrance; it tells the story of a people’s liberation. Bitter herbs are dipped in salt water to remind them of the tears of slavery. Lamb is roasted in remembrance of that first Passover night when lamb’s blood was daubed on the door frame of Jewish homes to ward off a terrible plague of death that would sweep through the darkness, destroying all first-born children. Freedom is toasted with wine. And the story continues to be retold. Through this remembrance the past is made contemporary and the liberating activity of God is experienced again. And it is remembrance that holds the Jewish people together; it creates community. At the heart of Christian faith is a person who did not make victims and yet was put to death as a guilty one. He became an outcast, a stranger and a scapegoat. Jesus is the new Moses, and like Moses he leads his people to freedom. During the Eucharist, Christians recreate a stylized Passover meal with unleavened bread and wine. Instead of roast lamb, Jesus is the lamb of God. In the Eucharist we return to this innocent victim (‘Do this in remembrance of me’, 1 Cor. 11:24). Through this remembrance, once again the past is made contemporary and the liberating activity of God is experienced. The activity of remembrance is paralleled with God’s remission of sin, through the death and rising again of Jesus. As we appropriate the memory we are able to accept responsibility and seek forgiveness. We remember that the sacrament originated ‘in the same night as he was betrayed’ (v23). Those who eat at Jesus’ table are his betrayers, then as now. And he continues to accept us, to allow us into his fellowship. We remember the body broken ‘for us’ who were God’s enemies and the blood shed to establish the ‘new covenant’ – the new relationship of promise and

Memory and Forgetting in a Contested Space 103 commitment – with us who have broken the covenant (1 Cor. 11:24– 25). We also partake in the expectation of a new heaven and a new earth (‘Until the Lord comes, therefore, every time you eat this bread and drink this cup you are proclaiming his death’, 1 Cor. 11:26). Thus memory becomes a ground of hope for a redeemed future. In the remembrance of Jesus the liberating activity of God is experienced and we are offered the possibility of remembering the people we have diminished and rejected and injured – the people we have made victims. We are given back memory. This recovery of memory is the ground of hope, for it offers us, in the presence of Jesus, the possibility of the restoration of relationships. There can be no authentic hope without memory. The Christian story is about giving us the memory – through the innocent victim, Jesus – to see our own victims; this is deep remembering. It is a subversive memory – a ‘dangerous memory’ in the words of the theologian J. B. Metz – because it makes us uncomfortable and because our false innocence – the narrative we wish to tell about ourselves – is exposed. We enter a new story where we relinquish denial. We see and accept our part in the story. We discover the truth about ourselves. The Christian story also tells us that the victims do not in their turn make victims: ‘never repay evil with evil’ (Rom. 12:17). The aim is the remaking of relationships, the embrace of the ‘other’, the starting again of promises and commitments, and the ending of revenge for we no longer need to inflict suffering on others. Victims are not required. In both the Jewish and the Christian stories there is a link between remembrance and faithfulness. Remembering the victim is an act of faithfulness, which should lead to an understanding of those who are vulnerable and might become victims. Our identity is given in the act of faithful remembering, ritually located in the Passover and the Eucharist. If Sachs says that memory is the driving force of morality, a particular sort of memory is required: right remembering. We can remember wrongly and use memory for resentment, hatred and

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revenge, for self-righteousness and self-justification, and to generate identities that imprison in the past and condemn to ceaseless repetition. Christians have used the Passion story to engender hatred of Jews and the story of Amalek in Deuteronomy 25:17–19 uses memory in a way which is deeply problematic: ‘Remember how Amalek treated you when you were on your way out of Egypt. He met you on your way and, after you had gone by, he fell on you from the rear and cut off the stragglers; when you were faint and weary he had no fear of God. When Yahweh your God has granted you peace from all the enemies surrounding you in the land Yahweh your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you are to blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget’. There is the sword of memory (literally in this text) and there is the shield of memory, remembering so as to shield us against repeating the wrongs of the past. For memory to be a shield, for us to remember well: O

O

O

There is a moral imperative to remember rightly. This is memory that serves the pursuit of acknowledgement, truth and justice. Right remembering does not exaggerate wrongdoing, does not seek to rectify injustice by causing other injustices and does not engage in false innocence. There is a moral imperative to remember so as to help those who are in need, particularly the victims. There is a moral imperative to link the memory of wrongs suffered to a redeemed future. In a Christian understanding this is for all, and involves, if only in hope, the reconciliation of the wronged and the wrongdoer and the oppressor with the oppressed – and people are rarely purely one or the other. Thus there is the possibility of remembering in a different way.7

Richard Niebuhr speaks of a ‘conversion of memory’ which makes

Memory and Forgetting in a Contested Space 105 a genuine solidarity between different groups possible, but only possible in and through an ongoing exploration in company with their contemporary descendents: ‘The conversion of the past must be continuous because the problems of reconciliation arise in every present . . . Groups use their separate histories as means of defending themselves against the criticism of others and weapons for warfare upon rival parties. We cannot become integrated parts. . .until we each remember our whole past, with its sins. . . No mere desire to overcome differences of opinion is of any avail unless it expresses itself in such reinterpretation and appropriation of what lies back of opinion – the memory . . . The measure of our distance from each other in our nations and groups can be taken by noting the divergence, the separateness and lack of sympathy in our social memories. Conversely the measure of our unity is the extent of our common memory’ (Niebuhr, 1941: 68). We are being called to inclusive remembrance.

Appendix 1 Different Forms of Remembering 1. Remembering as sorrow, loss and mourning: for lives wasted, cut short, etc.; for individuals and communities. 2. Remembering as therapy: generally for individuals, hoping that they can ‘move on’ when they have ‘dealt’ with their memories. However, we increasingly apply the metaphor of ‘therapy’ to collectivities. The belief in the healing power of remembering was at the heart of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 3. Remembering as fidelity to a community, and particularly its dead: telling the community story which is often about community vindication and the ‘glorious’ dead.

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4. Remembering as an expression of resentment and desire for revenge: revenge is a form of respect for, and keeping faith with, the dead, and a seeking after vindication and justice for individuals and communities. 5. Remembering as historical truth: What happened? Who was responsible? What were the main factors operating? etc. For historians. 6. Remembering as moral judgement: the recovery of memory as an ethical obligation: the obligation to persist in the effort to apprehend the truth; criminal prosecutions and punishment (legal guilt); acts of repentance and confession (‘I did this’, ‘I am sorry’), political apology (‘This state was responsible for . . . We apologize’) and symbolic gestures (the German Chancellor Willy Brandt kneeling at the Warsaw Ghetto Rising monument); acts of selfcritical reflection (‘We could have done better’ – individuals and corporate); acts of forgiveness (‘You did this to me. I forgive you’); acts of reparation (individual and corporate). 7. Remembering as education: so that we might learn the ‘lessons’ of the past; so that history might not ‘repeat’ (Holocaust Education); remembering for a different future; so that the young might walk in the steps of the ‘heroic’ dead (some memorials, some storytelling); remembering to continue the past; handling documents and stories critically; entering into the experiences and memories of the ‘other’ community and further reading history in the face of the ‘other’; remembering as part of the dialogue with the ‘other’. 8. Remembering for reconciliation: ‘While the recorded facts of the past cannot be changed, the opposing moral assessment of what was done and suffered can be revised; and in so doing can prove to be the beginning of the road to reconciliation . . .’ (CGP, 2009: 53). We can remember in a different way.

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Appendix 2 A Note about Amnesty 1. No Criminal Prosecutions for what has been done. Amnesty is an attempt to bring ‘to conclusion serious political disorders affecting civil peace’ (Ricoeur, 2006: 453). The aim of amnesty is civil peace. But amnesty is also linked to social forgetting (amnesia). In Articles I and II of the Edict of Nantes which aimed to bring an end to civil war between Protestant and Catholic in sixteenth century France, Henry IV proclaimed that there would be amnesty and there would be forgetting. The memory of what happened will be as if of ‘something that has not occurred’ (Ricoeur, 2006: 454). The past is overcome by forgetting. The attempt to create social forgetting through amnesty and calling it ‘national reconciliation’ after massive human rights violations in certain South and Central American countries in the 1970s and 1980s caused massive outrage. Some of the amnesties were subsequently revoked. 2. No Criminal Prosecution in Return for Confession/Acknowledgement/Testimony/Truth. This was the approach of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It is not amnesty in the traditional sense. The past is overcome by remembering. For such an approach to work, it probably requires forms of repentance and forgiveness. 3. Pardon People are let off punishment or have a reduction of sentence following a judicial process. The reality and memory of an offence is preserved. The State gives forgiveness – but not on behalf of the victim – to an offender, in their role as a citizen of the State. The offender has been forgiven politically but not personally. The British Government’s proposed legislation in respect of those individuals who were suspected of paramilitary offences, but who had not been tried or convicted by virtue of the fact that they were ‘on the run’, follows this sort of approach.

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Notes 1 See Giles Tremlett, ‘Spain’s Civil War Comes Back to Life’, the Guardian, 8 March 2003. 2 The pacto de silencio came under increasing pressure and has now collapsed. A new law on Historical Memory was passed in the autumn of 2007. Designed to recognize and acknowledge the tens of thousands of republican victims of Franco, it has been hugely controversial – opposed by the conservative Popular Party as re-opening old wounds, and by the left-wing republicans in Catalonia as not going far enough. It mandates municipal authorities to fund efforts to unearth mass graves. It is clear that over sixty years after the Spanish Civil War there is no consensus on the memory of that conflict. 3 Some people from Northern Ireland working in Bosnia and Kosovo have found that the mothers and grandmothers ‘hold’ the stories of atrocity, and they make sure that these are handed down to the sons so that they ‘know’ and can act when violence breaks out again. 4 The performative rhetoric of justice, such as apology, is important. A genuine apology is a ‘special act’ designed to keep right the relationship damaged through the actions of the apologizer. The apology, cannot, of course, erase what was done, but it has the potential to transform the situation created by the offence. In order to work, the apologizer has to name the deed, acknowledge the wrongdoing and recognize and in some sense feel the pain of the victim. 5 See Stanley Cohen (2001) States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering, Cambridge: Polity Press, pp 227–8. 6 See Hayner, 2001, chapter 3. 7 For an extended discussion of this see Volf, 2006.

References Biggar, N. (2008) Divided Past: Shared Future: Essays on Churches addressing the legacy of the Troubles, Belfast: Centre for Contemporary Christianity in Ireland. Cohen, S. (2001) States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering, Cambridge: Polity Press. Consultative Group on the Past Report (2009) www.cgpni.org. Garvin, T. (October 1997), Meath Peace Group Talk, www.geocities.com/ meathgroup/index. Harakas, S. (2001), ‘Forgiveness and reconciliation: An orthodox perspective’, in R. Helmick and R. Peterson (eds) Religion, Public Policy and Conflict Transformation, West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press. Hayner, P. B. (2001) Unspeakable Truths, London: Routledge. Morris, J. (2002) ‘Forgiveness and the individual’ in Forgiveness Papers, No 11: Belfast: ECONI Niebuhr, H. R. (1941) The Meaning of Revelation, New York: Macmillan.

Memory and Forgetting in a Contested Space 109 Ricoeur, P. (2006) Memory, History, Forgetting, Chicago: University of Chicago. Sacks, J. (1995) Faith in the Future: London: Darton, Longman and Todd. Shriver, D. W. Jr. (1995) An Ethic for Enemies: forgiveness in politics, New York: Oxford University Press. The Report of the Consultative Group on the Past (2009) Belfast. Volf, M. (2006) The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World, Grand Rapids/Michigan: Eerdmans.


Chapter 6

Forgiving and Church Responsibility Aidan Troy

Forgiveness is a big issue in all societies coming out of conflict. It is a huge issue once peace appears on the horizon because the past has a habit of reappearing and exercising a great influence. People who have an allegiance to a church community may experience a conflict between what the scriptures say about forgiveness and how they feel and may wish to act in their present situation. For those who believe that religious affiliation is part of the problem rather than a source of the solution, forgiveness has an entangled complexity. In this chapter I will begin by examining how forgiveness may be possible even though the ‘other’ to be forgiven or from whom forgiveness is sought is largely unknown. Many times we may imagine that if we were in a conflict zone we could find a solution to hostilities. It is an understandable temptation but one that is disproved by experience. It can happen that efforts at forgiveness may sometimes create a worse state of hatred and a desire for retaliation. This can happen even when no hurt or offence is intended. A few years ago in north Belfast an innocent proposal to place a Christmas tree at an ‘interface’ between nationalist and unionist Ardoyne led to a serious deterioration of community relations. It was not possible to have the tree put there and the proposed cross-community carol service never happened. 111

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In the second part of the chapter I will raise the question as to whether the main Christian churches are a unifying or a divisive force within Northern Ireland. During seven years living in Rome directly before going to Belfast, I was able to learn about and observe the Vatican in its work for Christian unity from a Catholic perspective. There were some excellent documents and thought-provoking discussions. Nobody could but applaud these sincere efforts. But back at ground level in a divided society like Northern Ireland, such efforts showed little sign of igniting a move towards unity and reconciliation. The latest invitation by the Vatican for Anglicans to enter into the Catholic Church has met with a mixed response. It seems to be the case that all ecumenism must be local if it is to be effective. The absence of an abundance of models of forgiveness in Northern Ireland will be scrutinized for its effect on the many and varied efforts to have forgiving and forgetting take root. A few hopeful signs from that time will be elaborated. There are some wonderful individual examples to be found among the contributors to this book who have turned their deeply personal loss into a springboard of forgiveness. These people are witnesses to courage and strength rather than to weakness. To contribute alongside such people in this book is a huge honour for me.

Who is my enemy? ‘One day a lawyer stood up to put Jesus to the test, saying, ‘Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ (Luke10:25). When Jesus asked what was written in the law, the lawyer could quote it verbatim, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind: and your neighbour as yourself ’ (Luke 10:27). When Jesus told him to do this and he would live, he was keen to justify himself and said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ The parable of the Good Samaritan that follows is one that I never tire of reading and praying. When I arrived in Belfast at the end of July 2001 from Rome, it was to become parish priest at Holy Cross, Ardoyne in north Belfast.

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A few days later a meeting of the Board of Governors of Holy Cross Girls’ Primary School nominated me as their chairperson. My pleading with them to be spared this post of responsibility due to my recent arrival back in Ireland was met with a chilling rationale. It was suggested that due to the blockade of the school a person without family ties might be best placed to hold this sensitive post. All the other governors had family ties while I had none in that area. On that basis, I had no option but to accept and to promise to do all I could to offer leadership in finding a resolution to the protest that had started in June 2001 while I was still living in Rome. My first issue was to find out who my neighbours were. The school was closed for the summer holidays when I arrived. The wonderful Principal of the school was my first visitor on the morning after arrival. She was heartbroken at the deterioration in the situation around the school and promised that she would continue to do all in her power to bring an end to the trouble. The parents of the two hundred and twenty-five girls, aged four to eleven, attending the school were unknown to me, and me to them. At a meeting I attended shortly after my arrival, I could see their apprehension that this newly-arrived parish priest and now chair of governors was most ill-suited to find a way towards peace and reconciliation. It took long hours every day to discover who my neighbour was and how we could best relate and support each other. It should be added that as the days turned into weeks and months, these same parents became rock solid in the support they gave me and the other school governors. Genuine and serious efforts to find a solution before school reopened on 3 September did not yield any result. Neighbouring clergy of other denominations were quick to make contact and to assure me of their concern and interest in having all in order before schools restarted. They could not have been kinder. They too were my neighbours. At the many meetings attended during August that year I began to wonder how this dispute affecting children most of all could continue, as I had met nothing but kindness and support in the weeks since I arrived. Surely, there could be no enemies?

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The unfolding of the Holy Cross School protest from its resumption on 3 September to its suspension on 23 November 2001 has been well documented (see Cadwallader 2004 and Troy 2005 as just two sources of information and opinion relating to these events). The protestors and the parents of the pupils going to school were geographically neighbours. Some, indeed, had worked and socialized together in better times. They recognized each other and could shout out each other’s names. The tragedy was that now they had become enemies. It was far from clear to me and perhaps to others how this had happened, and it was to prove notoriously difficult to make any progress toward resolution. In a situation new to me, the question was how could this situation of hostility and open hatred be turned into one of being neighbours at peace, if not yet friends? Being a newcomer I could but rely on those around me and trust in God. In the first place, I accepted that the protestors had issues that they believed were not being addressed. This was not always popular with the parents because of the very bitter nature of the dispute. It was my belief that if any resolution was to be found and the children rescued from this obscenity, then a basis of dialogue had to be found. To deny that the ground on which the other stood had any validity was not an auspicious starting point. For me to say that I believed that these people had grievances was not tantamount to saying that I agreed with the methods being employed to gain the attention of government or others who could help address those issues. My belief is that in situations where trust and being neighbours at peace with each other has totally broken down, only small steps will work to bring about any form of reconciliation or the beginning of forgiveness and the healing of memories. Let me give you an example of a small step that I still see as significant in moving towards a resolution of this most bitter dispute After some weeks of the resumption of the school protest and with the help of two local politicians from each side of the community divide, a group of protestors and a group of the school governors held talks for the first time face to face. We got nowhere and the talks broke down almost as soon as they had begun. It took another


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two weeks to broker another meeting between the two sides. All that time, everyone was suffering and the danger of serious injury or death was increasing. Most of all the children who were only interested in getting to and from school were in real danger of serious injury or death. A bomb thrown a few days into September 2001 fortunately did not reach the children as they went to school. At the end of this second meeting I offered my mobile phone number to the delegation from the protestors in order that we might be able to keep contact rather than wait another number of weeks before meeting again. Probably if I had known more about the situation I would not have done this because of risks of it being abused. Within hours of the meeting ending, I had a text message from one of the protestors giving me his number. A tiny bridge had been built. We had not yet crossed it. It is my conviction that in Northern Ireland there are some places, known as ‘interfaces’, where people live so isolated from their neighbours of the other tradition that it would be stretching language to the limit to call them neighbours. In many places, it must be said that it would be equally wrong to call them enemies. It is rather that a form of non-colour-based apartheid exists. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall new ‘peace walls’ are still going up in parts of Belfast. There are now eighty of these permanent barriers constructed in the Belfast area. The most recent of these walls was constructed in 2008. Back in 1994 there were twenty-six such walls. Even with loyalist and republican ceasefires in place there has been an increase in the number of these divisions between people. Taken house by house, family by family on each side of these walls you would not find nicer or better people. But their schools, places of socializing, of shopping, of worship, of bus routes and practically everything else are separate. In such a situation it is not difficult to see how the unknown people on the other side of the wall become ‘the enemy’. They are unknown and so suspicion is rife. Heroic cross-community efforts to break this down will be related in other chapters of this book. It is wonderful to know that this essential work is continuing, often in a quiet but effective way. Even the most optimistic of such great

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workers for forgiveness and a healing of memories will admit that we have not yet arrived at the finishing line that is mutual understanding and trust.

Whose road is it? A feature of life in Northern Ireland is what is known as the ‘marching season’. The vast majority of these marches commemorating the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 pass off peacefully and are celebrated by people of differing outlooks. There are some, however, where there is almost a guarantee of tension that can end in violence. During the seven years I lived in north Belfast, the months from Easter to September always had a shadow over them because of contentious marches going through the area. Just like the school protest mentioned above, a lot depends on where you stand. To the marchers on the road, this is a cultural expression of identity. To residents whose homes are on the route, this is a time when free movement in and out of their area can be restricted. Each side of this debate makes a case for their rights to the road, either to march or to show opposition because one is a resident. Republicans also believe in marching especially around Easter in commemoration of the Rising of 1916 in Dublin. Most of these marches are confined within nationalist areas and so do not normally impact on others outside their own community and seldom lead to incidents of violence. Efforts by government to manage these marches have not been fully successful. The Parades Commission is a body that is entrusted with making determinations for all marches and all protests during them. The police are required to enforce the determinations of this body and to ensure that all is observed. I have met with members of this Commission and have seen at first hand their efforts to ensure the safety of all involved. With the best will in the world such efforts are never likely to succeed. There is a fundamental and inbuilt opposition at work that does not allow for a middle ground. The road of the marcher is the


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Queen’s highway on which it is their right to walk. The road for the nationalist is part of their community and not a place to be closed down to allow bands and followers to come through. It is not my intention, nor indeed do I have the competence, to adjudicate here on what is right in this hotly-contested matter. Marches by one side of the community through what is perceived as the territory of another side will never be resolved until such time as some sharing of space is successful. At present, all people of good will rejoice that the violence of past decades is no more. There is a devolved Assembly at Stormont, situated in east Belfast, struggling to keep the functions of government afloat. It is in some ways a contradiction of to see members of the Stormont Assembly on different sides of these marches and counter-protests. It is a reflection of how divided the society remains even after the great achievements of recent years. The sticking point that places all at risk at this moment is the vexed question of the devolution of policing and justice to Stormont from Westminster. This is a graphic instance of remembering the past, and the wounds of past injuries still not forgiven and so not healed. No politician may put it in these terms, but listening to people at interface areas you soon become aware that this is a large part of unfinished business. The financial cost of policing these marches eats deeply into ever-decreasing financial resources. The human cost is even greater. People are injured, including police and army who are often caught in the middle. Also, in addition, for every summer that sees intercommunal violence, the day of reaching a community at peace within itself is put further back. Schools of all varieties do an amazing work of inculcating values of peace, tolerance and forgiveness. But events that redraw the lines of division can create confusion in the minds of the young when they witness adults in their community being sucked into contention with people who are their neighbours but not their friends. Since leaving Belfast to minister in Paris, I have followed the summer events of marches, always hoping and praying that a new

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dawn will come when a way forward will be found that allows people to remember their past with pride but in a manner that respects those who do not share that vision. This is asking a lot and will not be accomplished quickly or easily. The solution lies somehow in helping people to share ‘the road’ in a non-contentious way. At the end of the Holy Cross School protest, the residents of the Glenbryn estate had security measures added to the road on which the children going to school have walked again over the past nine years. It can be done, but it takes sustained efforts and a willingness to keep trying when attempts have come to nothing. In the final part of this chapter I will address this issue again in terms of shared space.

The God of all people God is neither a Protestant nor a Catholic. This may seem a very facile statement to make in a very serious book such as this. But it is necessary to be as basic as this in any attempt to reach into the psyche and heart of people often described by such titles. One of the sustaining features of the seven years I spent in north Belfast was a monthly meeting with fellow clergy of neighbouring churches. Through these meetings we could pray and reflect on life in an area that belonged to none of us alone but was ours to fashion into some expression of the Kingdom of God. The agenda was always loose so that we could listen to each other’s story and often experience each other’s pain. We also learned to trust each other enough that we could laugh together on occasion. Through the good work of one of this group a trip to England was arranged to study a project where an Anglican church had adapted to a demographic change that found it in the heart of a Muslim community. The adaptation was superb and it worked. We saw a crèche where the vast majority of the children were Muslim in a part of the church where the Eucharist had once been celebrated. We saw a lovely place of Christian worship alongside this place of colour and the sound of children’s laughter. For


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myself, I felt ashamed that the community from which I came still duplicated almost everything from leisure centres to school transport. It was – and perhaps still is the case – that it was not considered safe in the twenty-first century to have such mixing in Belfast. Good as this was for us as a clergy group who ministered in a divided community, it was also a pivotal moment in our growth as a group. We saw each other differently once we were away from our home patch. In our discussions each month we agreed to refer to our respective community by colour rather than by religious denomination or political affiliation. We spoke of the ‘Green’ community when referring to a Catholic/nationalist/republican area. We spoke of the ‘Orange’ community when the reference was to a Protestant/ unionist/loyalist area. In England together we didn’t need colours but just the name given to each of us at Baptism. On a trip to England we became more than clerical colleagues and dared to see each other as friends. A few days away was not going to undo the prejudices and points of view we all carry, but it brought home to me again how important it is to know the person who could be regarded as ‘the enemy’ if you are ever going to become their friend. Recently in Paris I was asked to speak at the American Protestant Church in Paris on my experience of living in Belfast. A question time followed and I was delighted to hear people from different cultures link their questions about forgiving and remembering to conflicts in their own place of birth. There are so many conflicts with terrible killing and destruction still going on. None of us as clergy are or were politicians. What best describes what we were trying to accomplish comes from what Jesus said when praying for the Church: ‘I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me’ (John 17:20–21).

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Language can be important in trying to find the key to unity and peace. Some denominations find that use of the word ‘ecumenism’ is threatening because it suggests a takeover by Rome! On the ground in a place like north Belfast, working for church unity and understanding could be as basic as that. In other denominations the Pope is regarded by some as the antichrist. That can be surprising and even hurtful, but it is the starting point of a dialogue that can only lead to reaching a better place and a richer understanding. Tiny steps were taken during that time by parishioners from all our various parishes having a shared session of prayer during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity each January. The first year we were all felt as though we were walking on very thin ice. Each successive year there was a relaxation as people of different denominations recognized each other and engaged in conversation. This affected only a small number from our respective denominations but the fact that it could happen was a sign that the prayer of Christ was having an effect among us. At Easter this same group felt strong enough and sufficiently trusting of each other to celebrate a Passover meal together. It was a great time of co-operation as preparations were made for the food and the prayer. People came with a desire to know that Jesus loves all and that the sad divisions among us were never of his making. To see people who had for many years lived apart from their neighbours of another religion sitting at table together is a sign of the Kingdom taking root in our midst. Even the ‘peace walls’ that keep people apart and that still stand in Belfast could not prevent people of good will taking the risk to meet their neighbours for the breaking of bread. Sharing the Eucharist may be still to be achieved, but a start has been made that will one day lead to the unity for which Christ prayed. In this area of Christ’s prayer for unity among people, it is always an occasion of great joy when a couple approach me about the celebration of their marriage. There was always an added poignancy when each came from a different religious tradition. In other parts of the world where I had ministered this was a regular occurrence


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and did not present any particular difficulties. In north Belfast there were issues of sensitivity and safety to be considered. If the marriage was to be celebrated in the Catholic Church, I found it important to invite parents and family members of both parties to a rehearsal for the ceremony. For some this was their first time ever to stand inside the doors of a Catholic Church. When the day of the wedding arrived, they had broken through the barrier of not knowing what to expect and could pour out their love and affection for their loved one who was to be married. On occasion I also had the joy of preparing a Catholic partner for marriage in a Protestant church. Once I remarked to the Protestant party that I knew his Minister and received a Christmas card from him each year. The young person found this encouraging as he seemed to suspect that we may not have been enemies but hardly friends!

The cross and the resurrection God works in mysterious ways. Following the school protest of 2001 in Ardoyne, I never thought that any other event could affect me so deeply. That was to change on 23 April 2003 when a seventeenyear-old young man hanged himself in the grounds of Holy Cross Monastery. He was a loved child who had reached an end point in his life and could see no way forward at that moment. He was to be the first of many such sad and tragic deaths in the coming five years. By the time I left Belfast, I had been engaged in the funerals of over twenty people, not all young, who died by suicide. Trying to find a way forward out of these tragedies was not easy. In the beginning the whole community that was affected did not know where to turn for help or for hope. In meetings with my colleagues from the other churches, I learned that their communities were also suffering from such loss of life by suicide. As suicide prevention and support groups began to take shape, it was clear that this was not going to be along sectarian lines. These groups were very much embedded in their own community but were not exclusive to the local people there. I found many opportunities to attend suicide

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events and became a member of health board task forces side by side with people from all religious and political outlooks. A few years earlier this would not have been foreseen and would have been considered unlikely. When suicide comes to a family there is numbness and a shattering of normal life that is hard to describe. Words are not capable of addressing the pain. Being present is all that any other person can offer. Arriving into such a situation, talk of God is not always a good starting point. Just to be there with people in shock may be all that is possible in the aftermath of a suicide. Preparing a church liturgy for a loved one who has died by suicide is a real challenge for any minister of religion. Recently I have put into print some of the approaches that I have found helpful in this sensitive matter and also highlighted what was not helpful (Troy 2009).

Hope Hope is the virtue that I have found most necessary in working through the sad and long-standing divisions that continue among the followers of Christ. This involves more than an optimistic spirit but reaches into the mystery of the Cross leading to Resurrection. Going back to the scene after the death of Christ offers hope: ‘But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, behold two men stood by them in dazzling apparel; and as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, ‘ Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen’ (Luke 24:1–5). Prayer for the unity of Christians and indeed of all people is essential. It also is essential to come to know those who we may know only by reputation and from a distance but, one day we hope to embrace as


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friends; then, I believe the prayer of Christ for the unity of his people will be realised. The empty tomb says that the past can be left behind and new life is possible.

‘I am the vine, you are the branches’ (John 15:5) This whole book on Forgiving and Remembering in Northern Ireland is a rich resource on how to deal with forgiveness and remembering. Many of the contributions tell of moving moments of forgiveness and how remembering past hurts did not cripple them. It would be wrong for me to claim a place alongside these heroic people. One incident of forgiveness asked of me following the Holy Cross School protest made a deep and lasting impression on me. A few years after the school protest ended I received a phone call from a man who wanted to visit me. This was easily arranged and a man I had never met before arrived. He told me the reason for his visit. During 2001 he had seen me walking near Holy Cross Church while he was driving along Crumlin Road. He had a momentary impulse to drive on to the footpath and kill me with his car. His reasoning was that I represented all that he detested about the ‘Green’ community and all the events surrounding the school protest. In a true sense, even though he had never met me at that time, I was the face of ‘the enemy’. He overcame this impulse – thank God! He told me how some time later he went through a conversion process and was now a member of a Christian group where he worshipped each weekend. By reading the Gospel he came to the conclusion that he could not love God with all his heart and soul if he did not first come and make his peace with me. It was interesting that had he not told me his story, I would never have known of his intentions. Still, he found it necessary to leave his gift at the altar and come to make his peace with me. Then he would be ready to worship his God in spirit and in truth. As a sign of reconciliation and peace he gave me a CD of music recorded at his place of worship that would symbolize in some way the act of forgiveness given and received. We shook hands and

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he left. I was profoundly moved by his humility and sense of what needed to be done and I have often been inspired by this simple meeting. Difficult as I sometimes find it to say sorry to another, this man witnessed to reconciliation in a most powerful way. It seems to me that the way forward in dealing with the past is to sow seeds for a new if different future. I have some idea of the challenge that is hidden in these words. Unless we do look to a new future with hope we can become stuck in a past that has damaged us all. It is in that sense that the vine and branches is a powerful image of where our growth lies and how we may one day find our way to each other.

Children playing together Children can be great teachers when it comes to forgiving. In July 2008 a group of pupils from Holy Cross School and Wheatfield Primary School went with their teachers to play in a basketball tournament together in America. These two schools are on opposite sides of Ardoyne Road, Belfast, where seven years earlier there were awful scenes of community strife and rioting. Through the good work of a voluntary group from America this breakthrough took place after months of meticulous planning. There were so many memories of what had happened in the past. Each school worked hard to present values of love and being good neighbours to their pupils. Families tried to come to terms with what had happened. Some found it extremely difficult. Some parents found it impossible to let go of the past and agree with this trip, but there was a solid middle ground who believed it was time to move forward. When this event took place, I believe that a line could be drawn under the sad events on that road some years earlier. On 8 May 2008, Holy Cross Primary School celebrated its fortieth anniversary of moving to their present site. It was with delight that I accepted an invitation to be present for this celebration in Belfast. That day I walked up Ardoyne Road to the school for the first time since 23 November 2001. It wasn’t that anybody prevented me from making


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the journey before then, but it was only on that day that I felt that I wanted to retrace my steps to remember and to forgive. There was also an element of wanting forgiveness for any way I had failed in my leadership of the school as chair of governors. There was also a prayer of thanksgiving in my heart for the many good people around the world who had prayed so fervently for all who were caught up in the school protest. When I reached the school, a journey of less than five minutes, I felt that I had closed a chapter in my life. This for me was a pilgrimage of peace.

Opening doors The fragility of peace in Northern Ireland is evident in many ways even at the beginning of 2010. A few instances of conflict during this decade and the slow journey to forgiveness have been explored in this chapter. The journey ahead may well be a long one. It is sobering to remember that a successful outcome is not guaranteed. Remembering the past and how to deal with it has not been accomplished by all peoples or on each side of this divided community. For a number of years before leaving north Belfast I began a project to turn an old school building into a family centre. This building stands with one side on the ‘Orange’ side of the road and the other on the ‘Green’ side. My dream was that with goodwill on each side we could bring this derelict building back to life for the benefit of all. At the heart of it there was to be a crèche where it would be possible for parents to bring their little ones in from either side of this strategically-located building. The first step across the threshold from either side would require great courage and a capacity for forgiveness in the light of remembering many years of hurt and estrangement. In Northern Ireland it may be necessary to go back to families with small children to learn a way of coming to know their neighbours. As the Kingdom proclaims, it will be the children who will lead us towards a new dawn.

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The remaining part of the building was to be shared space for suicide prevention groups and other social and health needs. An already existing health partnership working across the community divide was most enthusiastic in lending their support to this vision, calling upon their vast experience of working within a fractured area. European peace money was applied for as a primary source of funding and the application was receiving positive signals. Planning permission was obtained and the architects involved had produced creative and attractive plans for the venture. The biggest issue was going to be creating enough trust on both sides of the community that would allow the formation of an ‘Orange/Green’ board of management for the project. The Passionist religious congregation to which I belong and who own the building were generous in agreeing to give a long lease on the building once a board of management was in place. If this dream was ever to have a chance of coming to fruition, both sides of the community would need to have a sense of ownership of what was to take place. It would be doomed to failure if it was seen that one side were the controllers and the other side merely invited to come along afterwards. This little seed was not to get above ground as due to many circumstances the project was not proceeded with after my transfer from Belfast. Maybe also it was not the right time and maybe its day will yet come. What I appreciated greatly was the opportunity to engage with neighbours whose homes were within the shadow of the Monastery where I lived but who were strangers to me and I to them. Early meetings were tense and tentative but tiny steps led us to a better place. My hope and prayer is that one day the little ones from one side will come to know and play with the little ones from the other side. Forgiving will have come about and the Church will have made a contribution to unity and a brighter future for all. The path ahead may be strewn with twists and turns, but the only way forward is in hope.


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References Cadwallader, A. (2004) Holy Cross: The Untold Story, Belfast: Brehon Press. Troy, A. (2005) Holy Cross: A personal experience, Blackrock/Dublin: Currach Press. Troy, A. (2009) Responding to Suicide, Dublin: Veritas.


Chapter 7

On Fire with the Justice of God: Re-Reading Romans as a Political Proclamation Towards a Desired Future Johnston McMaster

The politics of the present and future in Northern Ireland is full of ambivalence. There is little visible commitment to sharing power and a more than obvious reluctance to deal with the past. Co-existence rather than reconciliation, established hurt rather than healing appear to be the limit of expectation. Institutional religion struggles to recognize the reality of its cultural disestablishment, and faith continues to retreat into privatized, spiritualized and individualized expressions. The lack of a developed socio-political hermeneutic and theology, and a resistance to it, blocks a meaningful faith engagement with peace-building, community healing and a process towards a desired future for all. In this context this essay will focus on one of the Christian Testament’s documents, Paul’s Letter to the Romans. The traditional approach to Romans has been shaped by the polemical and oppositional hermeneutic of the sixteenth century Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The law vs. grace framework has not only given us a false dualism, but a legacy of anti-Judaism, often and tragically expressed as anti-Semitism. This reading of Romans has also contributed to anti-Catholicism and religio-political sectarianism. 129

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The persistence of this hermeneutical approach has led to a denial of political and civic responsibility. Given that the traditional reading has long since ceased to speak to the contemporary search for faith, and has had such tragic, sociopolitical, communal and relational consequences, this essay will explore a different reading of Romans. It will seek to move beyond confessional and dogmatic readings of Paul’s important Letter to a more contextual, historical and socio-political reading. The essay will propose a re-reading of Romans as a political proclamation of the justice of God, the key theme of Romans, which was then and remains a searing critique of the politics of injustice that suppresses truth, healing and positive peace-building. If Paul’s Letter is on fire with the justice of God, then there are radical implications for people of faith in the political context of Northern Ireland.

Romans in dispute No one doubts the huge influence of Paul’s Letter to the Romans on the history of Christian theology. Augustine, Luther and Wesley were all profoundly influenced by its thought. Luther’s interpretation of Romans has dominated Protestant theology through his discovery of ‘justification by faith’. Luther’s discovery was rooted in his search for a gracious God and his frustrated longing for righteousness. The influence of Luther was such that the result was a ‘Lutheran Paul’ or a ‘Protestant Paul’. Much of Western Christianity has been dominated by an exaggerated Paulinism, especially Protestant Christianity, though not exclusively, since much of the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation was centred on a theological polemic around interpretations of justification by faith. The latter was continued as a polemic in a region such as Northern Ireland where sectarian religion predominates. But what if Luther misread Romans? What if the dualisms from which he worked were false, as dualisms often are? What if law vs. grace and works righteousness vs. justification by faith alone were based on a misunderstanding of Jewish Torah and of the

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Jewish tradition? Luther’s Paul was anti-Judaism, against the Jewish law, and if Romans and Galatians are read from this perspective, Paul was aggressively anti-Jewish. But what if Luther got it all wrong and his Paul was a sectarian bigot? Two major shifts brought this interpretation of Romans into dispute. The Holocaust involving the extermination of over six million Jews raised inescapable critical questions about much Western theology. The anti-Jewish Paul was discovered to be rooted in Judaism, not against it. His thought forms and faith assumptions were all Jewish and he, like the Lord he served, was Jewish and no longer perceived as sharply opposed to Judaism. He was critical of some interpretations of Judaism but from within. Another and related shift occurred when Krister Stendahl published an essay in 1960 which ‘issued a fundamental challenge to the established understanding of Paul that stood at the centre of Protestant theology and biblical studies . . ’. (Horsley 2000: 1). Stendahl had already been engaged in critical hermeneutical work laying out principles for interpretation of biblical materials which were being used in ways which skewed gender relations in church and society. Stendahl was now challenging the ‘narrowly introspective Augustinian and Lutheran interpretation of Paul as focused on individual salvation and justification by faith . . ’. (ibid: 2). Stendahl was even suggesting that this Protestant obsession with justification by faith had a questionable biblical basis. If Luther had misread Romans, it was appropriate that this serious criticism was coming from Stendahl, himself a Lutheran and later a Lutheran bishop. His essay ‘The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West’ not only critiqued the introspective individualism that dominated Protestant interpretation of Paul, but also exposed the anti-Judaism at the heart of modern Pauline studies and of the Christian Testament in general. Stendahl was dismantling an entire interpretative framework, one built on bad anthropology and a serious misunderstanding of Jewish Torah. He was also exposing a fundamental Western assumption that religion was separate from politico-economic life. Stendahl prepared the way for a more

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contextual and historical reading of Paul that would open up a new and fresh perspective on Paul and Romans. Paul’s context was the Roman Empire and all his activity was carried out within the Empire and with people who were subjects of the Empire: ‘The Roman imperial order, in all its facets, constituted the context in which the movement that Paul joined and helped to lead took its origins in the province of Judea. And it was the context into which he took his gospel of Jesus Christ, who had been crucified by the Romans but had been vindicated by God in resurrection as Lord and Saviour – imperial titles ordinarily used only for Caesar’ (Horsley 2004: 3). Paul’s Gospel, then, was not opposed to Judaism but to the Roman imperial order and Paul’s key vocabulary was Roman imperial vocabulary used in subversive ways. In his first letter, I Thessalonians, God’s kingdom and Jesus are opposed to the Roman Empire and its ‘gospel’ of ‘peace and security’. This imperial slogan Paul denounces as a lie, and the whole imperial apparatus stands under the imminent destruction of God’s judgment. The core vocabulary of Romans was drawn repeatedly from the imperial context and it might even be argued that Romans cannot be understood without an awareness and knowledge, not only of Paul’s Jewish world, but of the Roman imperial world (Elliott 2000; Horsley 1997). It is only in the last few decades that Empire studies have enabled us to construct the social and political world of Paul. This historical contextualization of Paul has deconstructed Paul’s anti-Judaism. He is no longer an anti-Jewish sectarian bigot – an insight with far reaching consequences for Jewish-Christian relations, and also in the sectarian context of Northern Ireland for Protestant–Catholic relations. ‘In Paul’s Letters, Christ and Gospel events stand opposed to Caesar and the Roman imperial order’ (Horsley, 2004: 4). And this also has profound consequences for the relationship between faith and politics.


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Romans in the shadow of empire If Stendahl had recognized ‘just how problematic Western privileged and depoliticized interpretation of biblical texts have become’ (Horsley 2000: 11) then a more socially contextualised and politicized reading of a Letter like Romans was the inevitable interpretative step. Unlike Augustine and Luther, Paul was not obsessed with introspective guilt and interior angst, nor would his Jewish communal perspective have allowed him to become a proto-Enlightenment individualist. Romans, like the rest of the Christian Testament, was written in the shadow of Empire, the all-pervasive, dominating system. Faith was to be lived in community in the context of the superpower with all its absolutist and ultimate religious, political and economic claims. If modern westerners insist on the separation of religion from politics and economics, then it needs to be recognized that such a separation was foreign to the world of imperial Rome and all the other imperial superpowers that dominate the entire Bible story. The ancient world did not recognize any such dualisms, which is why as westerners we find the Bible a difficult book to read. In privatizing and depoliticizing it we have misread it. When Paul wrote to the Roman Christians around the mid-century CE, he was writing to a faith community at the heart of Empire. Even if he had wanted to there was no avoiding the religio-political economic power of the Roman Empire. Paul wrote to counter Roman ideology and its domination of all its subjects. To read Romans as a political text would not have surprised Paul. This more historically contextualised interpretative strategy is no longer new or strange. In the last half century biblical hermeneutics has begun to take seriously the Bible’s own world and its domination by superpowers and geopolitics. Joshua Berman in his recent book explores the Pentateuch as a political text. He is a Jewish scholar who seeks ‘to analyze these texts and highlight their egalitarian program in light of the geopolitical domain of the ancient Near East’. He believes that the political and economic experiences of these cultures will ‘address the implications

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of the texts under study’. Hittite treaties are cited as an example of how we can understand more clearly the theological and political term ‘covenant’ (Berman 2008: 9,18). Richard Horsley takes a similar approach to Mark’s Gospel, highlighting the ‘politics of plot’ in Mark. He believes that we need to ‘become more informed readers by re-examining and relearning the historical context in, and for which, Mark performed’. In this contextualised reading Jesus was ‘executed by crucifixion, a gruesome form of execution used for slaves and provincial rebels, on the charge of being “the King of the Jews . . .” ’. Pilate saw him as a leader of popular insurrection against Roman imperial order. Highlighting the renewal of covenant in the key tenth chapter of Mark, Horsley is in tune with Berman when he highlights covenantal economics and covenantal politics in this text and in the rest of Mark’s story (Horsley 2001: 100, 190–194). Mark is read not as theology, but as a series of conflict stories relocated in the context of ancient Palestine under Roman imperial rule, as a story about subjugated people, giving them a voice (ibid: xiii). Reading the Bible, then, in the shadow of Empire and not just the Pentateuch, Mark or Romans is a productive interpretative strategy. It reconnects us to the realities of a politico-economic world, ancient and contemporary, enables us to inter-relate public concerns and faith with transformative ethical implications and rescues the Bible from religion and narrow religious concerns. This is essentially recovering the imperial foreground to the biblical writings. Israel’s story is read as an on-going struggle against Empire, successive Empires and their political domination, and the struggle to live as an alternative community, expressed in more just and egalitarian ways. Torah, prophets, psalms and wisdom writings all teem with symptoms of economic destitution, corrupt justice systems, leaders indifferent or complicit with oppressive systems, either the current superpower or the community’s own king or leadership imitating Empire. The Exodus is a theological story of protest, resistance and liberation from imperial oppression. The Jewish festivals, such as Passover, re-enact the paradigm in the context of a new struggle in


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a new historical experience where the covenantal life of equality, non-hierarchy and freedom is being suppressed. Likewise, the Gospels make no sense unless read in this context. Luke’s birth story is an alternative peace to the Roman ‘peace and security’ and an Emperor already proclaimed as ‘saviour’. The resurrection stories are stories of God’s vindication of non-violence, justice and peace in opposition to all that Empire claimed to bring to the world. The Book of Revelation is not an Old Moore’s Almanac but the most explicitly counter-imperial book in the Christian Testament. It is resistance literature expressing a searing critique of Empire and an alternative vision of a more just and peaceful society – a new heaven and earth. Romans too is a political text. It is ‘no theological testament, no essay on a theme – however useful that assumption has been to a history of Christian doctrine’ (Howard-Brook and Ringe 2002: 140). It is the idolatry, immorality, injustice and dishonour of the Roman world that has been left behind in the radical sacrament of baptism (Rom. 1:18–32). It is the world of values of Roman imperialism to which the faith community is not to conform, but to be continually transformed into a radical alternative and counter-cultural community of discernment and resistance (Rom. 12:1–2). The Jewish plight is that of being displaced refugees hated by members of the Roman aristocracy. Contempt for Jews and general anti-Judaism were alive in Rome and being fed by Nero’s advisors to the Emperor himself. Tragically, fifty years after Paul was writing, a theology of Israel’s replacement by Gentile Christianity became ‘orthodox’, settled faith not to be challenged until the latter half of the twentieth century (ibid: 142). An anti-Jewish, sectarian bigot could never have written Romans, especially the tortured chapters 9–11. Romans does not support the anti-Judaism of Luther and Protestant and Catholic Christianity, and far from being an ‘abstract essay in salvation in Christ’ (ibid: 142), Romans is a call to break with the standards of imperial Roman culture, including its anti-Judaism, and to live beyond the chasm between what the world, the Empire calls justice and the justice of God (Rom. 1: 15–17).

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Paul’s incendiary proclamation to imperial justice The challenge for readers of Romans in the West and in Northern Ireland in particular is to read beyond the anti-Jewish Paul, antiCatholic Paul and a Eurocentric Paul. Robert Jewett believes that ‘the main lines of interpretation remain largely within the historical-critical framework that arise a century and a half ago in Europe, having emerged out of the theological warfare initiated by the Protestant Reformation, the Counter-Reformation and the Enlightenment’ (Jewett 1994: 3). Jewett’s American context has been heavily influenced by the Eurocentric Paul, but this is now being overcome by emerging American scholarship, critically and uneasily conscious of its American identity as Empire and superpower characterized by military and economic domination. Richard Horsley and Neil Elliott, along with Jewett, are good examples of post-Eurocentric Pauline scholarship emerging from the USA. Over the border, Canadian Douglas Harink has written on Paul beyond the post-liberals in which he highlights justification – beyond Protestantism. He suggests that the traditional Protestant doctrine ‘is based on a poor translation of an important Pauline phrase; that it misunderstands the notion of justification as an inner and individual matter’ (Harink 2003: 25). He also suggests that ‘when the Roman imperial order is taken into account as an often dominating factor in the day-to-day life of the cities and citizens to which Paul brought his message, it becomes clear that Paul’s Gospel is an announcement of God’s own ‘imperial order’’ (ibid: 17–18). Post-colonial theologies and biblical scholars in Asia, Africa and Latin America are also writing from their own political context, and the political context of Paul and other Christian Testament writers. Romans, therefore, is political theology, which means learning to read the letter differently. A political reading of texts like Romans is not supplementary or optional. It is the ‘absolute horizon of all reading and interpretation’ (Elliott 2008: 11). Quoting the Latin American, Segovia, Elliott insists that ‘a fully contextualised reading of the New Testament texts must address the reality of Empire as an


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omnipresent, inescapable, and overwhelming socio-political reality’ (ibid: 7). Taking all this seriously, Elliott states that ‘Paul’s letter burns with the incendiary proclamation of God’s justice, and with a searing critique of the injustice (adikia) of those who smother and suppress the truth (1:17–18)’ (ibid: 6). The themes that dominate Romans are political themes and justice is core. Justice is in fact the language of justification, and the modern failure to make this connection is a failure to understand Paul’s Jewish roots and language as well as failure to grasp the socio-political reality of Empire as foreground to Romans. Paul states his thesis in Romans 1:15–16. He is countering the imperial propaganda by using the imperial language and the Emperor’s vocabulary. He reflects and mirrors imperial language to subvert imperial claims. Paul’s language for Jesus, Lord and Son of God, were titles claimed by the Caesars long before Paul’s time. Also ‘gospel’ and ‘preach the gospel’ were terms from imperial propaganda announcing the Emperor’s victories and accession. Faith has its roots in Paul’s Jewish tradition, understood and lived as faithfulness, loyalty and steadfastness. It was also the Empire’s word meaning loyalty to Emperor and his ultimate claim. The Empire believed it had the monopoly on faith or loyalty. Not so, countered Paul, and the faith community would have got his meaning. The key theme and purpose of Romans as Paul articulates it in Romans 1:15–16 is loaded with political vocabulary in contrast to or in subversion of imperial propaganda. ‘God’s power for salvation’ is in radical contrast to imperial power. The Empire celebrated military and administrative power as effective for salvation, the well-being or wholeness of people. At the conclusion of military campaigns, Emperors celebrated their divine power as saviour and as gospel or good news. The ‘Righteousness of God is revealed’ had to do with right relations as a social and relational idea establishing a new form of community which is inclusive. ‘Revealed’ has to do with divine action, the non-violent power of love or energy which is active in establishing right relations based on inclusivity and justice.

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The critical point is that Roman imperial propaganda through the Emperor made the same claim. Pax Romana was salvation based on force and violence. Paul is offering a radical alternative which is anti-imperialistic and the Empire’s domination system. Militarism and coercion, characteristic of all Empires, do not liberate, save or bring peace to the world. Non-violence, inclusive relations and distributive/restorative justice do. Paul develops this alternative good news in the rest of Romans in his battle for hearts and minds and to ensure a community that is not ‘conformed to the world’ (Rom. 12:1–2). The central theme of Romans is the ‘justice of God’ (Rom. 1:17; 3:21–26). Paul juxtaposes the justice of God with the justice of humans, an indirect reference to the Emperor and Empire. It is the injustice of the Emperor and Empire that suppresses the truth (Rom. 1:18). In the same text Paul describes the imperial reality as ‘ungodliness and wickedness’. In the imperial world the first meant failure to respect the deity, especially in the civic cult. The second word has the sense of injustice and is closely connected with righteousness or justice in v. 16-17 and justification in 5: 1. Through ultimate loyalty to the Emperor and acts of injustice, persons and systems cover up the truth about themselves and their egotistical quest for power and domination. The reality is that Empires wear masks. ‘Nations building empires for their own economic and political advantage must always wear a mask, always attempt to put a noble face on their rapacity . . ’. (Maguire 2005: 10). Romans is a Letter on fire with justice. This is Paul’s primary concern. Again the language of Paul is crammed with political vocabulary. This is not surprising. As a Jew Paul knew from his Jewish poetry (Psalms) that the king exercises justice by securing the welfare of the poor, vulnerable and socially weak. It is in Romans 5 that Paul really clusters political vocabulary and highlights reconciliation praxis: O O

justified – justice – righteousness faith

On Fire with the Justice of God O O O O O

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peace reconciliation endurance character hope

This is the chapter of the Letter at the heart of Protestant-Catholic polemics, used as a weapon to beat each other and perpetuate sectarian identity and theology. But now there is the realization, by some at least, that we have seriously misread Paul. Justification is God’s way of putting situations or people right. What is ‘right’ is shaped by justice, or right relations based on justice. Paul has a sociopolitical vision to counter the claim of Empire. The Emperor saw himself as the embodiment of divine justice and more: ‘Upon Octavian’s return to Rome, the Senate promptly awarded him a ceremonial golden shield, the clupeus aureus, celebrating him as the very embodiment of valor (virtus: in Greek, arete), mercy (clementia: epeikeia), justice (institia: dikaiosyne) and dutiful devotion to the gods, his ancestors and his posterity (pietas: eusebeia)’ (Elliott 2008: 29). Justice, mercy, piety and virtue are all themes of Romans and key vocabulary in Roman imperial propaganda. Paul’s political declaration of war on the Emperor is that he is making a delusionary claim. Pax Romana does not come through war, violence and the injustice that accompanies it and in which the imperial system itself becomes unjust. Paul’s alternative vision, the Gospel of which he is not ashamed (Rom. 1:16) is that people are brought into right relations through justice which is socially distributive and restorative. Right relations rooted in justice brought about by non-violence, compassion and love is the alternative good news (Gospel) of peace and reconciliation. As a political theology against Caesar and Empire, Paul clusters and holds in relationship the radically revisioned imperial language of justice, right relations, peace and reconciliation.

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The Letter’s message to the Roman congregation is clear: ‘The justice of God is not what the empire calls justice’ (Elliott 2000: 195). God’s way of making the world just (justification: dikaiosyne) is subversive and radically different from the Empire and every domination system or political hegemony. The divine and energetic dynamic in Paul’s cluster of words is what he means by ‘the power of God for salvation to everyone’. Paul denies the Empire’s monopoly of the word salvation. The ethical consequences of participating in God’s Empire of justice is that in baptism they ‘were made slaves to justice’ (Rom. 6:12–23) and they must present themselves to God as ‘war trophies (hopla) of justice’ (Rom. 12:1–2). Rome did pride itself as the ‘capital of Justice, the source from which Justice would flow throughout the world’ (Elliott 2008: 53). There was even a Roman goddess Justitia and the word was inscribed on the Emperor’s golden shield in the Senate house. But Paul will have the faith community discern the imperial lie. The gospel of God’s dikaiosyne is ‘a deliberate laying down of a challenge to the imperial pretension’ (Horsley 2000: 171-172). Romans affirms the euangelion of Christ over against the euangelion of Caesar. Far from being a privatized and depoliticized gospel, Romans is a very political and incendiary proclamation of justice in a world where every domination system or imperialistic pretence makes exclusive claims on its subjects’ faith or loyalty, promising them justice and peace. There is no anti-Judaism in Romans, nor can it be used as an anti-Catholic polemic. There is no sectarian bigotry of any kind. Paul’s anti-Judaism is a misreading and distortion with serious consequences in history. Paul as anti-Catholic is a sectarian projection with serious consequences for Protestant-Catholic relationships, especially in Northern Ireland and its history. Paul was anti-Roman imperialism, anti-Empire, anti-domination system and his counter-gospel was on fire with the justice of God. Paul’s Gospel of justification by faith was not a narrow, privatized, individualized religious experience, but a social and political vision of right relations rooted in justice in a reconciled and peaceful community, a radical alternative to Pax Romana.


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In the context of Northern Ireland, where sectarianism and bigotry have not gone away in religion and politics, where mistrust, fear and even hatred remain, Romans, far from helping one religious tribe boast its superiority to another, is a searing critique of all that was and is. Romans is an indictment of Northern Ireland’s history and past and its current inability or lack of political and religious will to overcome sectarianism, and build a reconciled, just and peaceful community. It is a good news vision of God’s intent for a community where distributive and restorative justice are key and at its heart. Without the justice Paul radically proclaims in Romans, there is no authentic religion or church, nor politics and economics with integrity.

Northern Ireland and a new model of relationship between faith and politics We live in a very different world from Paul and the Empire he opposed. Until the eighteenth century governments were authoritarian and believed strongly in the divine right of kings. Imperial Rome was the embodiment of this. After the eighteenth century this changed. ‘We are heirs to a relatively new experiment in political structures and nation-building: the democratization of society’ (Pilgrim 1999: 188). No longer do we believe in the divine right of those who rule, though some may still harbour that delusion and ‘manifest destiny’ is a version of it, but rights are of those ruled. Democracy means elected government, the welfare of all citizens and collective life, judgment on political performance and accountability and, at its best, people power. Despite the Western dualism, democracy ‘permits and encourages the church and individual Christians to become a lively partner in the public arena’ (ibid: 188). We remain, though, trapped in the tension and uneasy relationship between faith and politics. Given the construction of two confessional and sectarian states in Ireland in 1921, we have our own peculiar tensions and changing relationship between faith and politics. Our own version of Christendom has come to an end and

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the cultural disestablishment of Irish churches has happened. Some may wish to think otherwise and even continue to behave as though it were otherwise. The reality is that churches are no longer at the centre of political power, nor with the influence to shape public morality and legislation as they once did. With churches at the edge of political power and influence, increasingly marginalized, and with a new political settlement in Northern Ireland struggling to find itself, what is the relationship now between faith and politics? It is not and will not be as in the past. The extent to which Paul and Romans can help is problematic, not just because of his authoritarian and our more democratized context. The anti-imperialism of Romans and all Paul’s subversive use of imperial language suddenly becomes a political ethic of subordination in Romans 13, and it is confusing. How could Paul spend so much time undermining and exposing a political system for the lie that is it and asserting that the justice of God is not the justice of the Empire, and then call the faith community, those ‘slaves of justice’ by baptism (Rom. 6:12–23), to be subordinate to the very same political system? Romans 13 is a problem, not least because domination systems and totalitarian regimes have used it throughout history to legitimize their abuses of power. Passive or neutral faith communities have remained silent in the face of unjust politics or have been complicit in abuse of power to retain privilege and status. ‘Every person subject to the governing authorities’ (Rom. 13:1) has often supported an uncritical endorsement of state authority. When the civil rights campaign was gathering momentum in the 1960s in Northern Ireland, with protest marches and civil disobedience, the Protestant churches in particular were quick to invoke Romans 13. But was that an ethical response to a political system based on sectarianism and an abuse of power through its hegemonic governance? Can a sectarian system ever be ethical? The ethic of subordination of Romans 13 was not helpful in 1969, nor was it helpful to German Christians in the 1930s as National Socialism or Nazism came to power. But was this reading


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strategy around Romans 13 authentic? Was the text being read in isolation, not only from the rest of the Letter, but also from the imperial foreground? Or did Paul really chicken out and decide to go softly softly after his earlier incendiary proclamation? However we approach it, ‘This passage stubbornly resists integration with the argument of the rest of the letter’ (Elliott 2000: 22). Romans 13 and its apparent ethic of subordination not only has a politico-historical context but also a textual context, and both contexts have too often been overlooked. Borg and Crossan offer the timely reminder that ‘we tend to ignore immediate context – both before and after – in focusing on 13:1–7 as if it were necessarily and obviously a completely unified section of Paul’s thought’ (Borg and Crossan 2009: 118). Helpfully they draw attention to the textual context and begin Paul’s conceptual section at 12:14. We then read the famous section in 13:1–7 and interpret it ‘within the Pauline context of 12: 14–13:10’ (ibid: 118). When this reading strategy is adopted we then recognize that the overall text echoes the radical language of Jesus advocating love of enemies and negating violence against enemies in the Sermon on the Mount. The following parallels become obvious: Matthew 5: 44 ⫽ Romans 12:14 Matthew 5: 38 ⫽ Romans 12:21 Matthew 5: 44 ⫽ Romans 13:8-10 Matthew 5: 39 ⫽ Romans 13:2 The latter references are vitally important for an interpretative strategy. The textual context also suggests that Paul is primarily concerned about taxes and revenues in Romans 13, and about resistance to them. The situation in Rome was volatile. There were tumults and riots in 49 CE, six years before Paul wrote this letter. There are contemporary reports of tax protests being suppressed by deadly imperial force and of popular resentment of new taxes. It is here that Paul’s theme of resistance is important and the use of the same word resist in the Matthaen and Pauline parallels. The word

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means to ‘stand against in battle’, and a ‘single rank or line of soldiers’. The English translations do not do justice to the imagery behind the word. It really means ‘to resist violently’ (ibid: 119). This is Paul’s primary concern. Paul is concerned about violent resistance to taxes and revenues, and is opposing violent tax revolts by members of the faith community. ‘Paul is most afraid, not that Christians will be killed but that they will kill, not that Rome will use violence against Christians but that Christians will use violence against Rome. And that emphasizes the ultimate difference between the peace of Rome and the peace of Christ’ (ibid: 120). Read in the context of Empire and text, Paul is not a million miles away from Revelation 13 with its advocacy of active non-violent resistance to Empire. Had he been able to foresee the use of his words throughout Western history he might have been more careful and precise in his statements, maybe even applied a little more wisdom. But Paul was only writing a letter and had no idea his effort would become Holy Scripture or sacred text overlaid with theories of inspiration and even inerrancy. That the particular interpretation of subordination became the norm in Western theopolitical thought and practice is surprising because ‘there is no single, unified attitude toward political structures in the New Testament’ (Pilgrim 1999: 181). There is in fact a diversity of attitudes and approaches to the Roman state and deciding which is normative is difficult. Perhaps opting for one is not necessary as different responses are required in different circumstances. Ethic of Subordination – Ethic of Critical Distancing – Ethic of Resistance Pastoral Letters – Jesus and the Gospels – Revelation – I Peter – Hebrews These are the primary attitudes towards the Roman Empire in the


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Christian Testament and at least show that Romans 13 was not the exclusive norm (ibid: 181). Even the ethic of subordination of Romans 13 has now been modified by the more textual and contextual reading. From this perspective Paul was advocating an ethic of non-violent resistance to a particular problem of taxation. In Romans 13 Paul is not offering a theology of state, still less a binding norm of subordination regardless of the state’s behaviour. Just as the person who was steeped in his Jewish tradition and wrote Romans 9–11 out of pain and pathos could never have been anti-Judaism, so the Paul who wrote on fire for the justice of God over against the injustice of Empire, could never have advocated an uncritical ethic of subordination to that same Empire or any domination system. Is there then a paradigm for the faith community’s attitude towards the state? Does the Letter to the Romans provide clues, along with the rest of the Christian Testament, for a different relationship between faith and politics in Northern Ireland? Pilgrim borrowing from the doctoral work of Thomas W Strieter provides a comprehensive approach: O

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A critical-constructive stance is appropriate when the powers that be are attempting to achieve justice. A critical-transformative appproach is appropriate when authority errs, but can realistically be moved to salutary change. A critically resistive stance is appropriate when the powers are responsible for demonic injustice or idolatry and refuse to be responsible for change (ibid: 192).

There are two crucial words. Every stance or approach is ‘critical’ and that critical stance is rooted in the Jewish prophetic tradition. There is no uncritical approach to those in power. It may be critically friendly or constructive, but it still has the prophetic critical edge to it. The other word is ‘justice’, Paul’s key word in Romans and the heart of his incendiary proclamation. The critical stance to all political systems and powers is shaped from start to finish by justice. Paul’s critical ethic in Romans is rooted in God’s justice, God’s distributive

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and restorative justice which is the way to reconciliation and peace (Rom. 5). Paul is quite clear about his world. God’s justice is not that of the Empire and which the Emperor claimed to embody. The relationship, therefore, between faith and politics is always critical and always measured by the practice or absence of justice at the heart of governance and socio-political and economic systems. For Northern Ireland struggling to find a form of governance and to shape a form of democracy which will work for an otherwise contested society, Romans is a crucial political text. Its incendiary proclamation of God’s justice is the faith community’s norm and ethic of good politics. The critical prophetic Paul is in line with his twenty-first century Jewish brother and Britain’s most authentically prophetic voice, the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks. Sacks calls the contemporary Jewish community to take; ‘a positive stand on the basis of the values by which our ancestors lived and for which they were prepared to die: justice, equity, compassion, love of the stranger, the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person without regard to colour, culture or creed. Now is not the time to retreat into a ghetto of the mind. It is the time to renew that most ancient of biblical institutions, the covenant of human solidarity . . ’. (Sacks 2009: 9–10). The Paul who wrote Romans was one of those Jewish ancestors and would have fully recognized Sacks’ call for faith to go beyond the ghettos of the mind, beyond the false Western dualisms and beyond every form of sectarian bigotry to practise the core ethical values of faith in the public square. There will be no overcoming sectarianism in Northern Ireland without justice for all in public life. This will mean putting justice at the heart of our educational system, at the heart of our political arrangements of power and our economic, banking and commercial systems. It will mean a health system based on justice as well as a police service and criminal justice system. The politico-ethical


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message of Romans is that without such justice there is no reconciliation, peace and desired future. Unless we get the practice of justice right, there will be no shared future. From Paul’s perspective in Romans, being on fire for justice is true loyalty (faith).

References Berman, J. A. (2008) Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Borg, M. J. and Crossan, J. D. (2009) The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church’s Conservative Icon, London, SPCK. Elliott, N. (2000) Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle, Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Elliott, N. (2008) The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Harink, D. (2003) Paul Among the Postliberals: Pauline Theology Beyond Christendom and Modernity, Grand Rapids: Brazos. Horsley, R. A. (ed.) (1997) Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society, Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Horsley, R. A. (ed.) (2000) Paul and Politics: Ekklesia, Israel, Imperium, Interpretation, Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Horsley, R. A. (2001) Hearing the Whole Story: The Politics of Plot in Mark’s Gospel, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Horsley, R. A. (ed.) (2004) Paul and the Roman Imperial Order, Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Howard-Brook, W. and Ringe, S. H. (eds) (2002) The New Testament – Introducing the Way of Discipleship, Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Jewett, R. (1994) Paul the Apostle to America: Cultural Trends and Pauline Scholarship, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Maguire, D. C. (2005) A Moral Creed for All Christians, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Pilgrim, W. E. (1999) Uneasy Neighbours: Church and State in the New Testament, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Sacks, J. (2009) Future Tense: A Vision for Jews and Judaism in the Global Culture, London: Hodder and Stoughton.


Chapter 8

Building Space: Regeneration and Reconciliation Glenn Jordan

A story of decline There really is no reason to stop, once you cross the bridge over the Connswater and choose the right hand fork, ignoring the Albertbridge Road with its wider more spacious street. When you reach the Newtownards Road at the Prince Albert Bar you keep travelling, past Freedom Corner and the Short Strand until you cross the Queen’s Bridge into the city. But that’s not how it used to be. Many people on the Road still have stories of what this place used to be like. The busy shops, the teeming crowds of men in dark coats and flat caps making their way to Dee Street and the bridge into the shipyard. The sense of community identity that was expressed in church attendance and summer parades and the always enormous outputs of the Empire’s industrial heartland. Nowadays, the shopping is transient, the pound shops replace the take-aways to be replaced in their turn by another pound shop. Those crowds that are on the street are no longer congregations on the way to worship in one of the Road’s many churches, but customers on the way to their local bar for a night out. The pavements and fencing and the metal grilles on the windows of ordinary homes also bear testimony to a history of conflict and division. Short Strand, a small, beleaguered Catholic community, is 149

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surrounded on three sides by so-called ‘peace walls’. And opposite the doctor’s surgery and within a stone’s throw of the Strand, is a loyalist memorial garden, commemorating the shooting dead of two Protestant residents and the wounding of twenty-eight others from the area in an IRA action in 1970. That said, things are beginning to look up. The recent announcement of £23m of lottery funding for the Connswater Community Greenway has raised spirits. The local East Belfast Partnership Board is developing a number of masterplans for the area that are ambitious in scope and which promise the transformation of the community. In the meantime significant developments on the doorstep, like the fabled Titanic Quarter and the Scirocco Quays project, mean that the borders of the community will experience significant physical, social and economic enhancement. If the inner east Belfast community is to benefit in any way from the host of developments it is imperative that things change there too. In advance of all this promised change, though, it seems that a sad narrative of discord and division has been built into the physical environment of the area, and that the hurt and pain of decades is anchored to the hearts of the residents of this proud community. The traditional way of dealing with this conflict is often a paternalistic effort to adjust attitudes and values: change the prevailing views, which prefer violence, and peace will inevitably ensue. In this chapter I want to ask the question whether or not the renewal of the physical environment can create the conditions to enhance relationships and connections between conflicted communities and lead to a change in behaviour. In doing so, I also want to examine the intentions behind one such development in east Belfast, the Skainos Project, which I happen to be involved in, and whose architecture is a deliberate contribution to reconciliation in the community.

A city built on division The conflicted history of Belfast has been at least partially responsible for the lack of a city identity among the population and a strong

Building Space: Regeneration and Reconciliation 151 sense of local community identity. This is reflected, for instance, in people from Belfast being more likely to self-identify as being from Ardoyne or the Shankill than to admit to being from the city, and also to the relative lack of widespread support for Belfast’s attempt to become the European Capital of Culture in 2008. To change this fixed story requires acts of imagination, determination and vision which will help reshape our view of the city. As Watson writes: ‘Stories of the city and its public spaces as dangerous, dead or dull, or as sites of exclusion, marginalization and violence . . . contribute to, and produce, the very conditions that they describe . . . But new stories of public space as life-enhancing, exciting, safe and inclusive . . . can take us far in creating those spaces in just that way’ (Watson 2006:7). One on-going study concerned with these issues is the ‘The Urban Environment – Mirror and Mediator of Radicalisation?’ at the University of Manchester (http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/archi tecture/research/radicalisation/). The project is inspired by the assumption that societal polarization (including political radicalisation), is not a non-spatial or non-material phenomenon. It takes place in streets, apartments, shops or parks and it is materially reflected in features like fences, buildings and territorial markers. But walls, bridges and buildings also exert a gravitational pull on people’s perception and behaviour, for example the decision which playground to prefer, where to hide in the event of trouble and the likelihood of meeting ‘others’. In short, social conditions and urban environments shape each other, suggesting that space and behaviour might be in a continuous dialogue. An interim study report highlighted: ‘we have adopted nuanced ideas of space, place and city, where the relation of causality (of radicalisation) does not go unilaterally from the physical to the social, but instead is a

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multifaceted interaction between both. This is reflected in the definition of the city not as a passive container in which social phenomena simply happen, and not as an imposing foreground driving social forces, but as a terrain through which the social is constantly negotiated’. Through this lens the physical urban environment is seen as a terrain with the potential to influence conflict. Here it is the mediating role of built environment professionals, such as planners and architects, who can both ignite and pacify conflict or potential radicalisation: ‘planning . . . can help build trust and understanding across communities, reshaping not only the physical but the social and political geography of the city’ (Brand et al 2008: 4).

Creating shared space In another study, conducted by Gaffikin et al. for Belfast City Council (Gaffikin et al. 2008), to examine the role of public space in Belfast, and in particular its contribution to building a shared city, the authors argue that shared space could not simply be declared, yet must be created deliberately and intentionally, and often ‘won’ from those in support of separatism. They write, ‘It was crucial to create contrasts, pre-figurative spaces, or what Lederach referred to as ‘permanent pilots’, places that illustrated the viability of alternatives to divisive segregations and created new norms about integrated city living. Otherwise Belfast was in danger of settling for a few major shared spaces as tokens of its declared ambition for a shared future’ (ibid: 24). Without such ‘pre-figurative spaces’, they say, those in favour of creating a shared city were vulnerable to the forces lined up in opposition whose strongest persuaders were the ingrained suppositions and assumptions that change was impossible and the division caused by tribal allegiances was immutable.

Building Space: Regeneration and Reconciliation 153 The report recommends that Belfast City Council should first of all secure the best established shared public realm rather than starting with the most difficult interface areas. Without such a strategy, what they call ‘the ethnic blocs’ (ibid: 25) would determine the spatial and social outcomes. They describe this approach as ‘incrementalism’: ‘Extension of shared space in Belfast involves the creation of contrasts to the ‘ethnic norm’ via ‘pilots’ of alternatives. Such a strategy is best delivered through a systematic approach based on (a) incrementalism: that starts with securing the centre and waterfront for integrated living; moves out to tackle the symbols, flags, emblems and other barriers on arterial routes that mark them as ethnic territory rather than the public peaceful right of way that they should be; and then follows through with the neighbourhoods adjoining the arterial routes and (b) principled opportunism: while it is generally unwise to seek to remove walls etc. in the most tense interface areas first, there may arise opportunities for action which should be taken to offer demonstration of what is both desirable and feasible’ (ibid: x). Leaving aside the conceit inherent in such a strategy, they do recognize the risk that the creation of new areas like the Titanic Quarter could result in the ‘plantation’ of a city within the city, ‘gentrified and rarefied’ (ibid: 29). This risk is simply to swop the divisions based on ethnic or political identity for those rooted in social class which, in the end, may prove even more corrosive to civic society. Though the authors recognize that sectarianism can often masquerade as localism, it seems that the more deprived areas of the city, which are usually the most segregated, must await the trickledown effect of a strategy designed to create shared space. Nevertheless the report is helpful in advocating a strategy to confront the contested nature of space and social life in the city. The authors write:

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‘the “public realm” needs to become a space where remaining difference can be navigated and negotiated peaceably; where old borders and boundaries are blurred; and where in a more porous, fluid, shifting “dialogic space”, the pluralities, hybridity and multiple identities of a complex diverse world offer an alternative to the fundamentalisms of fixed identity. The safe spaces that will help shape these new conversations will not magically transform enmity into amity. However, they may transform antipathy into empathy, offering a more widespread civic capacity to engage, and sometimes even robustly contest, with “the other” within a public ethos of trust, respect and reciprocity’ (ibid: 32). The issues raised in this report are profoundly theological and should be of interest and concern to any Christian community interested in the life and the development of Belfast. There is a formidable challenge, though, to find ways to animate faith communities for engagement in the physical development of the city. By framing the issues in terms of justice and fairness, or by debating the capacity or role of the built environment in the transformation of enmity to amity, which are familiar concepts to Christians albeit in a changed context, such issues can be placed on the agenda of our churches. Furthermore, to the extent that Christians have an interest in architecture and construction, perhaps we should be thinking of our spaces and places as part of the civic realm of the city with the capability of being or becoming those ‘pre-figurative spaces’ or ‘permanent pilots’. As such, our spaces will point to something enduring beyond the mere bricks and mortar, and by their presence and usage in the city stand as viable alternatives to the compelling narrative of division. In Christian terms it mean our buildings are genuinely and intentionally sacred space which exist for more than just the sake of the faithful. They can also play a key role in creating shared space for the sake of the whole city.

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Sacred space and shared space The Skainos Project emerges from the belief that the space we inhabit is both shaped by us and shapes us – in Tim Gorringe’s memorable phrase our buildings eventually ‘ensoul’ us (Gorringe 2002: 38) – and the conviction that good public space can help build trust and understanding and thus be a contributor to reconciliation. In theological terms, we believe that space can have sacramental import. In his book Cadences of Home, Old Testament Theologian Walter Brueggemann argues that the liturgical texts of the Torah were a priestly response to the crisis of the presence of God. The recovery of sacrament, he says, was a means to ‘host the holy’ in an otherwise profane context. God was not – could not – be present everywhere in the exilic context, but He was present in the sacramental life. For this reason, people would come to the Holy Place in order to come into the presence of that which is precluded in every other place (Brueggemann 1997: 8, 38). Philip Bess also uses the rubric of sacrament, which he describes as an action or object in which the sacred is present, to describe how places and objects become sacred. He argues that both space and the objects that define and occupy it, are always at least potentially sacred in either a present or an anticipatory sense (Bess 2006: 65): Sacred presence: in terms of epiphanies such as Job (38:1ff) or Isaiah (6.1ff), Jacob (Gen. 28:10ff) or Moses (Exo 3.1ff). Such places are made sacred not by the work or choice of individual human beings but by the sovereign choice of the Sacred to make a revelation in and through them. In this sense human beings lack the power to make spaces and objects sacred. Sacred anticipation: spaces and objects may be made sacred when they are offered up (sacrificed) by human beings to the Sacred in the hope of their sanctification. Such a sacrificial action may be made in the sense of self-restraint or in the sense of lavish care and attention to the works of our minds and hands.

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There are therefore two poles, sacred presence (leading to the veneration of shrines) and sacred anticipation (expressing itself in the building of glorious cathedrals). But between these extremes are a myriad of sacred places which are defined by a history of either encounter or sacrifice, which Bess describes as ‘sacred call’ and ‘human response’. Sacred presence does allow, of course, for a revelation of the sacred in a mundane place like a car park or a shopping centre, for God always chooses to appear on His own terms. This is not to say though that therefore all shopping centres or car parks are intrinsically holy places. In fact, the likelihood is that if this did happen in such a place we would probably act much as Peter did at the transfiguration and seek to build a shrine in commemoration (Matt. 17:4). Sacred anticipation, however, allows for the possibility that we could, in fact, build a sacred place as a response or an offering. Such sacred places are needed, Bergsma might argue, for the sake of all our other spaces. He disagrees with those who say that sacred places should not be distinguished from common spaces because to do so limits the sacred to distinct times and places, and denies its influence on the entirety of life. Rather, he says, the removal of the distinction of sacred place has not led to the sanctification of all space, but to its profanation – now no place is sacred. Instead he describes the relationship between sacred and common space using the concept of ‘first-fruits’ (Bergsma 2007). In Romans 11:16 Paul writes that ‘if the first-fruits are holy, so is the whole batch of dough’. What is significant here, Bergsma argues, is that the offering of the first-fruits was regarded as sanctifying the whole harvest. In the rest of Scripture the principle of first-fruits is extended to Sabbath, by which we sanctify each day of the week (Gen. 2:1–3), to the Tabernacle, by which the whole Israelite camp was sanctified (Exod. 40) and to the tithe on material goods, by which blessing was brought upon one’s entire wealth (Mal. 3:7–12). In extending this principle to the dedication of time, space and material goods to God, there are profound implications for our

Building Space: Regeneration and Reconciliation 157 church buildings. By sacrificially setting aside space dedicated to God, we are seeking to extend the blessing of God on the whole. This is a fascinating extension of Bess’s concept of sacred anticipation. The argument therefore would be that our communities, urban, suburban and rural, need our sacred places as the promise of blessing for the whole community. These places, as well as the communities that worship in them, exist as a foretaste of the eschatological blessing, or shalom, that awaits the whole creation. Far from seeking to blend in with the surrounding architecture we should be deliberate in the creation of a different order of place: a place which, when entered, brings one into an alternative way of experiencing time and space, which opens one to the possibility of encounter with the Sacred, whose walls are soaked in the stories, prayers and songs of a community over generations and which testifies to the transformative power of the Gospel. It is the contention of those involved in the Skainos Project that the development is more than simply a stage upon which the dramas of life in east Belfast are played out. The architecture itself can have its own part in the play, interacting in creative ways with the community and the clients who use the space and with the rest of the physical environment of the area. The aim is to create, not neutral space, whose purpose is contact, but shared space, whose goal is engagement (Brand et al. 2008: 5). But first, a word about the context into which the Skainos development will emerge.

Inner East Belfast – the context East Belfast is reputed as a more prosperous area of the city. While this is true of parts of east Belfast, the reputation is based upon a time when that area was the industrial engine that drove the economy of Northern Ireland. High-density terraced housing served the thousands of workers from the nearby manufacturing companies. Churches were filled and there was a vibrant economy. Today, however, east Belfast is a post-industrial area afflicted by a number of serious problems. According to the Professor Noble

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Multiple Deprivation Indicators, inner east Belfast is home to two of the ten most deprived electoral wards in the whole of Northern Ireland. There are considerable pockets of deprivation even in wards that give the impression of economic prosperity and security. The area lacks good health, family cohesion and information. The neighbourhood’s children are afflicted with higher than average levels of disability, and lone parents run a high number of the area’s households. The community is largely dependent on government benefits, but many face unnecessary disadvantages because they are unaware that they qualify to receive these benefits. Educational underachievement is rife in east Belfast. Schools continue to experience falling enrolment due to lack of redevelopment, and buildings are in disrepair. Teachers suffer from low morale, and schools lack continuity of resources targeted at specific needs. On the last census day only five per cent of the population aged 16–74 years in Ballymacarrett Ward had degree level or higher qualifications.

A short history of conflict In both 2001 and 2002, from May-November in each year, inner east Belfast experienced considerable community unrest centred round the Cluan Place/Clandeboye and the Madrid Street interfaces. Shots were fired and five people injured, rioting was intense, countless petrol bombs were thrown and dozens of people forced from their homes and relocated. In late 2002 Madrid Street was cut in two by the erection of a security gate which has not opened since. During the winter months of both years community representatives sought to establish some firm ground upon which to build relationships. Mediation Northern Ireland were invited to act as mediators and helped establish a phone network for early intervention in unrest. Tensions remained high, however, and relationships were fragile,with the result that all attempts to prevent ongoing community unrest floundered. The impact of these two years of disturbance continues to leave

Building Space: Regeneration and Reconciliation 159 its mark on relationships in the area. Regular outbreaks of unrest, though more sporadic and less intense today, ensure that living conditions for residents remain strained. Antisocial behaviour at the interface continues, and though community activists believe it to be more of an outlet for disaffected youth, there is still a sectarian dimension. The difference now is that both communities are seeking to respond in a coordinated and agreed fashion. It has been a long journey since the dark days of 2001/2 but progress is being made. Some of the key milestones on the way have been: O

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the establishment of the Inner East Forum in June 2001 bringing together community organizations, churches, statutory groups and residents of the loyalist areas of inner east. This helped coordinate the community interventions of the loyalist community, and ultimately provided an appropriate partner for the Short Strand Community Forum, something which, to this point, had been absent. In the summer of 2001 proximity talks between delegated representatives from Short Strand and inner east were facilitated by Mediation Northern Ireland. Autumn 2001 saw the establishment of an early intervention phone network which was designed to provide a fast response network to violence at the interfaces. This network collapsed in 2005 due to the pressure of on-going violence. A contact group was established with representatives from the Inner East Forum and the Short Strand Forum to sustain contact between the communities. In March 2002 the Inner East Forum secured funding to remove offensive graffiti that had appeared around the interface. This developed into a programme of removal of loyalist wall murals and their replacement with murals of social, cultural and historical significance. At least one of these murals was designed by school children from both sides of the interface. Summer 2002 saw more serious rioting.

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In autumn 2002 a gate was erected at Madrid Street cutting off a key route into and out of Short Strand. The Community Safety Group was established by loyalists in January 2003 to respond to community fears at the interface and to liaise with Short Strand on peaceful alternatives. In April 2005 the Mediation NI phone network, which had limped along for the previous year or more, was finally disbanded and a new, locally-managed phone network was established. For the first time local residents coordinated the network. In September 2005, serious unrest led to the suspension of the phone network. In April 2006 an economic group was established to examine economic issues affecting east Belfast. Membership was drawn from the Inner East Forum and the Short Strand Forum. Continued unrest at the interface and ongoing disputes over parades made relationships tense in the second half of 2006. In July 2007 a joint Short Strand/Inner East Forum group was established to look at the issue of parading in east Belfast. In Oct 2008, a joint conference was organized looking at antisocial behaviour in east Belfast. In November 2008, Short Strand community representatives came out on to the Newtownards Road to condemn the defacing of a loyalist memorial by youths from Short Strand. In December 2008, Short Strand Forum hosted members of the Inner East Forum for breakfast in the Short Strand community centre.

Skainos theology The name ‘skainos’ has provoked interest and curiosity. Where did it come from? What does it mean? How is the word pronounced? First the easy one; it’s pronounced ‘skay-nos’, or at least that’s how we pronounce it, and it’s actually derived from the original Greek translations of the New Testament. Its literal meaning is ‘tent’ and it is used in connection with the incarnation in John 1:14 whose

Building Space: Regeneration and Reconciliation 161 plain translation is ‘the Word became flesh and pitched a tent among us’. It was chosen as a name for the project, although it is a little obscure, because it expresses the hope of regeneration and renewal for that part of Belfast centred on East Belfast Mission (EBM), and has proven itself sufficiently elastic to bear the development of the project over ten years to date. Giving a project a name is, in some ways, no less important than naming a child. There is a similar long gestation period in which the ‘parents’ live with the prospect of newness, trying to imagine what it will be like, and there is the emotional investment in wanting to name it appropriately. Partly this involves trying out the name to see how comfortable it would feel with the years. But we were also concerned to construct a ‘theology’ for the project. We were convinced even at an early stage that this project could be much more than bricks and mortar: it could actually stand as a visible sermon in the community. To do this we would have to try something different for this community – to integrate our theology into the design and construction, to give it flesh, so to speak. In this way it could speak of our long-term commitment to stick with this community through thick and thin, and express our confidence for the future. It would also speak of God’s miraculous provision. A strong concept in the name would guide the architect in designing features of the buildings which would point to things beyond the mere concrete. Furthermore, having the development as a visual aid, and a name that supports and underpins it, would help to explain why we do what we do. We avoided naming the development after people, alive or dead. Nor did we propose names that link the development to this locality, i.e. east Belfast, Ballymacarrett or Newtownards Road, in large part because we wanted to set new aspirations for the community and to foster new imagination of what could be. The name for the development therefore was deliberately and consciously abstract. It communicates a desire to be a living, vital presence in this part of Belfast. For some, it will be literally their home, but it is also

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intended to be a place where people of all communities find a warm welcome and where they feel valued and safe. The name also serves as a reminder that though buildings and facilities are important, even vital, the real focus is on what happens within those buildings. So calling a steel and stone edifice a tent helps subvert the temptation to glory in buildings, and it reminds everyone of the importance of the people who enter them and live in them. Finally, the word is used in Greek translations of the Old Testament to describe the Tent of Meeting, the place where God lived. It was the place to which the Israelites went in order to encounter God.

Reconciliation by design It is important to acknowledge that the foundation of the Skainos Project rests on firm theological bedrock. It emerged from the interest of a local Methodist community to move its long-established and successful venture in EBM on to a new plane. It is not necessary, however, for all those engaged with Skainos, whether as funders, clients, staff, volunteers or board, to assent to that theology, much less be formal adherents. Indeed, over the course of its history EBM has been committed to finding common cause with individuals and agencies who themselves are committed to improving conditions for those living in east Belfast. The Skainos ‘tent’ should be big enough to include all those who share its vision to create a new shared space ‘urban village’ in inner east Belfast, free of the traditional territorial markings, through the redevelopment of a two-acre brownfield site on the Newtownards Road between Dee Street and Templemore Avenue, which according to Belfast City Council is one of the most run-down and neglected areas of Belfast and one which has suffered greatly as a result of the Troubles. This village, built round a specially created new street with a village square, will model new approaches to economic activity, training and education, access to services, housing and community interaction, including that between the traditional communities in Northern

Building Space: Regeneration and Reconciliation 163 Ireland and the new ethnic minority communities in east Belfast. The heart of the village is a range of strategically chosen partners in a suite of buildings, sharing the ethos of Skainos to normalize life for all communities in the area. Thus, with a birth to death approach to life in east Belfast, the Skainos Project will provide safe spaces within which people of the traditional communities of Northern Ireland will encounter one another in the ordinary activities of everyday: nursery care for infants and children, social activities for older people, education and training, shopping, job search, worship, youth work, even living as neighbours in the social and private housing on site. It is Skainos’ contention that the building of the Skainos Project is in itself a contribution to normalizing community relations in east Belfast. The Skainos development achieves this by creating an infrastructure around which to build strong relationships and a shared future. It also does this by creating this space in a previously conflicted community, rather than the strategy of Gaffikin et al, to begin in the previously best-established public realm areas before radiating out to the interface areas. Skainos is a bottom-up approach to reconciliation, rather than trickle-down. Of course, at the time of writing it is an aspiration since the project has not been completed, but nevertheless there have been some positive advances. In what follows I would like to detail three developments which have been occasioned by the concrete reality of significant capital investment. One is a governance issue, the second is a design feature and the third is a matter of practice. 1. Though the project emerged from the well established work of EBM, the Mission recognized that if the best aspirations of Skainos were to be realized this ownership of and engagement in the project needed to be widened. In January 2005 a social enterprise called Skainos Ltd was incorporated with charitable status. The Board of the company included EBM representatives and two trustees from the Methodist Church in Ireland (who held legal rights to some of the land). Oaklee Housing Association, which

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owned some of the development land, also had representation. But Methodist representatives were not in the majority since the Board featured community representatives, including one from Short Strand. Two years later the representation from Short Strand was to double. EBM deliberately pursued a strategy of sharing ownership, which expressed itself in a ‘giving away’ or relinquishing of possession, in order to seek partnership and build lasting relationships. Such transparent surrender, while risky, was deemed necessary to maximizing the impact of Skainos in creating shared space. 2. The central feature of the design of the project is a new civic square for the city. From the beginning the development was envisaged as creating a new street in inner east Belfast which was untouched by the history of conflict. No flag would ever have flown, no kerbstones had ever been painted in community colours and no atrocity had ever been committed, giving this new street an opportunity to be genuinely shared space. Secondly, as part of scheme design, the new square would be fully serviced with power and water which would facilitate a range of public outdoor events such as live music, markets and fairs, thereby providing gathering space, in neutral territory, for the local community, but also orienting the inner east community to the rest of the city and region. Where previously there was no reason to enter or to stop in inner east, Skainos could now be a destination site. By increasing the porousness of the community, it widens the community’s range of influences and interests and makes it less introverted and less threatening to those from outside, and helps it contribute to making Northern Ireland an outward-looking region. Thirdly, the square will need to be named and the intention is to involve the whole community in the process. Skainos has retained a local artist whose role it will be to work with local people on the design and production of public art and in the naming of the square. Skainos has pursued the design process in another conscious act of relinquishment – the space is being given over to

Building Space: Regeneration and Reconciliation 165 the community. The new square does not make commercial sense in the development as a whole; indeed the shared costs across the whole project have been increased substantially in the attempt to design this feature to the highest standards possible. Nevertheless, the square is designed as the centrepiece to the development and the key to its function as shared space. 3. At a practice level Skainos encouraged EBM and Short Strand Forum to begin an engagement period in advance of construction. This was designed to break down barriers between the communities in anticipation of how Skainos would function when complete. After a number of discussions during the summer of 2009 there followed a series of public debates, jointly organized and hosted in turns by both groups. The debates focused on contentious and difficult issues but were framed in the context of an exploration of difference. During the autumn and winter an average of sixty people from both communities attended debates on political identity, understanding of history, policing and parading. When this series was completed, and following a successful joint funding application to the EU Peace III programme, a series of local workshops was initiated throughout 2010/11 seeking to explore issues of shared concern including education, infrastructural development in east Belfast and the policing and justice debate. The programme also includes a series of residentials for those most directly involved in conflict. The prospect of a major capital development on the doorstep of this divided community has provided the catalyst for new relationships and the examination of difference and commonalities. This in its turn will contribute to ensuring Skainos when completed will have the desired impact.

Conclusion There is no doubt that in inner east Belfast, community relationships have progressed from the extreme lows of 2001/02. Deep-seated

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adverse social conditions continue to be a factor, however, in the rise of antisocial behaviour, despite the best efforts of both communities to tackle that behaviour. Furthermore, the trust that has developed in the last decade has been given slowly by both sides and is not evenly shared through both communities, evidenced by the continuing discomfort felt on entering the ‘territory’ of the other. Residents and community workers still speak of ‘loyalist east Belfast’ and ‘Short Strand’ rather than ‘Ballymacarrett’ which indicates that space is still contested. The funding that trickles into the community still tends to be short-term and interventionist in nature rather than developmental or systemic. It is into this context that Skainos is seeking to have an impact on the community’s view of itself. It is the deliberate fashioning of shared space in inner east Belfast, and the value base of the agencies that are strategically chosen to inhabit this space, which is the project’s distinctive contribution to a shared future in Belfast. Skainos’ intention is to be a pre-figurative space, in the heart of one of Belfast’s conflicted communities, paying witness to new possibilities for the transformation of relationships in and through the transformation of space.

References Bergsma, J. (2007) ‘First-fruits and the Sanctification of Space’, Sacred Architecture, 7, Fall/Winter, 20. Bess, P. (2006) Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architecture, Urbanism and the Sacred, Delaware: ISI Books. Brand, R. and Fregonese, S. and Coaffe, J. (2008) The Urban Environment – Mirror and Mediator of Radicalisation? Study Report, University of Manchester. Brueggemann, W. (1997) Cadences of Home: Preaching among Exiles, Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press. Gaffikin, F., McEldowney, M., Rafferty, G. and Sterrett, K. (2008) Public Space for a Shared Belfast, a research project for Belfast City Council, Belfast City Council. Gorringe, T. (2002) A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, Redemption, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Watson, S. (2006) City Publics: The (Dis)enchantments of Urban Encounters, London: Routledge.

Chapter 9

Rewriting Our Stories: Narrative, Identity and Forgiveness David McMillan

Introduction It is difficult, and not altogether helpful, to discuss forgiveness in abstract conceptual terms in the context of community conflict. Inevitably, any discussion about forgiveness will emerge from, be rooted in and address real historical events in the life of an individual or a community. Such events can, and often do, have very profound effects upon individuals and communities and can alter the whole course of an individual’s or a community’s life. Therefore, getting a balance between addressing the conceptual issues of forgiveness and the practical outworking and implications of forgiveness in a context of conflict is never going to be a simple matter. However challenging the task, it is essential. Without it we are condemned to live in a destructive cycle of recrimination, blame and vengeance. We owe a great deal to those from a variety of disciplines who have carried this discussion into the public arena, but it is clear from the present state of the political process and community relations in Northern Ireland that reconciliation remains more of an aspiration than a reality1. In this chapter I want to consider first the possibility that when the Christian churches encourage forgiveness in personal and public life they are not merely addressing a religious practice or moral imperative but engaging also in the highly stressful business of asking people to renegotiate their sense of identity. The possibility arises 167

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precisely because the identity of the individual or community and the values it comes to cherish are constructed as part of an unfolding and evolving narrative. If identity is conceived of as an on-going construction, such as a wall or a building, then to revisit the building blocks or foundations of that narrative construction with the tools of forgiveness may be perceived as leading to the removal of key components of the structure and weakening the entire edifice. Little wonder that forgiveness is such a challenging concept. Who among us willingly risks undermining our own sense of identity or that of the community within and over against which our sense of identity is shaped and safeguarded? This leads to my second concern, which is to ask to what degree the Christian churches are willing to model the process of forgiveness and to be willing, if necessary, to rewrite or rediscover their own cultural, political and social identity.

Identity and interpretation The debates, disputes and disagreements between the communities over the years have served to highlight the reality of the social construction of identity. Catholic children were no more born with a genetic disposition to throw stones at the police than Protestant children were born with a genetic disposition to join the UDA. That some did, and still do, is due to their nurture within families and communities who have interpreted past and present events in a particular way and for particular reasons2. The sense of justice or injustice that issues in confrontation or violence is not as objectively based as the protagonists would passionately proclaim to any available TV camera or reporter’s dictaphone. This is not to say that the pain is manufactured or the passion is artificial – far from it. It is to assert, however, that the response to any action on the part of the other community, be it verbal or violent, is heard and read within the context of a historically effected consciousness (Gadamer, 1976), which has neither the luxury nor capacity to interpret statements or actions with unprejudiced objectivity. Much is made of the historical shaping of our traditions within communities and it is celebrated in story, song, marches and

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commemorations. However, there persists – on the basis of the unchallenged nature of our own sense of identity within a tradition – the belief that the judgments made of others are capable of untarnished truthfulness and crystal-clear objectivity. Whether we like it or not, the past functions both as tradition and prejudice. Recognition of an inherent lack of objectivity provides a significant challenge to the way a sense of identity is owned and demands a measure of humility in the judgment of others. In the context of conflict and its attendant insecurity, it is understandable that historically-shaped identities with their attendant values and virtues become more important and critical to the maintenance of community life. Each hurt experienced becomes bound into the process of self-justification, each hurt inflicted becomes rationalized as necessary for survival. Identity is forged and reshaped through the interpretation of events and experience, and the interpretation of events and experience is firmly located within that very identity. A perfect hermeneutical circle is established within which forgiveness, if not rejected as inappropriate, lies dormant between the pages of religious texts to be spoken of within the context of personal salvation and relationships within each community. Forgiveness is perceived as having little or nothing to do with attitudes to the other side because the issues of injustice, truth (as we perceive it) and survival trump forgiveness in the context of conflict. This is all very understandable, but indefensible within the context of a Christian world view. If we acknowledge both that identities are historically conditioned and that experience can only be interpreted from within limited horizons, then by any standard of reasonableness it must be acknowledged that assistance from outside a tradition is required in coming to some measured judgments and opinions on our own actions and the intentions of others. What shape that assistance might take and how it might reshape a sense of identity we will return to after some consideration of the nature of forgiveness.

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Forgiveness From the religious tract distributed on the street corner that urges the individual to seek the forgiveness of God to sociological and psychological academic papers, the themes of forgiveness and reconciliation have featured significantly in the life of the community. However, there seem to be as many views on what constitutes forgiveness as there are contributions on the subject. Is forgiveness to be unconditional, is repentance a requirement before the offer of forgiveness should be made, is forgiveness about the therapeutic benefits for the victim or is it a religious/moral imperative for the Christian, or both? Is forgiveness a process, an event, a state of mind or attitude, an undermining of justice and possibly even a betrayal of the memory of the dead? Is forgiveness only ever meaningfully extended from person to person, can a community forgive, can a community be forgiven, can a government apologize for the actions of others in the past, does forgiveness show weakness in the face of an onslaught and, critically for our consideration, does it undermine the sense of identity held by a community? It is clear that the potential for discussion on the issue to be at cross purposes is enormous, and clarifying the terms of a discussion on the subject of forgiveness is clearly essential. In his essay ‘Forgiving Enemies in Ireland’ Nigel Biggar (2008) considers, from a Christian perspective, whether the forgiveness of enemies can find appropriate political expression. His starting point for the discussion is an account of his own understanding of what constitutes forgiveness, in which he argues that there are two distinct moments in forgiveness which he calls ‘compassion’ and ‘absolution’. Biggar is concerned that the conflation of these two moments causes at best confusion and at worst harm to victim and offender, never mind the undermining of justice. Taking neither the view that forgiveness should be offered unconditionally nor that it is conditional on repentance, Biggar argues that his two-stage theory of compassion and absolution better fits with both ‘. . . a Christian and responsible process of reconciliation’ (ibid: 561). His concept of ‘compassion’ is shorthand for a process of developing sympathy


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for the perpetrator, a care for one’s own soul and a commitment to reconciliation, all of which is unconditional on the response of the offender. His concept of ‘absolution’ is the extension of forgiveness to the offender once they demonstrate repentance. ‘Compassion’ and ‘absolution’ taken together, whenever that is possible, constitute a meaningful expression of reconciliation. Reflecting a certain situational realism, Biggar (ibid: 575) argues that the primary need is for the ‘. . . composite virtue of grateful, hopeful patience’ in charting a course through the fragmented and uncertain state of ‘coexistence’ or ‘accommodation’ that prevails in Northern Ireland at present. Whilst Biggar (2001: 216) is cautious about the concept of ‘political’ forgiveness, he does suggest it is appropriate that in taking responsibility for our own failings ‘. . . beyond exercising the virtue of forgiveness-as-compassion for enemies, maybe we could risk discriminate confession and repentance and apology’ (Biggar 2008: 577). Perhaps such action may act as a spur to encourage mutual confession and some movement towards reconciliation even if there exists the possibility of such vulnerability being exploited. There is no doubt that any discussion of forgiveness in a political context is fraught with difficulty and a certain caution is appropriate. Legitimate caution can, however, become the refuge of the unwilling. Awareness of this danger seems to propel Porter (2003) to argue doggedly for a vision of reconciliation that extends far beyond a mere non-violent coexistence. Such a vision highlights the need for civic virtues which are essential ‘. . . if we are to be snapped out of ways of thinking and acting that restrict our capacity to envisage a society that is good for us all’ (ibid: 100). Porter identifies the core civic virtues to be cultivated if reconciliation is to be achieved as forgiveness, magnanimity and reasonableness. In Porter’s scheme of things forgiveness is essential in the healing of intercommunal divisions. Following the approach of Hannah Arendt, Amstutz (2003) sees forgiveness as a legitimate means of addressing moral wrongdoing, not least because it is not possible to unpick the fabric of community life and experience woven in the context of war and

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atrocity. From this perspective political forgiveness is very much to be desired, however difficult it may be to define and deliver. It is clear from the brief consideration of the views briefly outlined above that the basis of an approach to forgiveness in the political and social realm can vary significantly. Forgiveness can be thought of as a necessary civic virtue, an alternative to corrective justice, a moral ideal but not a duty3, solely the preserve of individuals who have been wronged or of communities which, while not being ‘moral persons’, can be thought of as possessing ‘moral agency’ (ibid: 12). The variety of moral, therapeutic or religious approaches to the issue of forgiveness4 can provide a rich kaleidoscope of concepts and possibilities which, not unlike caution, can become the refuge of inaction. The focus of this essay is on the role and responsibility of churches in the Northern Ireland context, which dictate that the approach to the matter will be primarily theological, and in that context David Tombs’ (2008: 589) response to Biggar’s essay rightly argues that, however attractive Biggar’s ethical even-handedness may appear, ‘. . . the biblical and theological arguments point more towards an understanding of forgiveness that is unilateral and not conditional on repentance’. Tombs is correct in arguing that forgiveness should be thought of as a unilateral action; however, that assertion needs to be set in the context of conceiving of forgiveness as an essential and distinctive Christian practice. Without trivializing either the extent of devastation victims may experience or denying that the moral energy (Williams, 2008: 583) required to embark on the journey of forgiveness may be beyond the victim, it is forgiveness thought of in these terms which begins to approximate to the kind of practice which makes the life of the Christian community distinctively Christian. McClendon (2002: 231) would argue that it is community practices such as forgiveness that ‘. . . establish the social norms for Christian existence’. The critical practice of forgiveness lies at the heart of the notion of reconciliation with God and forms a core element in the worship of any Christian community, epitomized in the prayer that Jesus gave to the disciples in Matthew 65. Browing and Reed (2004: 93), when reflecting on Jesus’ prayer in Matthew


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6, suggest that, ‘Forgiveness so seen is not a status one achieves; it is rather a life into which one enters’. Whatever disagreements may exist among Christians of various hues it is generally agreed that the church’s engagement in and with the wider community must go beyond verbal declarations of theological concepts and find embodiment in practices which model the discipleship to which we are called. McClendon captures this aspect of vocation in his chapter on ‘The Politics of Forgiveness’ when he says that ‘. . . the call to evangelize and the demand for public Christian witness point to the overflow of the Christian way into action towards and with and for the outsider neighbour’ (2002: 241). However, it is understandable, given the level of pain and hurt experienced in situations of conflict, that the concept of unilateral action on the part of the victim and the unconditional offer of forgiveness seem unrealistic and unreasonable. Furthermore, it is clearly unhelpful and potentially abusive of those who remain fragile and vulnerable as a consequence of conflict that there should be the additional burden of a sense of moral inadequacy, if they are not in a place to contemplate reconciliation or forgiveness of the offender. But the Christian community cannot be credible if it holds to itself and for its own benefit the radical and expansive forgiveness it claims to have experienced by virtue of the grace of God. Even those who would argue that forgiveness is predicated upon repentance have to address the challenge of the prior, unilateral and unconditional movement of God towards humanity in the work of reconciliation. This prior and unconditional movement of God towards us lies at the heart of the Christian celebration of God’s grace and mercy in every denominational tradition. It is not possible, therefore, to escape the question: to what degree is the Christian community prepared to mirror the unilateral action of God and make preparation for forgiveness to be offered prior to, and irrespective of, those who have offended us having a meaningful sense of their wrongdoing, never mind repentance? Granted, as Biggar (2008) suggests, we need to think of forgiveness as two movements: one made by the offended and one by the

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offender, in order to complete the process of forgiveness and bring about reconciliation. However, given the biblical account of God’s work of reconciliation, there needs to be a robust reaffirmation of the Christian calling to act unilaterally and offer unconditional forgiveness as the first step in that process. The biblical account of the action of God in the work of reconciliation can be seen in the threefold action represented by kenosis, incarnation and sacrifice6. While the concept of kenosis (emptying) is in theological debate a much disputed part of the discussion of the nature of the incarnation, it is worth appropriating the term for the purposes of the discussion of forgiveness. If we take the concept of kenosis at its most basic level, irrespective of the ontological debates surrounding the term, it will serve to represent a conscious, unilateral action on the part of God in making forgiveness possible as represented in the humility of Christ as outlined in Philippians 2:6–8: ‘. . . who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross’. This ‘emptying’ or kenosis represents, however it works out in practice, is an attitude of humility that is marked by setting aside all claims and rights for the sake of achieving the reconciliation of those who are estranged. The setting down, or setting aside, is then followed by taking on the nature of the estranged, ‘taking the form of a slave and being born in human likeness’. This action of incarnation is a deliberate, conscious appropriation of the condition of the estranged. It is a conscious decision to live in the other’s skin and situation as part of the process of seeking reconciliation. If it is to be paralleled with empathy, then it is empathy striving for deep understanding and identification. Finally, a complete and total sacrifice ‘. . . even death on a cross’ marks the third stage in the process of creating


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the possibility of reconciliation. Kenosis, incarnation and sacrifice are the stages in the conscious, unilateral and unconditional action of God to bring about a situation of reconciliation. An attitude of humility that sets aside all claims and rights, a conscious decision to live in the other’s skin and situation and the giving of oneself to death for the sake of the estranged summarizes the breathtaking extent of the commitment of God in the work of reconciliation. Considered from this point of view, Biggar’s concept of compassion falls somewhat short of the mark. Seen from this perspective, Jones (1995: 35–69) is surely right to rail against therapeutic notions of forgiveness as a sufficient basis for Christian practice. Furthermore, reflection on the stages of kenosis, incarnation and sacrifice undermines the assertion that in terms of human relationships the offended has no responsibility in the matter until the offender repents. Much as we might wish to assert that the claims of justice absolve us of responsibility to act until such times as justice is satisfied and repentance is expressed, it is just not possible to do so in the light of the biblical account of reconciliation and forgiveness7. While the process of ‘forgiveness’ may not be complete and full reconciliation may not be achieved until such time as the offender comes to terms with their actions and moves towards the offended, it is still the case that the action that was taken on our behalf to make forgiveness possible is the model that is set for us in the invitation to take up the cross and follow. The call to discipleship and the practice of forgiveness is truly, as Fiddes (1989: 174) puts it, an invitation to a painful voyage of forgiveness and a journey of endurance8. The problem before us now is to know how to begin to speak meaningfully of forgiveness in the context of Northern Ireland. Given that the hurts and wrongs of the past form an integral part of the construction of the individual’s and community’s sense of identity and values, coupled with our historically effected consciousness and prejudice, it is very difficult to have any objective grasp of our own contribution to the conflict. Furthermore, the challenge of Christian forgiveness expressed in kenosis, incarnation and sacrifice is to do that which is most threatening and counter-intuitive. The adoption of an

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attitude of humility that sets aside all claims and rights, coupled with a conscious decision to try and live in the other’s situation and the giving of oneself to death for the sake of the estranged, is a huge challenge. However, the solution to the problem may lie in finding alternative ways of thinking about the nature of identity which lessen the sense of threat posed by forgiveness and reconciliation. In addition, the church may yet be able to play a major part in progressing reconciliation within the community if we consider a reappraisal of the role of the church in the practice of forgiveness and consider possible strategies that would embody the practice in the life of the community.

Narrative, identity and forgiveness In his discussion on the relationship between virtues, the human condition and the concept of tradition, MacIntyre (2007: 208) makes the point that ‘Narrative history of a certain kind turns out to be the basic and essential genre for the characterization of human actions’.9 Furthermore, the narrative tends to be both linear and foundationalist, that is to say, we tend to relate to the formation of identity and values through the chronology of events and happenings and these very events and happenings are perceived as the basis on which our identity and values rest. Each new experience is interpreted within the emerging construction of identity, adds a new layer to the edifice of identity and reinforces the values that have come to the fore in the process of the unfolding narrative. This is the case for both the individual and the community, or communities – social, political, religious and familial – to which we belong. If I or my community – ethnic group, party or church – have to revisit a recent or past historical event with the possibility of that event being reinterpreted or altered, it may prove to be very threatening, even if others perceive that it would be for my benefit and liberating. Think, for example, of the person who in adolescent or adult life discovers that they have been adopted as an infant. The story of their identity needs to be radically reappraised. Such an experience can be traumatic. Consider the impact of attempts to bring previously untold aspects


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of a historical narrative in either the life of a family or community to light, such as those who discovered that family members had worked as informers for the secret police once the files were opened after the fall of communism. Consider the impact of radical conversions, mixed marriages, changes in political allegiance in which lives may be radically altered, a family or a tradition abandoned and a new way of constructing identity adopted. Changes such as this can be traumatic for whole family units, former colleagues and members of communities who may now be repudiated. When individuals or communities are exhorted to forgive and be reconciled in the context of historically based community conflict, it must be appreciated that they are being asked to place themselves in the vulnerable position of re-examining their understanding of themselves and their identity and values. The task of making sense of the hurt and pain they have experienced has already involved a binding in of the painful events to the ongoing narrative of their lives, which in turn may have further entrenched not only their view of themselves, but also of the offender. What is more, where that pain or hurt has been absorbed into the narrative of the community to which they belong, to revisit it with the potential of removing it from the structure of the edifice of identity shared by the community risks the wrath of the very community that has bound in the hurt and gathered round to support the victim. It has never been easy for the families of those killed in sectarian attacks to speak of forgiving the killers if those attacks have been perpetrated in the heart of a homogeneous Protestant or Catholic community. Who can forget the outrage within sections of the Protestant community when Gordon Wilson spoke publicly of bearing no ill will towards and praying for those who murdered his daughter, one of eleven who died in the Enniskillen bombing of 1987?10 Clearly, in the context of community conflict, forgiveness is too big an issue to be left to the individual, or the individual family, to carry alone. The shaping of identity does not have to be seen solely in linear and foundationalist terms. Debates in epistemology create other possible ways of thinking, some of which may be helpful when

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considering the construction of identity and the challenge of revisiting constituent elements of identity, not least in the context of forgiveness. Nancey Murphy (1994) engages Quine’s holist theory of knowledge in the context of an exploration of theology, an approach that can usefully be applied to thinking about the construction of identity. Rather than working with a foundationalist model of knowledge, Quine suggested working with one that was more akin to a ‘field of force’ or a network which has at its core key concepts and statements surrounded by a web of information that supports these assertions, with boundary edges that engage or collide with experience. The core remains relatively stable, even though there may be significant experiential challenges and encounters on the boundary as it develops historically. Murphy (1996: 94) characterizes this approach to knowledge as a web or net in which the key to its integrity lies in its capacity to absorb or address ‘recalcitrant experience’ on the boundary to maintain its overall consistency. If within our communities we were able to think of and express our identity in terms of values that form the core of a web or net derived from, surrounded and supported by a historical narrative that recalls the strains and stresses upon and the strengths and achievements of those values, then we may be better able to deal with the contemporary ‘recalcitrant experiences’ which we encounter within community life. At the very least the model can serve as a challenge to our communities to think of identity in terms of defining values rather than land, nationality and hurts11. It provides a means of stepping back and discerning what are our core values, from where they are to be drawn and what kind of people we believe we should be rather than being shaped and moulded as victims of circumstance. More importantly, it can provide a way of addressing the difficult legacy of wrongs perpetrated against us by seeing them as needing to be addressed in line with our core values, so that even bad experiences that we are prepared to meet with forgiveness can reinforce our sense of identity at its core rather than pose a threat. In saying this I am not suggesting that the killing of a family member should be considered


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a mere peripheral incident on the boundary of our experience, an inconvenience at the edge of our web of identity. But, however deep an experience penetrates into the web, the instinctive inclination will be to assimilate the experience and protect the values at the core, however long that process of repair may take. Those communities who would lay claim to Christian values must surely have at their heart the concepts of forgiveness and reconciliation. The direction of travel in this discussion is to consider the degree to which the Christian churches are willing or able to model the process of forgiveness and, if necessary, to rewrite their own cultural, political and social identity as witnesses of Jesus Christ. Of all the various communities to which it is possible to belong, the Christian church more than any other is conscious of the power and centrality of narrative in shaping its identity and determining its relationship with others in the world. While some approaches to theology and ethics may work with abstracted doctrines and principles it has to be acknowledged that the doctrines and principles are rooted in the biblical narrative and ultimately in the narrative of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. McClendon (2002: 342–3), in his response to what he sees as the reductionist approach of propositional ethics, argues that the Gospels are ‘Christian moral narratives’ and serve as moral teaching: ‘. . . by identifying characters (Jesus and the disciples) and a realm or setting (the coming kingdom). These are united by a plot – the gospel story. This story becomes moral demand, moral guidance, moral telos for readers just to the extent that we get the story, recognize the one there called Christ as our Lord, and thus confess ourselves to be among the disciples of the kingdom’. Therefore the primary story that informs the identity, practices and values of Christian churches in any context is not the immediate historical narrative in which they are embedded but the biblical narrative they are called to embody. Furthermore, churches

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themselves, particularly in the form of denominational structures, have to be cognizant of the fact that as institutions they fall prey to the tendency to operate as ‘powers’, and must be prepared to consider to what extent their ‘politics and claims are functions of the creative and redemptive power of God in Christ, and the degree to which these are corruptions of that power’ (ibid: 222).12 There is therefore a need for a constant refocusing on a Christological perspective to maintain core values and constrain the innate tendency of institutions to control and to preserve their own power base within communities. In expressing his vision of the total claim of Christ, Bonheoffer, (1955: 39), speaks of Christ as ‘the centre and strength of the Bible, of the Church and of theology, but also of humanity, of reason, of justice and of culture. Everything must return to Him; it is only under His protection that it can live’. If we take seriously the notion that Christian ethical practice is not driven by ideals or goods but by obedience to Christ, if the vocation of the church is to embody the way of Christ, if we believe Christology is the lens through which we interpret and understand the world and if Christ is the power that holds all things together, then without the church acting in obedience to Christ there is no fit model for the world to resolve apparently intractable problems. There is the need for bold and distinctive models of reconciliation, not least because it is not possible for life in Northern Ireland to continue on the basis of accommodation of different traditions when those traditions have as part of their core completely different political loyalties and aspirations. Surely it is the calling of the church, recognizing its own enthralment to power, to embody as witness the practice of forgiveness through kenosis, incarnation and sacrifice. Bonheoffer’s (ibid: 174) reflection upon the challenge to the church in his own time was that: ‘The only way the church can defend her own territory is by fighting not for it but for the salvation of the world. Otherwise the church becomes a “religious society” which fights in its own interest and thereby ceases to be the Church of God and of the world’.


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In the context of contemplating the church’s responsibility in modelling forgiveness it is worth noting that ‘There is no solitary Christianity. The moral life of Christians is a social life’ (McClendon 2002: 165). Therefore the primary task of the church in regard to forgiveness is not to demand of the individual Christian that they forgive unconditionally, nor even to facilitate forgiving encounters – though this is necessary – but to model as a community the practice of forgiveness through the process of kenosis, incarnation and sacrifice. The traumatized and disorientated individual member of the Christian community will be better enabled to embark on the voyage of forgiveness if they live within the nurture of a community for whom forgiveness is an essential practice. The response to this assertion is likely to be that, should a church declare forgiveness to anyone outside its own community, it would be perceived as nothing more than at best posturing, at worst offensive, high-handed and patronizing, as there is no forgiveness without moral judgement13. This is undoubtedly true. Therefore, we must understand that the task of the churches in regard to the modelling and facilitating of the practice of forgiveness is to seek to discover what unilateral kenosis, incarnation and sacrifice might mean in the current context. It is for the churches to ask of themselves, each other and the increasingly estranged community, what pursuing the process of forgiveness might entail, irrespective of the implications or cost to historic and cultural identity. It is clear that what is not needed to lead the way and foster reconciliation is more structural or doctrinal ecumenism, which may cost little and underplay obvious and legitimate differences, but an ecumenism of values loyal to the Christian vision that override historical events and the preferences and prejudices that have shaped the sense of identity within the estranged communities. It is not doctrine that has been the basis of conflict in the community. No one votes nationalist or republican because Protestants have a lower view of Our Lady and no one votes unionist because of transubstantiation – even though doctrine has been, from time to time, invoked in the cause of politics and division.

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Therefore the question remains: of what are churches prepared to divest themselves to model kenosis and become the engines of reconciliation? How can they begin to live in the skin and situation of those from whom they are estranged? What unilateral action and sacrifice are churches prepared to make, for what are churches willing to die without guarantee of reciprocal response to model the unilateral and unconditional movement of God toward us in kenosis, incarnation and sacrifice? If kenosis, incarnation and sacrifice lead to a divesting of elements of historic identity, does it matter? It may not be popular, it may be resisted, but does it really matter? Do the Protestant churches need to have the courage to put on the public agenda a discussion on the political reconfiguration of relationships on this island rather than preferring to live within the status quo to maintain internal stability and loyalty? Are Protestant churches willing to determine to remove the trappings of the State, its flags and emblems, from within their sanctuaries, not to deny the reality of cultural heritage, but as an affirmation that cultural heritage cannot stand as a defining characteristic of Christian witness? Will the Catholic Church be willing to die or ensure the preservation of its institutional culture, its power practices, through the insistence of educating its young people separately? Is it willing to create the opportunity for the children of Northern Ireland to find one another and grow together in the context of shared values rather than contested pseudo-Christian identities – a challenge which, to be fair, would test the commitment to reconciliation within the Protestant community14. There may be other more critical issues to be addressed than these and clearly there are huge challenges and tensions for those in leadership of church life. The genuine pastoral concern for the communities of faith makes doing anything that would appear to alienate faithful members of the community seem inappropriate and unfair. But what is the choice? It is either to perpetuate and continue to institutionalize division in the community on the grounds of the priority of cultural identity, much as the political arrangement does, or to find a way of leading people to share a sense of identity based on the core values of the Christian vision, whatever the cost. Without


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the church modelling some meaningful expression of kenosis, incarnation and sacrifice there can be little prospect of it maintaining faithful witness to Christ, or of any kind of societal redemption, never mind reconciliation, in Northern Ireland. Notes 1 At the time of writing the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee of the Westminster Parliament published its report on the Consultative Group of the Past Report. While commending the thoroughness of the Report, in their conclusions they state: ‘. . . the controversy that inevitably surrounds any such report is a potent reminder of the depth and extent of the hurt that still disfigures the lives of many in Northern Ireland’ and that, ‘We have reluctantly concluded that there is not enough cross-community consensus at present on many of the issues that the Consultative Group raised for the wide-ranging project that it recommended to succeed’. 2 See McCaughey (1993) for some insightful analysis of the ‘Function of the Story’ in shaping identity in Ireland. 3 Bash (2007, p.86) argues that forgiveness is not a duty but a moral ideal to be pursued when appropriate. In his chapter on ‘The Ideal of Forgiveness’ Bash says (2007, p.104) ‘To forgive is presented as a moral virtue, desirable to do but not mandatory, an ideal to which one should strive’. Bash has some interesting – and it seems not fully reconciled – thinking on the subject of forgiveness and asserts strongly that ‘it is not always morally right to forgive’, (2007, p.101) as circumstances will dictate what should happen, given that moral reasoning is neither deontological or consequentialist. 4 Biggar (2001) provides a chronological summary of theological, philosophical and ethical discussions on, and approaches to, forgiveness through the twentieth century. Bash (2007, pp.27–34) offers a survey of the study of forgiveness starting from the early eighteenth century. 5 Clearly there is considerable discussion over the implication of Matt.6. See, for example, Bash (2007, p.95) and Pokrifka-Joe (2001, p.165–6) for rather different interpretations and implications. 6 Jones (1995, p.120) develops the theme of kenosis in the context of incarnation in his chapter ‘Characterizing the God who forgives’. Jones develops the theme of kenosis as indicative of Jesus’ ministry and his vulnerability to the world of humanity. 7 In his exegesis of Matthew 6:12–15 and 18:23–25, Pokrifka-Joe (2001, p.165–6) argues that the act of forgiving is a necessary condition for an individual to be able to appropriate God’s forgiveness (as distinct from God’s forgiveness being conditional on our forgiving). Furthermore, acts of forgiveness are ‘an essential expression of divine forgiveness already received and an essential condition of the continued and ultimate reception of that divine forgiveness’. 8 Fiddes’ conception of forgiveness as a journey is also helpful in dispelling undue debate about ‘forgetting’ – often wrongly considered as an essential

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constituent of forgiving. Hauerwas (1999, p.28) argues that a Christian conception of reconciliation makes sense not by urging forgetting ‘. . . but by having our memories transformed’ in God’s salvation. The ‘certain kind’ of narrative history is a reference to the process of understanding others’ intentions ‘. . . in causal and temporal order with reference to their role in his or her history; and we also place them with reference to their role in the history of the setting or settings to which they belong’. It seems to me that this understanding can usefully be translated into our discussion on identity as it is perceived and constructed within a tradition. Indeed, MacIntyre’s observation that in making such judgments ‘. . . we ourselves write a further part of these histories’ seems particularly apt. A helpful and concise summary of the varying responses to Gordon Wilson’s comments can be found in the essay by Thomson (2001). This very brief engagement with holism could be extended, as Murphy does (1996, p.100–106), but lies beyond the scope of this essay. McCaughey (1993, p.3) comments in his introduction: ‘. . . the Irish ecclesiastical leadership has been every bit as wily as the Sadducees of Jesus’ time in their efforts to ensure the security and continuity of the cult and its prestige as the national religion’. An observation that could fairly be extended, if only in aspirational terms, to more than one denomination on the island. Shriver (1995, p.7) makes the point that ‘Forgiveness begins with memory and is suffused with moral judgment’. He goes on to state that, ‘For this very reason, alleged wrongdoers are wary of being told that someone ‘forgives’ them. . . . they sense they are being subjected to some moral assessment, and they may not consent to it’. McCaughey (1993) provides, amongst many other valuable insights, an important analysis of the history of education from the time of partition and the implications of the 1930 Education Act. He outlines the role of the Protestant United Education Committee and the Catholic establishment which ensured a system of segregated education in Northern Ireland despite the earlier attempts to provide a non-sectarian education under the terms of the 1923 Education Act. McCaughey’s conclusion is that the churches have failed to act prophetically in this area, preferring to fulfil a more ‘priestly’ function of preserving the role of the churches within the life of the community and the state.

References Amstutz, M. (2003) Forgiveness: making a world of difference, Belfast: ECONI. Bash, A. (2007) Forgiveness and Christian Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Biggar, N. (2001) ‘Forgiveness in the Twentieth Century’ in A. Fadyen and M. Sarot (eds) Forgiveness and Truth, Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Biggar, N. (2008) ‘Forgiving enemies in Northern Ireland’, Journal of Religious Ethics, 36 (4) 559–579.


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Bonhoeffer, D. (1955) Ethics, London: SCM Press. Browning, R. L. and Reed, R. A. (2004) Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Moral Courage, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans. Fiddes, P. S. (1989) Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of Atonement, London: Darton Longman and Todd. Gadamer, H. G. (1976) Philosophical Hermeneutics, California: University of California Press. Hauerwas, S. (1999) A Time to Heal, Belfast: ECONI. House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee (2009) The Report of the Consultative Group on the Past in Northern Ireland, London: The Stationery Office. Jones, G.L. (1995) Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis, Michigan: Eerdmans. MacIntyre, A. (2007) After Virtue: a study in moral theory (3rd edn), London: Duckworth. McCaughey, T. P. (1993) Memory and Redemption: Church, Politics and Prophetic Theology in Ireland, Dublin: Gill & McMillan. McClendon, J. W. (2002) Ethics, Systematic Theology (revised edn), Nashville: Abingdon Press. Murphy, N. (1994) Reasoning and Rhetoric in Religion, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International. Murphy, N. (1996) Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism: How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy Set the Theological Agenda, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International. Porter, N. (2003) The Elusive Quest: Reconciliation in Northern Ireland, Belfast: The Blackstaff Press. Prokrifka-Joe, T. (2001) ‘The Relationship between Divine and Human Forgiveness’, in A. Fadyen and M. Sarot (eds) Forgiveness and Truth, Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Shriver, Jr, D. W. (1995) An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thomson A. (2001) ‘Forgiveness and the Political Process in Northern Ireland’, in A. Fadyen and M. Sarot (eds), Forgiveness and Truth, Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Tombs, D. (2008) ‘Forgiving enemies in Northern Ireland’, Journal of Religious Ethics, 36 (4) 587–593. Williams, S. N. (2008) ‘Forgiving enemies in Northern Ireland’, Journal of Religious Ethics, 36 (4) 581–586.


Chapter 10

Forgiveness Through Post-Traumatic Growth Michael C. Paterson

The 28 September 1981 was a special day. It was my wife’s birthday, the first shared event since we had married three weeks previously. But it was to be a day that changed our lives forever. I was a Constable in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), the police service which had operated in Northern Ireland since the partition of the island of Ireland in 1922. There had been civil unrest from 1969 when ‘the Troubles’ started and by 1981 many people had died and countless numbers had been injured. Sadly the death toll was to continue rising up to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement between political parties on 10 April 1998 in Belfast. I had been posted to west Belfast and had worked there for one week since returning from our honeymoon. I was on an early shift that day, having started at 7.00am. Around 9.30am I was part of a two vehicle patrol and had been designated as ‘Observer’. This meant I travelled in the first vehicle in the front passenger seat and would deal with any calls we went to. The vehicles had half inch steel plate built up as part of the vehicle structure to protect us from various missiles and bullets. As an additional protective measure we travelled in pairs so that one crew could respond if the other vehicle was attacked. I became aware of an explosion to my left, outside the Landrover. My first thought was that it was a blast bomb and we were safe inside 187

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the vehicle. This thought quickly disappeared when I felt pain and looked down to see shredded flesh where my right arm had been. My left arm too had been amputated mid-forearm and my left leg lacerated. I noticed my left foot turned in at ninety degrees and knew straight away that my femur had been smashed. An anti-tank rocket had been fired at our vehicle and had entered through the driver’s door, killing Alex Beck instantly. It flashed across me in a downward direction, leaving a bloodied mess in its wake, before burning out through my door and exploding outside. I was taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital nearby for emergency surgery. The wait seemed like an eternity as our vehicles also came under gun attack. Eventually I was removed carefully from the stricken vehicle by an ambulance crew and whisked off to hospital. After arrival at hospital I was treated by Accident and Emergency staff and rushed to orthopaedic theatre. The surgeons tried to replant my left arm without success but also had to contend with my huge blood loss which resulted in me dying, albeit for a short time. I had the experience of feeling at peace, being present in a white light, but knowing this was not my time to remain there. My next awareness was coming round in the Intensive Care ward that evening, about 6.30pm, and having my family around me. I was aware my arms had been amputated and felt comfortable in that knowledge. I had survived death and have not feared it since. The period post-hospitalization was a difficult one; my life had changed totally. The relationship with my wife Hazel would never be the same again as I was now depending on her in many ways, the job which I loved had now gone, and I could not play rugby any more, a game which I had enjoyed from the age of 11 when I was introduced to it at school. I was left to cope with no hands in a world designed for able-bodied people – just think what it is like for me trying to open vacuum packed or heat-sealed products! I had every right to be angry, and I was. I could not blame myself because I did not fire the rocket but I did blame the IRA. A few months later I was told that seven people had been arrested in an immediate follow-up operation, and that one of them had urinated in his trousers when

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held for a while at Woodbourne police station later that day. That gave me a perverse pleasure at the time. I went through a period of anger and frustration tinged with sadness for the loss of what was. A normal grief reaction but I was faced with the challenges of building a new life. I went on to achieve academically and retrained as a Clinical Psychologist, developing expertise in treating survivors of psychological trauma. As a result of my achievements I was admitted as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth in 2008. The story of my struggle against adversity and lessons learned is recounted in my autobiography which I am currently writing. In the early 1980s the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher, pushed through legislation to prevent the media broadcasting the soundtracks of interviews with representatives of proscribed organisations. The IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein were included in the ‘gagging’. I found that when hearing Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness or Danny Morrison on television I got angry. However, when the news reporter read what the Sinn Fein representative had said I could listen to it without experiencing the same arousal. After a while the media found a way round the ‘gagging’ and employed actors to record what was said by the ‘gagged’ interviewee, using the same intonation and accent as the original. This was superimposed over the filmed interview with a caption ‘Actor’s Voice’. It made a mockery of the government’s strategy but, in a quirky way, was quite funny. I was able to listen to the points being made and remain calm. When the real voices were allowed to be played again I could listen without anger. In 1983 I started at the University of Ulster on a foundation year towards a degree in one of the social sciences. I was thrust into a situation mixing with people who had come from diverse backgrounds, and a number had a hatred for the RUC. By this time I had developed some confidence in myself, having interacted with many people since my injuries two years before. When I met new people at the university I did not know how they would feel towards me; in fact they did not even know anything about me at this stage.

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Over the course of a few months I got to talk with all those in my tutorial group and many others of the 180 entrants. I was open about my background as it would have been unwise to create a cover story which would easily have been discredited. I treated every person with the same respect and, I believe, received this in return. I had no bitterness towards people who may have supported the IRA’s actions – I was not going to ask them about their political orientations. I graduated in 1987 with a Bachelor of Science degree with First Class Honours and went on to study for a Doctor of Philosophy degree at Queen’s University Belfast. In the Department where I worked there were several people who had been brought up in west Belfast. All but one accepted me for who I was and received the same in return. The other person, for whatever reason, was clearly passiveaggressive towards me. I tolerated this, reassuring myself this was his issue and not mine. I was satisfied that I had always acted with integrity in dealing with people and had done nothing for which he could hold me responsible. I had never really reflected on how I felt towards the IRA gang that maimed me and changed my life. In March 1988 the Special Air Service (SAS), the British Army’s special forces, shot three members of the IRA in Gibraltar. The three, who were suspected of planting a bomb, died as a result of their injuries. One of the IRA team was Dan McCann, who I was told had been instrumental in the attack which killed Alex Beck and maimed me. I had no sense of jubilation, in fact my thoughts were more of relief that lives had been saved. However, the tragic irony was that lives were to be lost in Northern Ireland in ensuing events. Michael Stone, a lone loyalist gunman, attacked mourners at the subsequent IRA funerals in west Belfast on 16 March, killing three. Three days later at the funeral of one of them, an IRA member, two British army corporals strayed into the path of the cortège. They were taken from their vehicle by force, beaten badly and shot dead. Taken in context, McCann’s death did nothing to heal me. When I graduated with my PhD in the summer of 1991 a Sky News reporter asked me, ‘What would you say now to the people


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who injured you?’ I was taken by surprise, but this was probably a good thing as it allowed me to access the emotion of how I really felt without giving a considered answer. I replied to the question with a response which surprised me: ‘I won’t say it’s okay for them to have done this to me because it’s not. What I will say is that I am now able to put it behind me and get on with my life’. I became aware for the first time that I had moved on and had lost the anger which had been present only a few years previously. I did not know then what the factors were; come to think of it, I was not that concerned. Other people were putting energy into studying the conflict in my country – leave it to them! After a period working as a researcher at Queen’s University, and then as a statistician within the Northern Ireland Civil Service, I returned to university to study for a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology. This led to me launching a professional career in this field where I have developed an interest in psychological trauma. In 2000 I attended a trauma conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. On the last afternoon there was a symposium on the impact of the Northern Ireland Troubles. I checked the conference programme to see what else was on at the same time – after all, I was exposed to this daily on the Northern Ireland news and through the clients I was seeing in therapy sessions. My colleagues were planning to attend the symposium and, because I could not find anything else that interested me, I went too. A panel of people affected by the Troubles in different ways had been brought together by a psychiatric colleague, Dr Oscar Daly. Each told their story and each was moving in their own way. A member of the panel, Joe Doherty, had been in the IRA and was jailed for the murder in 1980 of Captain Herbert Westmacott, a member the SAS. He said he would not have been there if a member of the security forces was on the panel. He told his story and mentioned that he had worked with rocket-propelled grenades (the type that injured me). As far as I was concerned he

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could have had a role to play in my incident. At the end of the presentations the floor was opened for questions. A few people took their turn and stood up to ask sensible questions. I raised my arm and said to Oscar Daly that I wished to say something to Joe Doherty. I sensed a mood of anxiety as Oscar, knowing my background, said that we needed to finish. I insisted and was given my opportunity. I felt so uncomfortable and vulnerable as I started to speak; I could not stand up as I was exposed enough. I explained I had been in the RUC and then said to Joe that I could understand what had motivated him and could see that he wanted a better future for everyone in our country. I told him I shared that view and felt I could shake his hand. The symposium ended and people dispersed. I spoke with two panel members briefly and then noticed Joe Doherty preparing to leave the almost empty room. I said, as he approached, ‘I meant what I said’, and reached out my right prosthetic hand. He paused briefly and then shook it. We started to chat and I was aware that Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, the former head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service and author of ‘We will Remember Them’, a report on victims of the Troubles, was drifting over in our direction in order to witness what was, for me anyway, a momentous occasion. I spoke a few weeks later with a former IRA member who was working on a cross-community project. I told her what had happened with Joe Doherty and she confirmed that what he did was a huge step for him too. Some time later Oscar Daly ran a repeat of the symposium in Belfast. I went along to say hello to some of the panel members. I saw Joe and approached him. Without any hesitation he shook my hand and met me with a warm smile. I knew then that two perceptions of the world had changed and it was confirmed by the composition of the panel; on this occasion there was a former member of the SAS present. Following on from my experience of Joe Doherty I was not motivated to seek out experiences where I would mix with former combatants from republican or loyalist groups. In fact I would be more avoidant of such experiences. In 2001 I was approached by Wilhelm Voerwort, a South African working at the Glencree Centre


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for Reconciliation in County Wicklow in the Republic of Ireland. Wilhelm was organizing an ex-combatants group at Glencree where people of different political backgrounds could meet on neutral territory and tell their stories. He invited me to attend; I was resistant, not wanting to be involved in such an activity. I eventually agreed to attend as a Clinical Psychologist, providing support for former members of the security forces who were present. The day arrived and I made my way to Glencree. I remember joining others in the canteen where food was available. I noticed that many people knew each other, but I knew nobody. I saw a small, stockily-built man and my thought was, ‘He looks like an IRA man’. It turned out it was far from the truth; he had in fact served time in jail for activities as a loyalist paramilitary! We moved to the seminar room where participants sat in a large circle. I was to the back of the room, separate from the group. Members were invited to introduce themselves and give an indication of their background. It started off with a republican from Lurgan. He said his name and then stated, ‘I shot a British soldier and I make no apology for it’. I thought, ‘What have I let myself in for?’ The remaining introductions were made and the focus came to me. I introduced myself and explained my police background and why I was there as a Clinical Psychologist. I was told in no uncertain terms that I either join in or go away – but the language used was a bit stronger. I decided to join in and went from being a non-participating observer to a non-observing participant, a shift I had read about when studying sociology many years previously. After the discussion we all adjourned to the pub in the local village. I was seated between a former IRA man on one side and a former Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) man on the other. Political ideologies were put to the side as we enjoyed each other’s company. I attended Glencree on several other occasions about a month apart and enjoyed the opportunity to mix with people from different backgrounds. All had stories to tell which illustrated how they became involved in their respective organizations and why they were motivated to do things in the name of their cause. What I saw were

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people, human beings, not monsters who had no care for others. I was offered help on many occasions by men who would have shot me dead in the name of freedom several years previously! For me the greatest thing that happened at Glencree was an invitation to go to South Africa where I would be able to experience the culture of reconciliation and spend some time on a wilderness expedition in Umfolozi National Park. On the trip were ‘victims and survivors’ and ‘ex-combatants’. As a group we attended a number of projects in the Stellenbosch area, close to Capetown. On the wilderness trip, a plane trip away near Durban, we were split into our two groups and set off with rucksacks on our backs. As there were wild animals around we had to mount guard at night to keep the fire going and watch for encroaching animals. We were told that the biggest dangers to us were lions and rhinos, not to mention snakes. The irony of this trip was that former republican prisoners in our group were guarding a former prison officer who had guarded them whilst in the Maze Prison near Belfast. After the wilderness experience was over I reflected on what had happened. We were relying on each other for survival in an environment where trappings of civilisation were stripped away. We were part of the ecology, communing with nature as a herd of humans, working together for survival. A paradigm shift took place from the start of the trip when we regarded each other with some suspicion. We were ultimately able to see each other as friends and had developed trust and a support system. When we returned to our hotel near Stellanbosch one of the ‘victims’ group, who was an active member of Sinn Fein, had one evening consumed several pints of beer and started being verbally offensive to me. I handled it as best I could without sparking off an incident, but told my new friends who came from a republican background. They reassured me the other man did not represent their view of me; in fact they showed their contempt of him. In 2005 I was invited to participate in a BBC programme where people involved on opposing sides during the Troubles would sit across a table from each other and share their experiences. The event


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was to be chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the man who had led the Truth and Reconciliation panel in South Africa. I was asked originally to meet with a man who, in his time in the IRA, had brought into west Belfast rocket-propelled grenades and launchers. As the quartermaster he would have been responsible for supplying the IRA team which maimed me. Near the day of my appearance this man withdrew and another person was lined up. I agreed to meet him but he also withdrew. A third person was proposed and I agreed to meet him. Tommy McCrystal had been jailed for his role in the shooting dead of two part-time members of the Ulster Defence Regiment, part of the British army which was later assimilated into the Royal Irish Regiment. Tommy and I told our respective stories and I could see where he came from in terms of his motivation to join the IRA and kill in the name of his cause. He admitted to feeling comfortable in my presence and could understand me. At the end of our meeting I said, ‘If I had the same experiences as you did growing up I might well have done the same thing as you’. Archbishop Tutu was amazed by what he heard. He later wrote a testimonial for my website (Paterson, 2009), ‘He took our breath away!’ I have thought about how things have changed for me over the years and asked myself why am I not bitter and resentful when many of the clients I see clinically are. I feel it is because I have experienced post-traumatic growth and achieved psychological well-being. According to the ‘Organismic Valuing Theory of Growth Through Adversity’ (Joseph & Linley, 2005) one is geared towards healing and the integration of positively-associated material. This fits with and builds on earlier theoretical models of response to trauma (Creamer et al, 1992; Horowitz, 1982, 1986; Rachman, 1980; Shapiro, 2001). The Organismic Theory holds that to develop psychological wellbeing, we replace old dysfunctional models of the world with new models by being motivated to take action to fulfil our needs and be more promoting of our well-being. A community sample of 648 survivors of violent trauma (Connor et al, 2003) found that their evaluation of forgiveness, along with

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hatred, was not associated with outcome measures for physical and mental health, trauma-related distress, or post-traumatic symptom severity. In a later study of New York City residents, one year after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Jennifer Friedberg and her colleagues (2005) noted that forgiveness appears to mediate the effects of lower levels of stress (low level rumination) but has no effect where individuals have higher levels of rumination as a result of trauma. If one were to consider the causal direction as trauma preventing one being able to forgive, it would suggest that for those stuck with trauma, such as in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD; APA, 1994), an effective psychological therapy would likely be of benefit. This could help the sufferer link to more adaptive mental material and develop new functional models of the world. I had the good fortune of experiencing in 1998 the psychological therapy Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR; Shapiro, 2001) where a fellow psychologist targeted the incident in which I was injured. EMDR is recommended by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE, 2005) as an effective treatment for PTSD. Whilst I never suffered PTSD, the trauma of the incident was held within my brain in implicit memory, unlike normal everyday events which are stored in explicit memory. This means that when the trauma memory is triggered, it feels emotionally that it is happening in the present. For me, every time I spoke of the incident I felt a knot in my stomach. By processing the trauma with EMDR there was a completion process taking place with a move to more functional thinking. At the end of processing the trauma it was no longer disturbing, I felt positive about myself and my stomach was clear; the incident felt as though it was in the past. Had I not processed the trauma, triggers for my distress would have remained. I may not have been able to attend Glencree, go into the wilderness in South Africa or have been present with Tommy McCrystal in front of the camera. I was intrigued when I was invited to complete a questionnaire on psychological well-being arising through post-traumatic changes (Regel & Joseph, 2010). This 18-item measure revealed a high score


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(84%), with the highest scores on ‘Purpose in Life’ and ‘Autonomy’ subscales. This indicates that I have grown following my trauma and, it appears, have sought out experiences which have met my needs and have benefited me, though not necessarily in a hedonistic manner. The reader will note that nowhere have I said I forgive the members of the IRA who maimed me and caused heartache, frustration and sadness, not only for me but for my family. However, I feel I have moved on psychologically, being able to put the event behind me and get on with my life. Not only that, I have let go of resentment and anger; in fact I now have positive attitudes to many of those who I would previously have seen as enemies. Forgiveness, it seems, is about being able to connect with a higher state of being and moving on without being burdened with the legacy of the past.

References APA (1994) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV, Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association. Connor, C. M. and Davidson, J. R. T. and Lee, L. C. (2003) ‘Spirituality, resilience, and anger in survivors of violent trauma: a community survey’, Journal of Traumatic Stress, 16(5) 487–494. Creamer, M., Burgess, P. and Pattison, P. (1992) ‘Reaction to trauma: A cognitive processing model’, Journal of Abnormal Psychology 101, 452–459. Friedberg, J. P., Adonis, M. N., Von Bergen, H. A. and Suchday, S. (2005) ‘September 11th-related stress and trauma in New Yorkers’, Stress and Health, 21(1) 53–60. Horowitz, M. J. (1982) ‘Psychological processes induced by illness, injury and loss’, in T. Millon, C. Green and R. Meagher (eds) Handbook of Clinical Health Psychology, New York: Plenum. Horowitz, M. J. (1988) Stress Response Syndromes, Northville, NJ: Jason Aronson. Joseph, S. and Linley, P. A. (2005) ‘Positive adjustment to threatening events: An organismic valuing theory of growth through adversity’, Review of General Psychology, 9(3) 262-280. NICE (2005) Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): The Management of PTSD in Adults and Children in Primary and Secondary Care, National Institute of Clinical Excellence (http://www.nice.org.uk/CG26). Paterson, M. C. (2009) http://www.drmichaelpaterson.com. Rachman, S. (1980) ‘Emotional processing’, Behaviour Research and Therapy, 18, 51–60.

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Regel, S. and Joseph, S. (2010) Post-Traumatic Stress: The Facts, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shapiro, F. (2001) Eye Movement Desensitsization and Reprocessing: Basic Principles, Protocols and Procedures, New York: Guilford.

Chapter 11

The Transformational Possibilities of Forgiveness David Bolton

Saying sorry or offering an apology, forgiving and being forgiven, play a huge part in our personal and collective lives. Constantly we are challenged to say sorry or to accept apologies and offer forgiveness in our personal relationships, and sometimes in our encounters with wider society and its institutions. Through experience, most of us probably learn that there is a significant qualitative difference between daily slights, discourtesies and accidents for which we sometimes, often without thinking, say, ‘Sorry’, and those seismic events in our lives that turn our world, or the world of others, upside-down. As a child I learned, as I suspect many if not most of us do, that when I had done something that was disapproved of by my parents and other adults, I was expected to say ‘Sorry’. This applied even to the things I did which I did not think were wrong at the time, or were undertaken without the desire to offend or without knowledge of the meaning or consequences of the offending act. I recall one uncomfortable event when a friend, unfairly in my view, complained of something I had done whilst we were playing, and of how he glared triumphantly from behind my mother’s back at the admonishment I received and as an apology was begrudgingly given. The offending act is long forgotten; the experience of saying sorry, less so. I do not recall the declaration of forgiveness, but as neither has mentioned the matter since, I have 199

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lived for the last fifty years or so, on the working assumption that I was forgiven by both my mother and my playmate. In the scheme of things it really hasn’t mattered. And yet we learn that sometimes things that happen to us, or things we say or do that impact on others, really do matter, and they matter a lot. They matter perhaps because there is a broad social agreement that they matter, or because something we did to offend another, while it might seem of little consequence, matters much to them. We might feel that the issue matters to God or our faith community; or indeed, something matters a lot to me personally, when it doesn’t matter very much to anyone else. Finding ways of living with such things and of navigating our way through or past them is something most of us struggle with from time to time. It is in this struggle that we are brought up against the challenge of forgiveness; of either offering forgiveness or seeking forgiveness. Most relationships would probably never last if there were no capacity to forgive, or to overlook some slight or offence. Parents nurturing their children want to teach them through life’s experiences the difference between right and wrong and the consequences of actions that do not take into account the interests of others. Through being confronted with our shortcomings we learn, and through the forgiveness of important figures, we also learn how we can recover from a wrong-doing. We learn that forgiveness can help undo or overcome some of the damage caused by offending words or actions and also help us retain the relationships that are important to us and avoid rejection. To belong is such an important impulse in our lives and if the alternative is rejection, then securing forgiveness becomes essential to our experience of life and of happiness. So experience teaches us that if we are to maintain relationships that are important to us then we need to be able to give and receive forgiveness. We learn that there can be a world of difference between just saying ‘Sorry’, or just saying ‘I forgive you’, and living our lives in relationship with another where how we feel and act suggest we are not really sorry, or that we have not really forgiven. In other words,

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there is a qualitative difference between saying sorry and being sorry; between saying ‘I forgive you’ and living that statement authentically in our relationships. Along with the words of forgiveness, we might reasonably expect there usually needs to be corroborating actions, and if we can access them, corroborating thoughts and emotions. On the matter of receiving forgiveness, knowing that we are forgiven can make such a difference. We know that what we have done wrong might still matter to the one we have offended, yet notwithstanding this, something has happened in the mind (heart) of the other person that means they do not want to reject us, or that in spite of what we might have done, ‘I somehow seem to matter more than the legacy of what I have done’. Perhaps the person seeks to forgive, not because they hold my interests centre stage, but because they want to be able to live with themselves, or at least more comfortably with themselves. In other words, carrying resentment brings its own burden and sometimes when all things are taken account of, it is better to set that aside. The decision to live a life free of resentment takes us in the direction of considering forgiveness as a way forward. Whatever, the experience of being forgiven when we feel what we have done has caused hurt etc. can provide an insight into how I might respond when I am hurt and am faced with the option and challenge of forgiving. We forgive, in part at least, because we know what it’s like to be forgiven and what it means to be unforgiven.

What is forgiveness? Perhaps at this stage we need a working definition of forgiveness. Charles Griswold insists that forgiveness requires action by both parties (that is, the one who is offended against and the offender) and cannot be accomplished unilaterally (2007: 38–53). A dialogue is necessarily involved, either direct and explicit or tacit. For forgiveness to be completed a process unfolds in which both the offended and offender experience a changed state of mind, a reorientation towards the other, and the setting aside of resentment. Later we will turn

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to the limitations caused when one or more of these conditions or outcomes is absent or impossible. Forgiveness can conjure up a range of thoughts and reactions. Sometimes it can be more about pleasing others than addressing our inner turmoil. It can be seen as something good folk ought to do, exemplified by the television world’s appetite for the handshake between former enemies. When the camera lights are switched off we are still left with our feelings, especially if we have not worked them through. We may feel under pressure to forgive without really understanding or feeling the detailed reality of what forgiveness means. Talk of forgiveness can also make us upset or angry. Here Griswold’s definition is helpful when we focus less on the term ‘forgiveness’ and more on the three components he identifies, namely a changed state of mind, a reorientation towards the other and the setting aside of resentment. If we understand the task of forgiveness in terms of these three components, then we have a better sense of what it is we are struggling with. As implied already, in many cultures we tend to think that forgiveness is a good thing; especially to forgive. In some other cultures and times, forgiveness has been thought of as weakness, or negative in other terms. For instance, communities that practise blood feuding, the eye-for-an-eye approach, achieve stability by the threat and fear of mutually-assured destruction. Forgiveness could be a rather unexpected and destabilising response. Yet while it may be considered to be a good thing, particularly in relation to matters of passion, of life and death, forgiveness is not an easy option. If we love someone who has hurt us, our love and our investment in a relationship might compel us to forgive even a great wrong. On the other hand, an act of betrayal within a relationship might be unforgivable for the injured party because of the violation of trust and of love itself. Life’s experiences suggest that each of us could take our own journey in response to what on the face of it seem similar hurts of similar depth and consequences. This suggests that perhaps there is something in how we see the world personally, and in how life’s experiences have sculpted us, which influences how we


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might respond when faced with life’s difficulties and the challenge to forgive. Circumstances make a difference. Within an existing relationship where there is hurt and resentment, forgiveness can lead to reconciliation. Sometimes, however, there is no prior relationship. The hurt person and the person who caused the hurt were not previously known to each other, but through events they are brought together. A relationship of sorts, perhaps an ill-founded relationship, is created, and if there is resentment etc. forgiveness may achieve an understanding which takes both beyond the hurt of the event and its consequences. In either case, forgiveness might be offered, sought or even exchanged, a settled place is found for all concerned, but no enduring relationship is established beyond that. In the context of a devastating and deeply-felt loss or hurt, something has happened that goes to the soul of our being, that is visceral and beyond thought. In such circumstances forgiveness might be a way through but it might also be unthinkable, at least for a while. Perhaps we might need to understand that for some of us, in some circumstances forgiveness is not an option we could follow, or having considered it, we reject it. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to think that there might be some things we could not, even should not, forgive; for example, genocidal acts or the cruel murder of a child (ibid: 90–8). Yet perhaps, as we will see later, there is something about the timeliness of forgiving and about the need for us to work our way over some time towards a judgment as to whether we can or ought to forgive. Also, in communities where forgiveness is thought to be a good thing, people who hurt might feel hurried along through the expectations others have of them to forgive, perhaps even to speak of forgiveness before they feel it, or have thought it through for themselves. Richard Holloway cautions that, ‘We only add to the trauma if we try to urge or hurry people into a forgiveness they are incapable of offering’ (2002: 53). To which we might add, ‘. . . incapable of offering, just now’.

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The case for forgiveness While life holds out the prospect of joy and fulfilment, reflection and experience remind us that it can be harsh, unpredictable and indifferent. With such disturbing reality we face a choice. We can either yield to a brutish world, which through accidents, natural events and disasters, ‘acts of God’, personal failures and disappointments, loss, human acts of thoughtlessness, betrayal, belligerence and violence, of conflict and war takes all and gives nothing. Alternatively, we can shape our world, and specifically relationships, by which – notwithstanding the damage done – we can overcome or transcend life’s brutishness, and know and create joy. Yet the joys of life are short. Its hurts live long. Forgiveness, or as we shall see, something that looks like forgiveness or has its qualities, can provide for us an alternative to what Richard Holloway calls the ‘treadmill of the past’ (ibid: 53), and enable us to take new directions when otherwise we remain shackled to the treadmill. It can get us back to somewhere close to the point we were before something hurtful was done or experienced, or some loss endured, with the important qualification that something significant has changed and that the world we are entering is not the same one we inhabited before. Forgiveness can help loosen the grip of the past and help us discover some kind of future in spite of what has happened. It holds the hope of incorporating the past, along with its pain, losses and injustices, into a future of rediscovered and perhaps even enriched experiences of community and of life itself.

Forgiving ourselves At times the challenge we face is in forgiving ourselves. We do, or feel responsible for, things involving ourselves or others that we live to regret. Sometimes these actions or omissions can have devastating and fatal implications for others. Whether by accident or design we can find ourselves living with the consequences of our actions or our failure to act. As a result we bear either a sense of guilt because


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we feel we have violated some norm or standard, or shame because our actions or sense of responsibility have left us with a deep sense of self-disapproval over something we would rather others did not know about us. How do we forgive ourselves when we are both the offender (perhaps) and the offended? If we are to live with ourselves, we need to find a way of living with things for which we feel responsible, and for some this struggle resolves itself in finding a way in which we can forgive ourselves, albeit with the realization that there is something about the past that cannot be changed. More subtly, life’s distress might not be so much to do with forgiving ourselves, but locating responsibility where it is really due, as in the case of a child or adult who in childhood was abused and was persuaded that the abuse was their fault in some way. Similarly, sometimes people can live their lives overshadowed by the belief that they were responsible for some significant offence or injury to others, or should have been able to do more to prevent or redress a situation, when in truth circumstances reveal that they could not possibly be responsible, and therefore do not need to carry a burden of self-blame and reproach. It is not easy to dislodge, consider and revise such firmly-held beliefs about oneself, others and the world, especially if these ways of seeing oneself, others and the world have been in place for many years and it is upon these that one’s life and way of getting through life are founded. It is not sufficient to offer the advice that whatever has happened does not matter, or is in the past. Also, it might not be enough to offer some externally legitimized absolution, particularly where this clashes with the values and core beliefs by which the person lives his or her life. Faith can play a part in helping, especially where it helps to establish and affirm a keen sense of self and of self-worth. If I have a deep sense at the core of my existence that I am beloved by God and live out of that belief, it can profoundly change the way I see myself, others and the world I live in. It can provide a foothold for making progress and help chart a way to self-forgiveness. Words and rites of forgiveness can also bring great consolation and again provide a way forward.

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Sometimes people seek help through therapy, which can throw up ethical issues when people come with concerns that have legal implications. That apart, to be effective the therapist must be capable of recognizing and acknowledging the reality of how the person sees what they feel responsible for, and understanding the evidence for the unhelpful conclusions or appraisals that the person has been living with. The person will benefit from being supported in accurately reassessing the distressing experience or experiences, and the evidence for the unhelpful conclusions or appraisals that they have been living with. The task then is to identify more accurate, relevant and balanced appraisals that logically, authentically and accurately fit with the circumstances, then to integrate these new understandings and insights into the person’s view of themselves. and into developing a way ahead. Reflecting on this theme, Richard Holloway reminds us that we need to learn to balance that which we condemn ourselves for against that which is good in our lives. He notes how sometimes the level of regret, over ‘failures and mistakes, wrong roads taken, right roads not taken’ can get out of balance: ‘We should be honest about what we have done badly, but we should also acknowledge what we have done well, in our journey through life. Most lives are achievements that have had their share of sorrow and endurance . . . We have to bring to the examined life a kind of objectivity that enables us to look at ourselves with compassionate impartiality’ (ibid: 51). This reminds us that we can be too hard on ourselves and that we need to bring to mind all those things in our lives that are good and place them alongside our disappointments and failures. Sometimes this is hard to do and we might need help. But we are never alone in these circumstances. In reality, who of us has lived a perfect life? Who of us does not have regrets? Touching on this truth Julie Miller wrote her song, Broken Things:


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You can have my heart Though it isn’t new It’s been used and broken And only comes in blue It’s been down a long road And it got dirty on the way If I give it to you will you make it clean, And wash the shame away. (Miller 1999, Track 7) This song was sung by local singer-songwriter, Juliet Turner, at the huge public service held a week after the Omagh bombing in August 1998, and profoundly reflected the feelings of the thousands who gathered on that occasion. The expectations sometimes placed on us by religion can themselves become an obstacle to living a life in which we are able to forgive ourselves. Our view of God, or our understanding of religious texts or the faith community we belong to, can reinforce feelings of failure and thoughts of being undeserving of forgiveness. The poet and hymn writer, William Cowper (1731–1800), struggled for much of his life with a deep sense of rejection by God (Cecil, 1929) and cried out in his hymn: O! For a closer walk with God A calm and heavenly frame, A light to shine upon the road That leads me to the Lamb. (The Methodist Hymn Book 1933, Hymn 461)

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Bringing perspective to this problem within religious experience, another hymn writer, Frederick William Faber (1814–1863), wrote: There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, Like the wideness of the sea; There’s a kindness in His justice, Which is more than liberty. But we make His love too narrow By false limits of our own; And we magnify His strictness With a zeal He will not own. (Hymns & Psalms 1983, Hymn 230)

Forgiveness and civil conflict Whilst forgiveness implies a ‘me’ and a ‘you’, at times we might be faced with the question of resolving a hurtful relationship with not just another person (or group of people), but an organiszation or a nation. This seems particularly relevant in the context of the Troubles, the most recent period of which commenced in the late 1960s until substantive violence ended in the mid-1990s with ceasefires, even though violent acts continue to be carried out well into the second decade of the twenty-first Century. Over the years, the issue of forgiveness has often been addressed in and by churches, in the secular and community processes that developed as part of the political and peace-making processes, and in the debates around how Northern Ireland’s population should address ‘The Past’ as in the Consultative Group on the Past (2009). The debate has thrown up complex questions. For instance, many involved in carrying out acts of violence as members of paramilitary groups, did so in pursuit of particular political goals or visions, or because they felt the need to protect their community from attacks and threats by others. Members of the army and police were involved in acts of violence. People acting in such roles were often seen by


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the institutions of the State, their respective organizations and many within the community as having legal legitimacy, including the legitimacy to use violence in certain circumstances. Individual police officers and soldiers may also have thought they were undertaking a duty and service to protect the community. Where such views of the use of violence are sustained, can we expect that individuals who were responsible for acts of violence would regard themselves as being in need of forgiveness? If not, how do we have a conversation about forgiveness, in Charles Griswold’s terms? That is, how can we have a conversation about forgiveness when nobody feels sorry? Besides such cognitive motivations, there may also have been more emotional drivers such as fear and hatred, which raise similar questions about how there might be engagement in a matter of forgiveness. In the context of conflict such as the Northern Ireland Troubles, to forgive involves one whose actions have almost inevitably placed them at enmity with the person who has suffered, giving rise to a range of deep feelings such as anger and resentment. Where someone has died, the picture is even more complicated, since that person is no longer able to engage in a process of forgiveness. The unrecoverable loss of a person who has died and whose potential and life have been brought tragically to an end becomes entwined with the grief and loss of those dear to them who survive. In such circumstances we grieve both for our own loss and the prematurely and unjustly-ended life of the one we hold dear. This is perhaps one of the reasons why some who have been tragically bereaved, especially where death is the result of particularly cruel and heartless actions, cannot forgive – or find it particularly difficult to do so – as it feels like giving away something that is not theirs to give away. As noted, it also involves doing so with someone whose actions have placed them at enmity with the bereaved person, which can be a huge mountain for any of us to climb.

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Forgiveness when no one is sorry Yet perhaps there are ways of responding to life’s events that fall short of Griswold’s forgiveness model but which have something of the quality of forgiveness about them. Where for example the offender does not recognize the hurt caused or persists in making the case for the actions they have taken, there is nobody seeking forgiveness or interested in a changed state of mind, in a reorientation towards the other and the setting aside of resentment. Or, in circumstances when we suffer an injury to our soul, if we are to survive we do not have time to seek out the offender, to embark on a dialogue and to negotiate Griswold’s three elements of forgiveness. Perhaps in these sorts of circumstances when nobody can be found who is sorry, we can free ourselves from the burden of resentment and the selfdestructive choices that can otherwise blight our lives and the lives of those we love and who are dear to us. In November 1987 eleven people were killed and over sixty injured in a bomb explosion in Enniskillen, at the annual Remembrance Sunday Ceremony. The bombing was planned and carried out by the IRA (Irish Republican Army) as part of its campaign of violence, a campaign that was ideologically underpinned by a political analysis and objectives. One of those who died was Marie Wilson, a twentyone year old student nurse. Her father, Gordon Wilson, following the death of his daughter in the bombing, spoke within hours of her death of his thoughts. He said in a radio interview for the BBC: ‘I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge. Dirty sort of talk is not going to bring her back to life. She was a great wee lassie. She loved her profession. She was a pet and she’s dead. She’s in Heaven, and we’ll meet again. Don’t ask me, please, for a purpose. I don’t have a purpose. I don’t have a plan. But I know there has to be a plan. . . . It’s part of a greater plan, and God is good. And we shall meet again’ (Wilson & McCreary 1990: 46–7). Similar sentiments were expressed, both publicly and privately, by many others affected by the tragedy and while there were calls for


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justice, no-one directly affected by the tragedy called for retribution. Mr Wilson later went on to develop his thoughts and express his feelings about his family’s experience, but at that point he focused on his desire that no harm should befall those responsible, and he was expressing well-intended thoughts. His intervention at a time of considerable danger in the history of the civil conflict in Northern Ireland was widely regarded as instrumental in minimizing reprisal attacks (Bardon 1992: 777). In this tragic and politically worrisome situation, a response characterized by a forgiving disposition by Gordon Wilson was made over and against an ideologically inscrutable act of violence. No transaction of forgiveness was completed (even after Mr Wilson later met representatives of the IRA), yet to use Griswold’s analysis, in the days after the tragedy there was a tacit dialogue (through the media), and at least on Gordon Wilson’s part a decision to desist publicly from expressions of resentment and a benevolent orientation towards those who had killed his daughter. The effect publicly was highly significant and deeply moving and offered a surprising and unexpected way through what was undoubtedly a terrible personal and community tragedy, and a very dangerous period in the history of the Troubles. In like mind, Doreen McFarland wrote about her struggle to get to grips with the death of Samantha, her daughter, in the Omagh bombing of 15th August 1998. Samantha died, along with twentyeight adults and children and two unborn babies, in the bomb explosion that wrecked Market Street that Saturday afternoon. Just before the tenth anniversary Mrs. McFarland reflected upon her decade of loss and struggle, and wrote: ‘To bestow beauty instead of ashes and praise instead of despair’ (Isaiah 61:3). Surviving a crisis and turning it into growth means adjusting your thoughts, and developing new beliefs about your life. It may be painful to delve into the facts of your crisis, but just as lancing a boil

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is a necessary first step to healing, facing the facts is the first step towards becoming whole again. Those who go through a crisis learn which hopes, dreams and expectations were violated by the event. First they identify where the repair work is needed. Then they develop a road map for the future. Often you are left with the feeling that nothing will ever be the same again. That’s to be expected. You may have to make adjustments in how you work, where you spend our leisure time and how you relate to your family and friends. Remember, it is the nature of a crisis to shake up your stable world. But it forces you to reach deep within yourself, to find streams of hidden strength, courage and hope you never knew existed. You may not feel courageous or hopeful right now, but that does not mean those things aren’t there just waiting to be tapped! Inner healing begins when we give up the hope for a better yesterday and take the first step towards making a better tomorrow; ‘Even though you do not have strength for today, you can call on the One who does. The Lord is my Rock, my Fortress and my Deliverer; my God my keen and firm strength in whom I will trust and take refuge (Psalm 18:2)’ (McFarland 2008: 1). In Griswold’s terms this is not forgiveness as no transaction has occurred, but Mrs McFarland has described a different place from what Richard Holloway calls the ‘treadmill of the past’, where resentment has been set aside, and where life has been rediscovered and entered into. This text, written ten years after the death of her daughter, reveals a struggle of immense proportions, and the eventual resolution of a terrible experience to the point where inner peace is found.


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Getting close to forgiveness Forgiveness, either offered or received, particularly in the context of major life events, can help us find our way through a troubling and difficult situation and be part of how we choose to respond. Elizabeth Capewell provides a very useful insight into the contribution forgiveness can play in helping us move from a world before loss and trauma to a new world beyond loss and trauma. She describes in her Trauma Cycle (or Trauma Process Map) how after a damaging traumatic experience we enter an experience of loss and chaos which can lead in time to a possible dead end of feelings, behaviours and thoughts, such as bitterness, over-reliance on alcohol or a desire for vengeance. This Elizabeth Capewell refers to as the ‘Whirlpool’ reactions, circumstances or experiences which can consume us. This part of the cycle is potentially self-destructive, and if we are to move beyond this we have choices to make. If we choose wisely we can move beyond the self-destructive choices and circumstances to cope more healthily, where: ‘The reality of the incident is accepted, but there is choice about perceptions and actions. Control of life is resumed. Life has more colour and love, trust and fun are again possible. Pain is transformed into positive actions, learning or projects. There may be an aspiration to explore forgiveness’ (Capewell 2004: 21). The phrase ‘the aspiration to explore forgiveness’ is a helpful and interesting phrase for a number of reasons. The ‘aspiration to forgive’ is where the focus lies. So at times when it is impossible to forgive, or Griswold’s conditions aren’t met, the key is that in me, I have the desire or hope to forgive. Such circumstances could include those where something tragic has happened but where no one is at fault, that is, no one is or can be responsible. It was an accident and that’s the end of it. In other situations, it can be a loved one who has died who is the one we need to forgive. It is not uncommon for bereaved people to speak of their anger at the person who has died. Sentiments

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such as ‘How dare she leave me!’, ‘How are we going to manage?’, or ‘Why did he leave me with all these responsibilities?’ are not uncommon. And these sentiments can arise even where there are no complicating factors as one might find in the case of suicide for example, where such feelings of loss, of unanswered questions and abandonment can be very intense. In such circumstances a turning point can be reached in the gift of having the aspiration to forgive. This can translate into thoughts like, ‘Even though you are no longer here I am now capable of and have reached a point where I could, if you were here, forgive you’. Or, with reference to the context of civil conflict, ‘Even though you have hurt me and my family, and have done so in the cause you have aligned yourself to, I no longer hold any resentment towards you’. Much of the public discourse about forgiveness in the context of the Northern Ireland Troubles has been encumbered by a debate about the theological protocols of forgiveness. For example, ‘only God can forgive’, or, ‘there can be no forgiveness without repentance’. We might understand, as has been implied, that there is no forgiveness without a forgiver and a forgiven, or a transaction, leading to the reparation of a ruptured or ill-founded relationship. As already described, the Troubles throw up a peculiar set of circumstances. Not everyone who undertook an act of violence that killed or injured others, or destroyed a business and livelihood, or damaged the mental health of others is willing or able to acknowledge that what they did requires to be forgiven. And for some, yielding on this important point might be difficult territory. If someone holds that they are at core ‘a good person’ and that the acts of violence they undertook were done for reasons that are congruent with their identity as a good person, then changing their view on this would be very challenging. So if someone who has suffered at the hands of such violence feels they need to forgive, or have the aspiration to forgive, how can this be done when there is no-one to say ‘sorry’? Here perhaps the transaction is different from what we might normally expect, and those familiar with the post-Troubles landscape will recognize some of the views and experiences of people who


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have spoken publicly about their experiences in this regard. On the part of the person responsible for the act of violence there is the possibility that while they retain a conviction about why they took part in the act of violence, they are able to realize and acknowledge that their actions had terrible consequences for others, and are subsequently sorry for those consequences. For the one who would aspire to forgive in such circumstances, there is the possibility that they might understand the position of the person who undertook the violence that impacted on them and their family, and in this context recognize the steps that the person who caused their loss, sorrow or distress has made in approaching their position. In such circumstances an ‘aspiration to forgive’ might be a helpful and ‘good enough’ position that will allow the grieving, suffering person to reach a better place, helping them to move from a limited and joyless life to one that is life-giving and has a renewed sense of purpose.

Forgiveness and communities As well as the perspective of individuals involved, e.g. the individual gunman who kills another and leaves a family bereaved, there is the context of violently opposed identities and ideologies. Here, there is a conversation to be held about forgiveness, not at the individual or family level, but at the group or community level. We might regard this more as a process of reconciliation (or to be exact the establishment for the first time of a proper relationship) and recast Griswold’s three elements as: O

O O

shifts in ideology and a revision of group or community needs and priorities; reduction in fear and an increase in trust; and decisions to replace old unhelpful memories and narratives with more accurate and helpful understandings of ‘the other’ where constructive thoughts occur upon which progress can be made.

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In a community or group context this requires leadership that can envision how things might be, that can set out the case for taking a different approach and enable progress to be made which enables groups or communities to retain a sense of identity and safety, while seeing the merits of taking the risk for living with ‘the other’ in a new relationship. These steps and processes take a long time, as the political and peace processes in Northern Ireland and elsewhere reveal. Sometimes symbolic steps and words are needed to acknowledge and accept responsibility, to demonstrate and affirm the changes in perspectives, to provide reassurance and to seek and define a new relationship. There must be room in such processes for the cry of the broken heart while resisting the temptation in group and community processes to take offence or to affront ‘the other’. The experience of the Northern Ireland political and peace processes has also revealed that while many have a desire for justice and peace, in the imperfect world of competing ideologies and violently opposing views of the world, we can’t always have both. There can be setbacks, and the temptation to get one over on ‘the other’ can be irresistible, when sight is lost of the more noble aims of making peace. The challenge is for each generation to determine both what it can do and has unique responsibilities to do, and to recognize what is better left to future generations. Wisely done, future generations might well find they are able to see justice and peace embrace (Psalm 85:10). It is in such a context that perhaps the ideas around restorative justice can help, where means are created to enable the one who is hurt to lay before the one who has hurt them the immediacy, reality and intensity of the implications of what has happened, to ask questions and expect answers, and to enable the one who caused the hurt to explain and perhaps intellectually and emotionally to accept responsibility. Beyond such encounters lies the prospect of new beginnings, through changed states of mind, reorientation towards the other, and the setting aside of resentments. This approach suggests that to achieve such things these human processes are required as an addition or an alternative to politics


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and judicial processes. While they might make a difference in some respects, politics and judicial systems that proceed without sensitivity to the experiences of loss, grief and trauma cannot readily address these profound aspects of human experience. They can only be expected to provide responses limited to the scope of politics and justice, responses which, though possibly practical and affording redress, are at best tokens of society’s concern and acknowledgement, and perhaps at times society’s limited efforts to deal with things that cannot be undone. However, at its core, experiences of loss, grief and trauma and the emotional, identity and related needs they can give rise to, are for a different province of wisdom to address, which involves the soul, the mind, relationships and community.

Forgiveness can lead to transformation Eric Lomax was captured during the Second World War in Singapore and was held prisoner by the Imperial Japanese Army on the Burma–Siam Railway. During his imprisonment he was tortured many times during interrogation, mistreated and abused, and starved almost to the point of death. The person who came to personify the torture and ill-treatment was the translator, Nagase Takashi. After being freed, Eric Lomax returned to Britain and tried to settle down. However he suffered severe traumatic reactions to his experiences and harboured at times murderous hatred for those who had held him prisoner: ‘In the cold light of day my anger was more often turned to the Japanese who had beaten, interrogated or tortured me. I wanted to do violence to them thinking quite specifically of how I would like to revenge myself on . . . the hateful little interrogator . . . I wished to drown him, cage him and beat him . . .’ (Lomax 1996: 210). He describes the increasingly devastating impact on his mental health and well-being, and of how forty years after the end of the

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war, eventually with help from military psychiatric services and Helen Bamber of the Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture, he was able to begin to talk about his experience meaningfully for the first time and to begin a recovery from his traumatic experiences. However, he retained a desire to find out the truth about what had happened to him and his fellow prisoners of war, and at this stage continued to have feelings of revenge. Almost by accident Eric received an article from a Japanese newspaper about his torturer interpreter. This eventually led to a remarkable meeting through which Eric Lomax learned that Nagase Takashi had in his own way suffered greatly as a result of his involvement in the interrogations and torture. He had become extensively involved in anti-war and peace-making activities and at the time they met, was desperately in need of Eric Lomax’s forgiveness, as he approached the end of his life, forgiveness that was wholeheartedly given in a meeting the two men had in Japan after a visit to Singapore. This is a remarkable story told in the book by Eric Lomax, The Railway Man. It is worthy of reading, an unsensationalized yet inspirational and moving account of a real human experience and struggle. In the closing lines of the book Eric Lomax summarizes the outcome of the meeting and the granting of forgiveness. He says: ‘I felt I had accomplished more than I could ever have dreamed of. Meeting Nagase had turned him from a hated enemy, with whom friendship would have been unthinkable, into a bloodbrother . . . I had proved for myself that remembering is not enough, if it simply hardens hate’ (ibid:276). Here a struggle with dreadful experiences led eventually to the offering of forgiveness, with life-changing and transformational consequences for both men. Writing elsewhere on the subject of transformation, I have pondered whether: ‘. . . there is the possibility that, beyond times of great distress


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and experiences of loss, there lies something hopeful, something settled, new or enriching . . . Whilst we could never contemplate entering willingly into the terrible things that happen in our lives, there remains the possibility that we can – because of and in spite of tragedy and loss – discover new and good things’ (Bolton 2003: 1).

References Bardon, J. (1992) A History of Ulster, Belfast: The Blackstaff Press. Bolton, D. (2003) ‘Transformation’, unpublished text of speech, Omagh. Capewell, E. (1990 & 2004) CCME Monograph, The Trauma Process Map: A personal construction of experience, Newbury: CCME. Cecil, Lord D. (1929) The Stricken Deer, London: Constable. Consultative Group on the Past Report (2009) www.cgpni.org. Cowper, W. (1779) Olney Hymns. Griswold, C. L. (2007) Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Holloway, R. (2002) On Forgiveness, Edinburgh: Canongate. Hymns and Psalms: A Methodist and Ecumenical Hymn Book (1983) London: Methodist Publishing House. Lomax, E. (1996) The Railway Man, London: Vintage McFarland, D. (2008) ‘Beauty for Ashes’, Unpublished personal reflection: Omagh. The Methodist Hymn-Book (1933) London: Methodist Conference Office. Miller, J. (1999) Title track of Broken Things album, Hightone Records. Wilson, G. with McCreary, A. (1990) Marie, A Story from Enniskillen, London: Marshal Pickering.


Chapter 12

Understanding Through Collaboration and Friendship: An Interview with Jo Berry and Patrick Magee

Jo Berry lost her father, Sir Anthony Berry, in the Brighton bomb at the Conservative Party conference in 1984. Using this loss as a catalyst to dedicate her energy to conflict resolution and peacebuilding initiatives, Jo went on to found the charity Building Bridges for Peace. The organization seeks to promote public understanding of forgiveness and non-violent approaches to conflict situations by sharing personal testimony as a way of developing awareness about the human consequences of conflict. In 2000 Jo met the man who planted the bomb that killed her father in Brighton, Patrick Magee. Motivated to reach a positive outcome from her loss, Jo and Patrick have since embarked on a journey of understanding each other and used that collaboration to demonstrate publicly the possibilities of dialogue from conflict. Their experiences have been shared by audiences round the world. GS: Do you forgive Patrick Magee for what he did? JB: Forgiveness is a word I find hard to use. In the Christian sense of the word, I don’t think I have forgiven because that would mean that I would never feel angry again, that I would kind of feel at peace

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and that there would be a moment when everything’s fine. That’s how I see Christian forgiveness, but that’s not what it is to me. I see forgiveness more as a journey and the experience that I talk about still means a lot to me. But in hearing Pat and spending some time with him and really understanding why he did everything he did, when I knew his story, I reached a place where I thought if I’d lived his life maybe I would have made the same choices. At that stage you can’t stand in judgment anymore and in that moment of understanding for me there was nothing to forgive. GS: Do you think it was the same for him in the sense that he realized if he had lived your life, he would have understood your position? JB: I think he’s definitely reached that understanding. He says that he was guilty of demonizing the other, and that he used to accuse the English of demonizing republicans. But he sees that republicans were also guilty of doing that, and that’s how conflict keeps going really, with each side demonizing the other. But on the point about forgiveness, I think that it’s about him forgiving himself for what he’s done. I don’t think I’m responsible for that, he has to forgive himself. He says he doesn’t think he ever will, but that’s his choice. I don’t see forgiveness as something I give to other people really. GS: You mentioned that your experience is a journey, but what is that like? JB: Engaging with him is an emotional experience and I can still feel anger, or annoyance. We have our own different views as well. Obviously we’re going to have disagreements about the situation, for example from my life’s perspective I don’t think violence works, that the cost is too great and how are you ever going to end a conflict if you’ve just created so much pain? Although with what he knows now he wouldn’t use violence, he stands by what he did then. Quite often people say that he can’t be repentant, but I don’t

Understanding Through Collaboration and Friendship 223 think it’s like that. I think that at that time he genuinely couldn’t see an alternative. GS: Do you think you understood him more quickly than he understood you as regards the impact of what he was involved in? JB: During the first meeting about half way through, our journey together began, where he stopped justifying, or wearing a political hat and opened up and that’s when I realized his need to engage in dialogue and understand me. I realized then he had a similar need and that’s what carried on. I think if ever it changed, we probably wouldn’t meet. But having a need to engage is sometimes very difficult for him. GS: Do you think the engagement acts like a form of repentance for him? JB: It’s partly about making sure other people don’t have to make the same choices he did. So is that repentance? I don’t know, but there is certainly an attempt to use the past to make a better future, which we both share. People do misunderstand it and how it’s helping, but it could completely change direction if I wanted it to. I feel I’m in control of it. GS: Have you ever thought of stopping contact? JB: When Pat’s been misunderstood, and said something that makes it sound like he’s still in the IRA, yes I have. There have also been times when I’m just overwhelmed with it all. I always give myself permission to stop if it gets too difficult, not to remain committed forever. It’s got to work for me and my children. GS: Can you give some background on how you first met and what happened?

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JB: Pat would never initiate any meetings, which I think is right. It was something I first thought about probably in 1996 after the peace process had been running for some time and I think that without that changing context I wouldn’t have met him. He’d still be in the IRA committed to the armed struggle, or whatever it is he calls it. But during that period I got invited to Glencree Reconciliation Centre to take part in a number of weekends and it was only then that some of the trauma really got addressed. I went through a whole range of emotions which provided very important preparation. I also went to Corrymeela a couple of times and started to meet people who knew him in prison and were friends of his. I said publicly that I would like to meet him one day, and was told it could be arranged. I was told on two or three occasions that he did not want to meet me but he was saying he did want to meet me and he later told me that he never said no. But I suppose that since the beginning, there had sort of been this feeling that if it’s right then it will happen. Then I was at a peace conference when I met someone who said they knew Pat and could arrange a meeting if I wanted and this person did arrange it and that’s how it happened. The first meeting was very long, about three hours and it took place in a mutual friend’s house. We just started talking, and as I said, in the first half of the meeting his purpose was to justify it and explain it from his perspective. I think he presumed that I’d been fed the Daily Mail kind of line about the IRA. GS: Do you think he went into that meeting feeling more vulnerable than you? JB: That’s what did help me because I was terrified. But I was also thinking it is harder for him in a way because I had had more preparation – I’d met people in the IRA and I’d heard quite a bit about the justifications. I also met a friend of his prior to the meeting who said he could see why I might get something out of this, but not Pat. For him, Pat had no need to meet me and that is the normal stance, that they were right, and they had the moral high ground.

Understanding Through Collaboration and Friendship 225 GS: So your meeting was about breaking that open? JB: He now says that I disarmed him through my listening, which is quite an interesting word ‘disarmed’. That I just listened and asked questions and didn’t go in to point fingers or play the victim. I knew enough about listening and I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to create a bit of emotional safety, so he could open up, I wanted to get inside him otherwise what would be the point? In the first half of the meeting I was just getting set answers and I was thinking I probably wouldn’t come back for a second time, because there’s only so many times you can hear that sort of justification, and I know it wasn’t going to help me. But then something happened. There was this moment when he stopped talking in that way and said he’d never met anyone like me before, open and with so much dignity. He then went on to say ‘I don’t know what to say, I don’t know who I am, how can I help?’ I would say that’s when he began his journey, when he was becoming vulnerable and seeing that nothing he’d prepared could help. Then suddenly the enormity of who he was just sitting with came across. However, he does say that if I had been very defensive and aggressive, he would have stayed in that initial position, which would have been more comfortable, but because I didn’t respond he then didn’t have a position, so he opened up. Listening is a really powerful transformative tool for conflict, for how we manage conflict and for how we make decisions. GS: Would you say that by listening to him you also made him listen to you? JB: Definitely, but there have also been times when I have pushed him and I think that was important. I pushed him on the argument that violence is justified in some instances. I asked how can one say that and play God like that and decide you shall live, you shall die, your cause is worth using violence for and yours isn’t and I think he found that quite difficult.

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GS: Did you want or did you need to know all of the details surrounding Brighton? JB: He won’t talk about it mainly because he’s still protecting the two people who were with him at that time. He was clear from the start that he wouldn’t go into more details and he did say at that time that he had kind of buried it all and didn’t think about it. He can’t communicate it, so it’s probably easier for him not to think about it too much. GS: Have you experienced pressure to forgive or not forgive? JB: I haven’t really felt the pressure to forgive but I know people who have felt that very strongly, who have tended to be Christians and believed that in order to be a good Christian one should forgive which I don’t agree with. I know people who are doing fantastic work, who say they haven’t forgiven and they don’t want to, and they’ve got no resentment and they’re fine. This idea that if you don’t forgive you’re somehow less of a person is not true and it’s one of the reasons that I don’t like to use the word. GS: Would you say that the word forgiveness can get in the way of understanding? JB: Yes I think it can because as the victim there may be a pressure that you should think and be a certain way and this can create pressure to act in a particular way. I have also experienced where it felt as if people wanted me to move on before I was ready. People love to tell you how you should be, and that can cause problems. GS: Has Patrick ever apologized to you? JB: Yes. At the first meeting when he said ‘I’m very sorry for killing your father’. He also acknowledges it every time we meet in public.

Understanding Through Collaboration and Friendship 227 But I think what is really important is that constant acknowledgement and if we’re talking publicly and I get emotional or upset because of something he says then he always totally listens and stops and will sort of make sure I’m feeling better, so that acknowledgement is very important. The action he took he says was about getting the British Government to start listening, which he claims they did. So it wasn’t as if he had worked out how many would die in order to bring that about. But he manages to separate the strategy or the struggle from the human cost. I think what he’s learnt through me is that he was guilty of demonizing and he couldn’t have done it if he’d seen human beings in that hotel. He wasn’t thinking of the implications and the emotional cost at all, but now he’s fully aware of that. He would now also see it as a weak choice to use violence but then believed that there was nothing else available. GS: Where are you in the journey? JB: We’ve been meeting since 2000 and he’s making some big changes; it feels like he’s moving. It seems as though maybe the balance is changing and he’s more questioning about what happened back then. I think he’s also become quite conflicted and he’s trying to work that out in himself, but it’s not an easy option for him. One thing I’ve been accused of is that I’ve let him off the hook and that somehow he doesn’t have to think about what he did, which is absolute rubbish. It’s actually the opposite. GS: Do you feel better having worked with Patrick? JB: Yes. I wanted to create something positive to come out of it and contribute to peace and felt that about two days after the bomb. I think that what we have learnt from him is profound and I quite often say in public that I’m grateful to him, for what he’s shown me and what I’ve learnt. Also we have seen the effect of us being together on other people and it’s extraordinary, transformative. It is as if we are a vehicle or something. We’re not telling people what to

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do, feel, think, or change in their lives, but people are really receiving something and we get that all the time. GS: Do you address the wider issues of conflict or would you see the work as primarily personal? JB: We might be asked questions, which we’ll answer, but I tend still to keep it to my experience. I have experience of meeting people from around the world now, and I’m part of a much larger network, so I might share people’s experiences of what they’ve said, but in the context of conflict. We make ourselves available to absolutely any questions at all and we speak a lot about the time of the bomb. A lot of people ask questions as well. GS: What are they looking for? Is it a natural capacity to want to forgive people, or be as understanding as you have been? JB: I think people want to understand us more, and then maybe apply it to their lives in some way. I think in order actually to do the talks, I constantly make myself vulnerable and speak from quite a deep space in me. Someone at one of the talks said recently that I speak from a stillness within me and that I convey peace and I show what listening is. I always just stop before I’m going to talk and look at everyone and then it’s almost like I’m connecting with everybody there, but I don’t think about what I’m going to say. GS: What has the emotional rollercoaster that you’ve gone through been like? JB: It’s been a transformative time really. When I started this process I didn’t trust myself particularly, I had pretty low self-esteem and I was going through a very difficult time. Now I trust myself, I’m comfortable with feelings and I take care of myself. If somebody’s giving me a hard time I can say ‘no’. I couldn’t do that at the beginning. The wound that I was left with from Brighton had a huge

Understanding Through Collaboration and Friendship 229 impact on my life and I hadn’t healed it, and it was only when I started healing it that it helped me as a person. When I lost my father I didn’t believe that I had needs to be met so I ended up squashing the whole experience and thinking, well I’ve just got to live with it. I didn’t know there was a way to feel better. And even though it was something I really wanted to do I didn’t trust myself to carry it through. Then in 1999, I suddenly relived the whole Brighton day as if it was that day, and these huge emotions just sort of came up and shocked me completely. It was then that I thought I need to work on this and then that I started to take some power and control back. And the stronger I got the more I had healthy relationships with people. So for me knowing what I needed and trusting myself has been a big jump. GS: So you have now got the answers you were seeking? JB: What I wanted was to create something positive and it’s been a long time coming, For a quite some time I wasn’t doing that, and I needed this transformation where pain and the trauma could contribute to peace, actual peace, and that’s the process I’m now familiar with. I made a conscious choice to do that, and I don’t really see that stopping. I can’t go back to the person that I was before. What the problem did for me was wake me up to the reality of conflict, war and terrorism and that is what I am now working to address where I can. If I hadn’t done something I would just sink, so it’s also for me a way of survival. GS: Do you thank Patrick for that? JB: Yes I do. I thank him for carrying on meeting me and for what I’ve learnt from him. I’m fascinated in how to not blame someone and alternatives to blame. In blaming there is the potential danger of not taking responsibility and he’s been a great teacher on that because obviously the temptation is to blame him still. I know lots of people who don’t want to do that and that’s fine. Those people have my support. I’m not saying this is the best way at all, because it isn’t. But for me this process is definitely about understanding.

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GS: In the relationship with Patrick do you think of yourself as the victim and him the perpetrator? Is that categorization in your head? JB: We meet because he killed my father and that’s not going to go away but our work is around healing that relationship. That is our relationship and I don’t feel a victim within it. At times I’ve really found his suffering hard. I have seen his pain and I think he deserves to forgive himself and I’ve said that to him but he says he doesn’t deserve to be forgiven. The amount he’s put into contributing is phenomenal. If you look at what he’s actually doing there are not that many from the IRA doing the work he is. The work we are involved in is a continuum and I see a shared responsibility with what happened to the IRA in the context of Northern Ireland. I certainly think it’s possible for everyone to heal but that does involve taking charge of your journey and knowing what you need. Victims need to be empowered to know they can make that choice. My work is about me developing as a human being and that runs alongside everything.

Patrick Magee Charged with planting the bomb at the Grand Hotel Brighton at the Conservative Party conference in 1984 which resulted in the loss of 5 lives and injured many others, some seriously, Patrick Magee received eight life sentences when he was jailed in 1986. Described by the judge at his trial as ‘a man of exceptional cruelty and inhumanity’ he was freed from prison in 1999 under the early release scheme of the Good Friday Agreement and met Jo Berry in 2000. The two have continued to meet since and bring together their experiences of conflict to support peace-building initiatives and conflict resolution processes around the world. GS: How did your first meeting with Jo come about? PM: The first meeting was on 24 November 2000 and that came about by a telephone conversation I had with an old comrade of

Understanding Through Collaboration and Friendship 231 mine, who said the daughter of one of the people killed by Brighton would like to meet me and apparently that this had been going on for about six months. I agreed to the meeting because I always felt an obligation to talk to victims or indeed anybody connected with the conflict. Republicans knew that was part of the legacy coming out of the conflict and that these meetings had to take place if you wanted to achieve reconciliation, move on and build trust. The only thing I would have asked is what Jo wanted out of it and I was assured that she just wanted to talk and try and get a better understanding of what the motivations were. I was therefore assured it was going to be non-confrontational and that was very important. The first meeting in Dublin took place over three hours, with just me and Jo sitting in a room talking together. I suppose it started off by setting out my motivations, setting out the context for the Brighton attack and really I was justifying the action to her, if also trying to do it with some sensitivity. That’s what I was there to do and I was assured that’s what she was there to hear. It had to be done with complete candour and honesty, but also explained with sensitivity. I was deeply impressed by Jo, and I was disarmed by her, in the sense that she facilitated a move from the position where I was explaining political motivations, to talking about personal obligations. For the last part of that meeting I was trying to know more about how it affected Jo herself. I certainly didn’t expect a further meeting, but within a week or two we had a second meeting, and maybe even a third before Christmas. Over Christmas I thought that this was an important thing for me to do and was something I could get my teeth into and pursue further. I also started working on an idea for a project to facilitate encounters between victims and offenders and I put a paper together which Jo liked, as well as several other people involved in cross-community work. And because of this it got a bit of steam behind it. GS: In that initial meeting were you going in with any specific aim? PM: I saw it as a political obligation. I thought we should be meeting victims and here was a chance for that. I thought it would be a one-off

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and in that sense a useful exercise, but I couldn’t have envisaged it carrying on like a relationship that’s covered over 60 meetings on all sorts of platforms, universities, schools, prisons, conferences, a lot of media work and working with groups interested in reconciliation. I couldn’t forsee that at all. GS: Did the question of forgiveness come into this? Did you ask for it, did Jo offer it, or, was it ever a point of conversation? PM: No. That’s got to be the question that looms in a lot of people’s minds and for some people that might be the goal and that’s great if that’s what people want. But it didn’t feature in our discussions, except insofar that we reached an understanding where forgiveness was inadequate to the purpose of the meetings. If Jo had forgiven me, would that then mean that she would no longer be angry? That’s just not possible. Certain people might be able to achieve that state, and perhaps more so from a religious conviction, but for us it was more about trying to reach an understanding, starting off as parallel understandings and hopefully converging. There was never going to be a total meeting of minds. Clearly there are so many differences between myself and Jo, in terms of our political outlooks, backgrounds, etc. As one example, Jo is a pacifist and I’m not, so you can’t square that circle. However, we could still arrive at a situation where we could at least understand the motivations and trust the other person and see that at least there is sincerity in their position, which I think is absolutely essential. For any reconciliation, trust and truth are essential. This may well mean some painful discussions but it can work if each holds to the validity of the other’s position and I believe we’ve achieved that. GS: Over the years have you opened up a distinction in your own mind between organizational and personal responsibility? PM: I think it’s personal and political. You can remain convinced that we’d no other choice than to become involved in the struggle, and

Understanding Through Collaboration and Friendship 233 I am convinced of that. But that’s quite apart from this other realization that you’ve hurt people, and that’s a heavy burden to carry. In the thick of it you don’t see it, but coming out of conflict, suddenly it opens up a space for introspection and to explore trauma. This for me is one of the great motivating factors for continuing to meet Jo, and through understanding to make reparation. Because of causing that pain I feel that I have this responsibility to meet victims and try to move the reconciliation process a bit further. GS: Have you ever found yourself under pressure from people – colleagues etc. – who are against this process and see it as somehow undermining the republican struggle? PM: I did discuss it with close friends, close comrades, and they let me know their feelings about it, which were that this is premature and too soon to be doing this work. At that stage, the peace process wasn’t really bedded down, and they felt that more needed to be done. But I was doing it on my own, I wasn’t doing it as a member of the movement. When I got out of jail in ’99 I didn’t report back, and indeed was wondering what I could do. I then realized that this was something I could do, that I could get my teeth into, but that also I had an obligation to do it. However, there were some misgivings as well. GS: Would it have been less likely you could do this if it wasn’t for the peace process? Did the external political context make a big difference there? PM: It certainly would be extremely difficult and I think Jo recently said on a platform that she didn’t think it would have been possible for her to meet me with the background of the conflict going on. But I also think that even in conflict you have to make some sort of account to get over the obstacles. That there needs to be some talking to the other. Usually it’s done at a sort of leadership level, in terms of contacts between, say, governments and these are important

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avenues, but there are other things that can be done in civil society at the social level, with the churches etc. helping to move beyond the stereotypical images of each other. So I wouldn’t rule it out, but it’s extremely difficult to do it with conflict going on. GS: In the work that you’ve done with Jo, has it become increasingly apparent to you that violence is more justifiable if the enemy is seen not as individuals but as a construct, an object? PM: You didn’t know your enemy, you just saw the uniform, or you were only aware of their political allegiances and what they were doing to you and your communities. Whether you like it or not you end up with a kind of a communal vision of them so you see them within blinkers, you can never see the full picture, but the same goes for them as well. If you want to get out of conflict you have to widen the picture of each other but it’s extremely difficult to do it. GS: Have you experienced some difficult moments with Jo when you thought this isn’t going to last, I’ve got to walk away? PM: I’ve often felt like that because it can be pretty harrowing. But I see the pain in Jo and even sometimes anger and you wonder how this is moving things on. That perhaps this is a good point to cut off. But then you go away and you give it more thought and you come back to the realization you have to continue with it, that there is an obligation to do so. So it becomes practically impossible to walk away from it when you hold to that. You wonder what other things there are to do and sometimes think that all that is achievable has been achieved. But the point is, Jo has shown this trust in me and I have to honour that. It’s important to honour the trust that has been shown in me and as long as she continues to want to meet and take things further, I can’t see me backing off from it. GS: Can you see when the republican part of you is overpowering

Understanding Through Collaboration and Friendship 235 the more emotive, individual part of you, or do you not make those distinctions? PM: I’m motivated as a republican, not despite being a republican. But as a republican there is an obligation to be absolutely frank, open and truthful, as far as possible. One thing we can’t discuss is operational detail and Jo understood that from the beginning, where the ground rules for these meetings had to be set down right from the start. But beyond that I’ve tried to be as open as possible, both in what I say and in the spirit of the meeting. I’ve learnt to be a better listener through this because I really wanted to understand her better and again, I wanted to honour the trust she has shown with me. The fact she was prepared to listen, and in many instances come out with some remarkable statements, proved that she saw we were at least trying to work from a base of integrity and honour and this gave validity to our perspective. That here was somebody who has been greviously hurt specifically by my actions, and who has shown such trust – well, that just has to be honoured. GS: Have you found at some of the meetings where you’ve been present and you’ve given talks that people have verbally attacked you and expected some kind of public apology? PM: There have been instances where people have heckled and shown disapproval, but more often than not it’s been overwhelming support. I’m not saying they’re agreeing with me, but they’re civil and respectful. You get that from the questions and from the feedback immediately after the meeting. There have been occasions where I have been put in a position where somebody has tried to bounce me into some expression of sorrow or regret, but it doesn’t happen often. One such occasion was in October 2009 when Jo and I spoke in one of the committee rooms at the House of Commons. It was quite apparent that it would have made the organizers’ life a lot easier if I had come out with some expression of sorrow. But I think that’s more because they were under pressure themselves and had in some

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way to justify extending an invitation to me when it left them pretty vulnerable as politicians. I was asked to express regret, forgiveness and sorrow but I said I had made a personal expression of sorrow to Jo in the first meeting with her. I can’t give an expression of sorrow to anybody I haven’t met, or haven’t developed a relationship with. It would be insincere, and I wouldn’t know where that person is coming from so it wouldn’t be felt. GS: Is the perpetrator and victim categorization helpful? PM: Stereotypes are not helpful. We employ them from a sense of really not knowing the other and from having this blinkered, reduced view. You have to expand on that if we’re really going to be able to sit down and respect people. The more contact, the more awareness of each other’s position, and that’s what we have to strive for if we’re going to achieve true reconciliation. GS: What do you think of the argument that one needs to forgive in order to move on? PM: There are some circles that can’t be squared because there are some very basic differences between people and their political outlooks, etc. You only have to look at the impact of religion on the conflict to see that. All you can do is extend the context and keep on extending and building and building, where you isolate those who will just never accept the validity of your perspective. That’s all you can do, keep building up alliances. GS: What has come out your journey and what clarification has emerged from your relationship with Jo? PM: One thing that does emerge is that you get a clearer picture of the extent of the pain you’ve caused. And that goes beyond the pain you’ve caused as an individual to the impact of pain overall. You just get an insight into what’s been lost. If you want to bring it down to

Understanding Through Collaboration and Friendship 237 specifics in Jo’s case, I now have a better sense of her father. I had no knowledge of the man, I don’t think he ever commented on Ireland, but he would have been a supporter of Margaret Thatcher. Beyond that we weren’t targeting any specific politician, so suddenly you know you’ve killed this man, you’ve met his daughter, and through that and over time you get to appreciate him as an individual, as a human being. I have got that through Jo. Suddenly it’s like an act of restoration in itself, where although I can never bring Jo’s father or any victims back, I can at least get a clearer understanding of the loss and I think that’s important. GS: How has the relationship impacted on you personally? PM: It is a heavy burden and I’m conflicted about it, because again, you can’t square the circle in your own head. You know that what you were doing had to be done, and I’ve no doubt about that, even after re-examining and asking myself difficult questions about that period. Anybody who has been involved in any violent conflict, in its aftermath, will feel conflicted because of the burden of having hurt people. When you’re there and you do it, that’s one thing, but then later on you have to live with it and that’s when it makes you ill. One cannot emerge from a struggle of duration without being in some way traumatized or wounded. But I still carry the conviction we were right and that’s very important. If I felt that we weren’t right, that would be difficult so the conviction is a protection as well. GS: Has the process of development and growth with Jo happened in a spontaneous unplanned way? PM: After the first couple of meetings I thought of working at a specific programme to facilitate encounters and certainly there were valuable lessons learnt from our meetings, particularly in terms of the need for preparation. If there is to be any kind of large scale reconciliation through bringing victims and offenders together, it has to be done with enormous support or else it could be dangerous and

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increase the trauma. Jo had been on her own journey for a long time, well before meeting me and so had been thinking hard on all of this. For me too in jail I had been thinking in terms of the shape of the eventual outcome and what needed to be done and said. I came out of jail with very much with the conviction that the legacy had to be dealt with, so we both had this conviction before we met to try and explore further what had happened and I certainly wanted to make a contribution to that. GS: Has working with Jo had a therapeutic impact on you? PM: Even though we’ve had about sixty meetings over ten years there weren’t that many occasions, if you strung them all together, where we actually sat down and moved forward. But what you try to do, if it’s possible and if you feel safe enough, is to try and get into a space where you can be open and honest. There’s clearly got to be some therapeutic value being honest with each other. Yet there are other times when one feels like walking away from the experience. But I always wonder if a meeting was good enough, whether I got the points across, or whether it’s good for Jo or the audience. GS: Clearly listening has been incredibly important in this friendship? PM: Very much so. If you’re going to move on you have to feel safe and secure and the context has to be right. Clearly because of this you have to be thinking about how to achieve and facilitate that in such a way that each side feels free to be open. It’s extremely difficult and we haven’t always achieved that. I think that what Jo and me have achieved is a willingness to listen and if one says something the other has a problem with not to jump up and say ‘I don’t agree with that’ but work to try and achieve some kind of convergence through working with those differences. Given that people’s experiences are different, one needs to work sensitively and if that happens then you have a chance to develop understanding.

Understanding Through Collaboration and Friendship 239 GS: Has meeting and working with Jo made it easier for you to live with what you were involved in? PM: I don’t feel it has made it easier. You mustn’t think that after all these meetings it’s easier to talk in public about it because it really isn’t. It’s quite gut-wrenching to get into that space and it’s never easy. It’s not something that improves. But again, we both must be getting something of it, or we wouldn’t agree to do it further. I also think what we’re doing is political in that one can see the need for good examples of dialogue and reconciliation, despite differences. For a lot of people they see our main message as being that despite our difference we continue to meet. If you believe that such examples are needed then that’s another motivation. GS: Do you think apology is important for conflict resolution? PM: Not in any sort of formulaic way, but if you feel it, you should say it. I think it is helpful to remove all the obstacles for its expression and sometimes people are adamant in sticking to their position while refusing to see the truth in the other’s position. It’s also difficult to make that first step, probably because it will be seen as a weakness. But again, listening with sensitivity is important here. If Jo had expressed anger at me it would have been easier to deal with at many levels because I’d have dealt with it politically. Her willingness though, just to listen and try and engage in a very positive way changed that and that’s why we continue to have the meetings.


Chapter 13

Developing a Forgiving Spirit: A Personal Story David Clements

It was a cold clear night in early December 1985. I had just enjoyed a Christmas party with the Youth Group from the church I was attending in Belfast. Attempts to contact me earlier had failed, and I arrived at my house to find the door open. An old flatmate and close friend, who still had a key, was waiting for me with the minister from the church. The seven words of conversation that followed are still vivid in my mind. ‘David, your dad’s been shot. Dead? Yes’. It may seem a brutal way to have conveyed such news, but best friends do know best. As I had been going out for the evening in Belfast, my Dad was about to go home from the police station in Ballygawley. As he went out to his car, there was a ring at the station gate. As he answered it, shooting broke out, he was shot in the face and then again in the head as he lay on the ground. Another colleague was murdered before a bomb was left which destroyed the station. The others in the station had a miraculous escape. I travelled the fifty miles home with my friend and his wife (a cousin of mine) in silence. What could any of us have said? The first person to greet me as I arrived home was my mother. She came outside into the cold darkness and embraced me, and I felt for the first time the real pain of the Troubles. After all these years it is still painful to recount this story. 241

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The following year I re-heard the call of God to serve Him in the Methodist ministry. That call has taken me to Enniskillen, Warrenpoint, Woodvale/Shankill and then Belvoir. Ironically these have all been places scarred by IRA bombs; though only in Shankill did my ministry coincide directly with the atrocity. Around that time I heard about the work of WAVE. At that time WAVE stood for Widows Against Violence Empower. As work developed all kinds of people, bereaved, traumatized and injured through the Troubles, have been offered help. So the acronym has been dropped, but the name WAVE has stuck. Having shown some interest in their work I was invited to join the management committee, and I remain involved to the present day. Through this involvement with WAVE and also at times my own pastoral work, I have been involved at various levels with many families directly affected by the violence in NI. This personal and pastoral experience, together with my Christian worldview, is what shapes my views on the topic of this book. Over the years I have often had the opportunity to comment in the media, both broadcast and print, on issues relating to victims of the Troubles. The media has often had a particular interest in the issue of forgiveness. It predated the Remembrance Day bombing in Enniskillen, but that remarkable interview given by Gordon Wilson had a lasting influence on how many journalists interviewed later victims. I do believe that, in the providence of God, Gordon’s words had a tremendous power and influence for good – they most surely restrained a bloody backlash of retaliation that would only have multiplied the sorrow in Northern Ireland during that dark winter. At the same time, however, it must be recognized that there has been a negative outcome from that interview. From then on, after almost every tragic incident in the Troubles, there seemed to be a journalist asking the shocked and numbed relatives of the victims: ‘How do you feel?’ Or worse still: ‘Can you forgive the men who did this?’ Some may ask, what is the harm in this? Let me explain the type of scenario that more than once I have had to try to deal with. A man is shot dead. Within a few days the widow is asked ‘Do you forgive the

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people who did this?’ Since Enniskillen, the right answer, the noble and worthy thing to say is ‘Yes – I forgive them’. And so the widow’s response is broadcast on the six o’clock news. Many commend her for her gracious words and that commendation has its short term reward. But then, as time goes by, the initial shock and numbness wear off and are replaced with anger and grief as the enormity of her irretrievable loss really sinks in and she is caught in a devilish trap. She feels anything but forgiving. Now those words spoken and broadcast earlier are like a chain around her neck. The media have long since moved on to newer stories and who is there to listen now? The media often take short cuts and the term ‘forgiveness’ is frequently used in a very loose way. This was illustrated recently when Ulster Television did a series of four in-depth interviews with four people profoundly affected by the Troubles – at least two of them are contributors to this book. The often repeated trailer for the series said that it was about forgiveness. However, in my view, only one of the stories really involved forgiveness. It was the one in which Richard Moore met the soldier who fired the plastic bullet that blinded him. The soldier was clearly sorry for his actions and Richard has forgiven him. The story involves a relationship, repentance and reconciliation. It has always seemed to me that these elements are essential if forgiveness is to have its fullest meaning. The other stories, which were also uplifting and challenging, were about the victims moving on, dealing with their loss in positive ways and not ending up in a bitter and twisted state. Valuable and important as this is, without relationship and reconciliation this must surely be something short of forgiveness. This raises a question: What if the perpetrator is an unidentifiable stranger, or is fundamentally impenitent or perhaps dead? In such circumstances, not unusual in the context of the Troubles, is the victim trapped without the option of forgiving? I should now like to explore this a little further.

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Better than bitterness It is self evident that bitterness is a bad thing. Even the most ill-informed commentator from another planet who glances at Northern Ireland could make the valid observation that we are plagued by bitterness. Scripture underlines the potential dangers. ‘See to it that no-one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many’ (Heb. 12:15). Paul exhorts the Ephesians to ‘get rid of all bitterness’ (Eph. 4:31). In Galatians Paul risks being thought of as insulting in his effort to prove that the gospel of grace is about faith in Christ and not works of the law. Nonetheless he is equally eager to point out that we cannot abuse our freedom in Christ without serious consequences. The example he gives is chilling – especially for those of us in the evangelical fold. ‘If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other’ (Gal. 5:15). Bitterness does not normally come out of nothing: some real or imagined insult or injury has been the cause. The story of the Troubles in Northern Ireland has furnished us with a multitude of reasons for bitterness on all sides of the community, and although the scale of the hurt varies a great deal, the Troubles have impinged on all of us who have lived through these times. There can be a great variety of human responses to insult and injury but we could broadly categorize them into three. One response is to retaliate. To be vindictive and take revenge, to strike out and return evil for evil, blow for blow, bullet for bullet and bomb for bomb. Sadly, this option has all too often been taken in the history of NI. It should be noted that most often those who retaliated were not those closest to the previous victims but others from that general community who took it upon themselves to act in this way, often contrary to the expressed wishes of the victim’s family. Clearly, this leads to a continuation or even an escalation of the conflict. A second response is to resort to a self-destructive retreat into self-pity. Powerlessness or fear may make this seem to be the only


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option, but in the end it leads so often to discouragement, despair and depression. Again, as I think of the people who have to come to WAVE for support over the years, this has been the experience of many. In the midst of the Troubles there were few, if any, organizations that offered support to victims of the Troubles. GPs, social workers, clergy and others were often at a loss to know how to help in the medium to long term and there was little hope offered. A third response is to deny or suppress real feelings of anger and hurt. Sometimes this process is aided by the use of prescription drugs and/or alcohol which give a temporary relief from the pain, but never a lasting solution. Over time, sometimes a very long time, these feelings smoulder and poison our whole system and lead in the end to a bitter spirit. Instinctively we feel that there must be a better way than this. What would Jesus do? His response towards the soldiers who crucified him was to pray for them: ‘Father forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing’. His teaching to his disciples was: ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who ill-treat you’. This leads us to the vexed question of forgiveness. I say ‘vexed’ because in the context of Northern Ireland this important and complicated issue has too often been treated in a superficial and cavalier manner. What sense does it make, in the face of an evil atrocity, to say to the widow and orphan ‘You should forgive?’ The issue of repentance is often raised. Of course, if forgiveness is to be ‘transacted’ there must be apology, repentance and, if possible, restitution. But, in Northern Ireland there is little chance that many victims will ever receive even an apology. Their beloved husband or son, father or brother was seen in the eyes of others as a legitimate target, hence no crime was committed and talk of apology inappropriate. The best we can hope for, it seems, is an expression of regret for the hurt caused on all sides. There is a great danger here for the victims. With no prospect of meaningful repentance, there is the possibility that the victim will be trapped in a bitter spirit. But it need not be so. The victim may take

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the initiative. Whether or not the perpetrator acknowledges his guilt, the victim, in response to insult or injury, may choose to develop, by the grace of God, a forgiving spirit. This can only be done prayerfully and progressively. In the dim and distant past I came across these five features of a ‘forgiving spirit’. I am not able to acknowledge the source, but all I can say is that for at least fifteen years they have been a help in my preaching and my personal struggles: O

O

O

O

O

A forgiving spirit is one that rejects the right to retaliate. It will not consider returning evil for evil. A forgiving spirit is one that takes the deliberate decision not to harbour hostility. The evils of the past are not forgotten but they are not allowed to dominate the present. A forgiving spirit is one that takes the deliberate decision to return good for evil. A forgiving spirit is one that wants the best for those who have injured us. For the unbeliever this may seem absurd, but for the Christian it is profound. The best we could wish for anyone is for them to come into a living relationship with Jesus, which then opens up the real possibility of not just forgiveness but reconciliation. A forgiving spirit is one that grows out of the knowledge of having been forgiven by God in Christ (Eph. 4:32).

To some, these things may seem too theological and remote. To others, and perhaps especially those who do not share my Christian worldview, these things may seem irrelevant. Granted, they may have particular resonance with those who claim to follow Christ, but I do contend that there is a wider application and value. Developing a forgiving spirit may be to the benefit of the guilty; it will surely be of benefit to society, but most of all it is for the well-being of the victim. A forgiving spirit is better than a bitter spirit. This reflection has been deliberately personal. If it seems to be too self-indulgent, please forgive me! I have been asked, however, to explore how this principle of developing a ‘forgiving spirit’ may apply


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in a wider context. I will try to comment on this before concluding this chapter with a further personal reflection. Clearly there are connections between the personal and the community (or communities). Something that is good for the individual’s physical, psychological and spiritual well-being is bound to be a positive thing if it can be translated into a community context. Though written primarily for the individual, the five pointers above can be helpfully applied to communities. First, reject the right to retaliate. Sadly, in the story of the Troubles there was a great deal of retaliation. Often this was done in crude and cruel ways and the obvious result in many cases was an escalation of the conflict. Often there were appeals for no retaliation from political, community and church leaders and we must presume that they may have had some positive influence. It always seemed to me that the most powerful voice was the tearful one of the victim. Thankfully, in Northern Ireland we are now in a safer place and the cycle of violence has been broken. And yet, many must wonder if we had been better able to curb the visceral response for revenge, how much less suffering there might have been. Second, the deliberate decision not to harbour hostility and to be dominated negatively by events of the past clearly has a community dimension to developing a ‘forgiving spirit’. The difficult question, however, is who must take responsibility for this? On an island where history is so important and where perceived victories and injustices are celebrated and remembered on an annual cycle, shaping the attitudes of each succeeding generation, this is a difficult question. Tribal politics depends in large measure on the retelling of these stories, and in Northern Ireland that paradigm has not been broken. Nevertheless there have been subtle changes, most evidently in the relationships between Sinn Fein and the DUP. There are still obvious tensions, and it would be too much to claim a ‘forgiving spirit’, but the present is not dominated by the past in the same way. In other areas, such as education and inter-church relations, there are similar if less dramatic changes. Issues which have divided us for a long time

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are not yet resolved, and perhaps never will be, but in a climate where the hostility is reduced genuine progress is made. The third and fourth challenges issued above have particular resonance for communities in conflict. For such a long time, and perhaps still to a lesser extent, we were trapped in the classic zero-sum game. Anything that was thought to be a gain for one side, had to be by definition, a loss for the other side. It is liberating and transformative to realize that a gain for the other does not necessarily mean a loss for me or my side. Indeed, if I contribute to the benefit of the other there is most often some kind of reciprocal benefit for me. The positive feedback of being blessed for blessing the other is a powerful force for good. Finally, when the apostle Paul writes to the church at Ephesus his words are surely intended to be applied at both the personal level and also in the community: ‘Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you’. I have always been uncomfortable when people say that we all share responsibility for the Troubles or that we have all been affected by the Troubles. At a superficial level there is a truth in the statement, but the more profound truth is that the suffering has not been evenly shared; in some places it is clotted thick. Likewise the burden of guilty responsibility weighs more heavily on some shoulders than upon others. That said, there is none without sin who is able to cast the first stone. Recognizing my need for forgiveness and the failings of my community, however imperfectly I may perceive them, helps in the difficult processes of offering and of seeking forgiveness. As I look back on my personal experience, how have I applied these principles? I began this chapter by relating a short account of the night my father was murdered by the IRA. I remember what my mother said as we embraced under the stars that cold night – ‘Isn’t it terrible’. A short and simple phrase that just hints at the devastation just visited upon our family. How should we respond? I suppose I


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had always known that my mother was a remarkable woman, but her conduct in the days that followed added proof beyond doubt. My mother showed remarkable grace. In my view it was of supernatural origin. Over a few days I guess that about 500 people called at our home and my mother spoke a word of grace to virtually every one of them – everyone from the local parish priest to the Rev Ian Paisley. Perhaps most notably she welcomed the visit of some members of a neighbouring family with very strong republican sympathies who may well have applauded the ‘daring raid’ which left my father lying dead on the ground. A day or two after my father was killed, my mother and I did an interview with one of the local television stations. I can’t remember all that we said and I can’t remember exactly what was later broadcast, but I do remember this. We commented on my father’s faith, a faith that we shared. We did not speak at that stage of forgiveness but we did speak without bitterness and pleaded for no retaliations. On a number of occasions in the years that followed I was made aware that those comments did have a particular and positive influence on some who might otherwise have responded differently. How did I respond when my dad was murdered? At various points over the next year or two one thing that I did was to pray for the men who had killed him in cold blood. I prayed two things for them, and as far as I know in my own heart, I was sincere in both requests, and in the order in which I prayed them. First, I prayed that they would repent of the evil they had done, that they would give up their horrible violence and that they would be transformed by the love of Jesus Christ, and then we would be brothers and by the grace of God I would certainly be enabled to forgive them. As I prayed this I had a picture in my mind. About two years earlier as a final year medical student at Queen’s University, I was actively involved in the Christian Union. I was chair of the Mission Committee that planned and organised a series of events throughout that year under the title ‘The Missing Peace’. One idea we had was to have a panel of people who had been directly affected by the Troubles. We had a policeman’s widow and three

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ex-paramilitaries, from the IRA, the INLA and the UVF, all of whom had been converted to Christ during their time in prison. In the political pressure cooker that was the Students’ Union at that time, it was a remarkable event. It was a privilege to befriend the former INLA hunger striker and to have him as a guest in my home. The miraculous workings of the grace of God in his life were obvious to me. So as I prayed for the men who had killed my father I genuinely sought to return good for evil, and to seek the best for those who had injured me and my family. However they might respond, this prayer was an expression of a forgiving spirit and it delivered me from bitterness. The second prayer I prayed was this. If they would not repent and their hearts remained hardened beyond redemption, I asked that God would judge them in this life, and that they would be prevented from inflicting similar sufferings on other families like mine. Some may think that this second prayer negates the first, and that I have succumbed after all to a desire for revenge. In the end, God alone can judge the motives of my heart but I don’t think I am guilty of that charge. I repeat, the order and priority of the two prayers is significant. Developing a forgiving spirit does not mean that we must not take on board the seriousness of the offence. Indeed the opposite is the case. If some minor offence is committed – say I spill your coffee – I would apologize and you might say ‘Oh it’s alright, forget it, it doesn’t matter’. Even if there is a cleaning bill to be paid, you are right that it doesn’t really matter. However, if I have just killed one of your children, that kind of response is not possible. If I am quite impenitent and likely to go out and kill again, what should you pray for me? Let me add one more piece to my story. A few days after my father’s funeral we had a disturbing visit from a senior detective. My father’s police weapon could not be accounted for. All possibilities had to be considered. Had he left it at home? My mother looked in the place he always kept it when in the house, but she knew it would not be there. He was always very careful, and she knew he would have had it with him on duty. The only remaining possibility was that those who had


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killed my father had taken his gun as they escaped. Perhaps he had drawn it as the attack started and they picked it up from the ground, or perhaps the assassin who cynically shot my dad a second time as he lay on the ground took it from the holster. Whatever the scenario, and even yet I still sometimes wonder what that last minute of my dad’s life involved, the thought that the men who had murdered him in cold blood would perhaps use this weapon to take another innocent life was almost too painful to comprehend. That thought did add passion to both of those prayers that I prayed for the east Tyrone brigade of the IRA. It gives me no great pleasure to say that I believe that the second of those prayers was the one that was answered. About 18 months later, while I was working as an assistant pastor in Enniskillen, I was travelling home to my flat quite late at night. On the car radio there was a news bulletin which reported an attack on the police station in Loughgall. It was a very similar type of attack to the one on Ballygawley station in which my father was killed. This time it seemed that the security forces had advance warning of the attack and this time it was the IRA unit that came under surprise attack. Eight of them were killed. As I drove and listened to this news report I had a strange feeling that I find hard to explain. I was just a few hundred yards from my flat; I parked the car and sat in silence for some time. I sensed that something was over. It was as if a quiet voice said to me ‘The men you were praying for are now dead’. The following day a seal of confirmation was given to me when I was told that my father’s gun had been recovered at the scene in Loughgall. Now, almost twenty-six years on, do I really have a forgiving spirit? I don’t think I ever prayed again for those who killed my father (we Protestants don’t say prayers to or for the dead!). I have occasionally prayed for the families of those killed at Loughgall. I want God’s best for them. I have told this story before and there is little in this chapter that is not already in the public domain in one form or another. About three years ago I was asked to write a piece on forgiveness as a feature for the Belfast Telegraph – I think it was in the wake of some issues

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raised by the 7/7 attacks in London. Albeit more succinctly, I told the story of the two prayers related above and then at the end of the article I added this as a postscript. The editor chose to make it quite prominent: Postscript. If there are any members of the east Tyrone brigade of the IRA who were involved in the attack on Ballygawley Police station, and somehow survived Loughgall etc., should you want to speak with me, my number is in the phone book. No-one called. Sometimes, though, I wonder what I would do if that call did come. To be honest, I don’t know for sure. I hope that the forgiving spirit that I have tried to nurture would be strong enough for the challenge. Not so much for the man who might stand in my doorway, but for me and for my family; for other victims and for the whole community; and ultimately for the glory of God. For all the struggles, my story is that a forgiving spirit is better than a bitter one.

Chapter 14

The Possibility of Forgiveness: An Interview with Duncan Morrow

Duncan Morrow is Chief Executive Officer of the Community Relations Council which is responsible for funding the development of inter-community relations practice and policy in Northern Ireland. He has played a central role in ‘A Shared Future’ the long running government strategy to improve relations in Northern Ireland, and is closely connected with learning agency work on understanding conflict through the University of Ulster. In 1998 Duncan was appointed as a Northern Ireland Sentence Review Commissioner, the body responsible for implementing the early release of prisoners agreed as part of the Good Friday Agreement. GS: What does forgiveness mean in the context of a post-conflict Northern Ireland? DM: Part of the problem with forgiveness is that it operates outside the law, which explains why politics has such a huge difficulty in dealing with it. At a humanistic level it’s not a great visible act, but it means that destructive emotions between us no longer remain the pre-eminent issues in our relationship. If to forgive means that the harm done in the past is no longer the foundation of our relationship, then there’s no other possibility for moving ahead there except for forgiveness. An awful lot of understanding about what forgiveness means is remains tied up with symbolic moments of its visibility, where people are looking for the words to be spoken. Genuine 253

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forgiveness seems to me to be about people who have real reasons to make justice claims on other people, but who choose not to do so, instead saying let’s get on and move forward – that to me is the substantial nature of forgiveness. And without that it’s hard to see how we can overcome the test of whether we make it forward or not. GS: Is it pointless to talk about communal forgiveness? Can one only talk about individual acts of forgiveness? DM: Maybe the power of good example allows other people to move into this space. What it shouldn’t look like is powerful people asking forgiveness on behalf of people who haven’t asked. The meaningful acts of forgiveness in the modern world, in politics, have been through acts of leaders, as with Sadat going to the Knesset and saying he would talk to them, which was a huge gesture. Of similar importance was when Brandt fell down on his knees in Auschwitz, or the statements of Martin Luther King, where justice claims were voiced as part of a dream – in other words, they were within a reconciliation framework. One also has the example of Mandela and his refusal to go down the potential path of pressing the justice claims, but instead saying we will find justice in the new South Africa, and so seeking change through transformation. These were acts of powerful people who became human and therefore allowed other people to follow them. But real forgiveness is where people recognize that they don’t have a choice, because the alternative is not to forgive, and that is worse for me, for you, for everybody. GS: Is it more likely that people with a religious sensibility are going to say that? DM: The language of forgiveness makes sense from a JudaeoChristian point of view and that is the claim that Judaeo-Christianity makes on us, which is actually that there is no rational reckoning, only the possibility of forgiveness and renewal. The possibility of forgiveness itself is tied up with having been forgiven. In other

The Possibility of Forgiveness

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words, knowing that actually we weren’t held to account because we too were forgiven – that’s the dominant story in the New Testament, the story of the forgiven servant and who we are in that story. We are always the person who’s been forgiven. GS: Is unconditional forgiveness really the only forgiveness worth having and giving? I ask this because repentance is seen by some people as fundamental and foremost to forgiving. DM: Forgiveness is characterized by limitlessness: it is the limitless act. It’s the release from the logic of revenge and the eye for an eye approach. When it comes to serious human interaction, if that’s the way we go, that absolute reciprocity is the best you can do, then forgiveness is essentially the refusal of your right within that logic. It is to say, no, I want to remain in a human relationship rather than have my justice, and in a funny sort of way it opens up the possibility of another kind of a justice because the really radical version of forgiveness is when you’re forgiven first. That actually is the key to unlocking forgiveness, and the possibility of forgiving is finding that we were forgiven first. It’s not repentance first. We were forgiven first and then we repent and then we convert, that’s the logic. Repentance is actually a moment of recognition, of seeing, you suddenly see what you did, but the forgiveness, the fact that the other is not forcing it on you and you can’t blame it on them actually imposes responsibility. So the possibility of taking responsibility depends on seeing and the possibility of seeing, and the process of forgiveness, of forgiving, in a sense is incomplete until the other sees. GS: Are there degrees of forgiveness? DM: There are degrees of refusal towards retaliation, certainly, there is that. There is also a willingness to forgo punishment. I suppose I would hold out for a more radical version of forgiveness, which is that essentially the forgiven person is somebody from whom I no longer seek recompense. I am not interested in that anymore but

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instead am more interested in you. The theological model here is Jesus on the Cross and ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do’. It’s literally saying, they’re more than this act and I’m interested in them, not the act. GS: But if you steal my car to go and kill someone with that car, that’s a very different situation that you’re forgiving in comparison to somebody who through that act lost five members of their family? DM: I can’t ask someone to forgive in that kind of way, as a demand. This is separate from punishment, although the person may need to be punished too, but it’s not an alternative to punishment. If you read Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment he suggests that doing punishment is a way for the person who sees to begin to pay back, so in that sense punishment can be an extremely positive thing. Forgiveness is not about being against punishment. For the person who is destroyed by this act where five members of their family are killed, the possibility of the miracle that they might one day be able to forgive is a possibility of liberation, it’s not a law and it’s not a demand. It can’t be asked for. And in a way that’s the weakness, which is that exactly what we need is too much to ask. Let’s be clear: forgiveness is always too much to ask because forgiveness is about injustice. GS: Should Catholic priests who abuse children be forgiven? It seems to me only the victims themselves can answer that question. DM: Being forgiven to me means the possibility that the person who was abused looks at the person who did it to them and sees in them a human being and moves on. It doesn’t mean they don’t pay for what they did. Forgiveness is equality in relationships. It is not an act of abolition, or an act where everything disappears; that’s not its primary function. Its primary function is in bringing us back to the human relationship. It’s the mechanism through which we see each other – after all that’s been done – as human beings again.


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GS: Is there a language of forgiveness, a dialogue that can address it without it falling into a punitive or legalistic kind of argument? DM: Part of the problem is it has to be shown, not told; it’s revelation in symbol, in fact, in reality. Another part of the problem here is that we talk about forgiveness as if it is an object, an ‘it’, and it’s not. It’s what happens when people forgive and eventually receive being forgiven. Essentially it’s a verbal reality, it’s a way of describing the consequence of forgiving. In turning it into an object there’s a serious danger that it then becomes a rather brutal measuring stick, which actually makes people victims again, because they can’t make it. It becomes, if you like, the notion of a perfect idealism which you can’t make. GS: Does that mean then that forgiveness is forgiveness if that is how I see it? DM: In a sense it’s testing the reality which is where we are now in our relationship. Many things may help with that, such as gestures, generosity, evidence, space made by acts of generosity, by acts which are essentially acts of forgiveness and of symbolic difference. GS: What would you say, though, to someone who says relationship has been the cause of the problem and that they’ve actually got to get away from it, not seek to transform it or develop it, but end it? DM: It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be in intimacy with the person afterwards; it literally means you can let it be. To me the importance of forgiveness is that we are back to seeing each other as human beings, but that does not mean we have to be at a particular level of intimacy with others. To forgive the person who abused you as a child can’t be asked for, in any legal sense. The law will take the revenge you want; that’s the reality and that’s what we ask everybody who works through a process of law to work with. But forgiveness is coming to a point where you no longer look at them and only see

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that evil person, you see a human being. Does that mean you have to know them? No it doesn’t mean that; rather, it means that they no longer have any dominating part in your life. I see it as a miracle, as a possibility, as a necessary reality, without which we cannot gain freedom. But I also see it as an impossibility and as something we have to hope for. Because of its miraculous nature it seems to me religious when it appears. GS: You have two areas in tension here which are victim and perpetrator. But as soon as you use the words ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’ people leap into one category and don’t want to be in the other. Part of the problem seems to be the language of exclusivity, of polarization. DM: We tend to understand victim and perpetrator as kind of ontological categories, like male or female – you’re one or the other. Actually, victim and perpetrator are ways of describing positions within a relationship. Also a victim can become a perpetrator so even if I am a victim now, part of the way to forgiveness is finding my way back to my time as perpetrator. Part of the story is that in having recognized how I have been a perpetrator, I come to see what it is to be a victim and recognize my victims. In other words, these are no absolute categories, even though we all rush to the victim’s side, as if that speaks of a pure truth while we miss the fact that we must also belong to the perpetrator, if not in this act, at least in their humanity. The bigger problem is taking ownership of our ability to be perpetrators. The issue is not was evil done, I don’t think that’s in question at all, but is the court a court of the ‘innocent’, or a court of the ‘guilty?’ While that doesn’t take away from what you have to do in relation to the act, it certainly suggests that the position you’re judging from is different and the kind of resolution you’ll be looking for is different. We have collective and individual stories, both innocent and guilty, and then we have a political story about innocent and guilty as well, and these tend to be absorbed into each other, even though we know that they don’t quite fit. Yet we tend to move very quickly from one to the other, maintaining the continuity


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of our sense as victims, and the dominance through it is such that we believe that acting as perpetrators took place within an overarching sense of being a victim. In other words, we minimize responsibility, we sense that our acts were personal acts for which we were not entirely responsible, because they arose out of a situation in which we were first victims. GS: You seem to be suggesting there that we all want to try and put ourselves in the victims bracket because then it makes it easier for us to scream and shout about what we have done and how we feel. DM: Most want to be the good guys and we want to be the people demanding justice, rather than the people from whom justice is demanded. Paradoxically, we are most united when we are all united against our perpetrators – that makes life relatively easy, because we all agree at that point – and it’s probably a point of particular danger, not so much about the acts that that person’s done, but in terms of our ethical position. GS: Would you say there is there a different psychology at work within the Catholic community in comparison to the Protestant community on the whole notion of forgiving? DM: In Catholicism there is a notion of falling short that is forgiven in the sacrament of reconciliation and it’s fairly profound. That’s also true in Protestantism, but here there is an emphasis of personal responsibility which tends to operate in the absence of absolution. Protestants haven’t got a possibility of absolution so you have to repent, but if nobody relieves you of your sin, you have to relieve it yourself. The core of that kind of thinking is that essentially what the crucifixion demonstrates is you do have a totally innocent person, who is crucified by the crowd and the political authorities, and who forgives them. That’s the way round it works and you can see how this reverses normal expectations about behaviour. The doctrine of atonement is bizarre, but in a sense it’s the other way round. What

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the crucifixion reveals is complicity in violence, that our community is born in complicity in violence, that’s what it reveals, but this is not something that people want to know. Even Christianity has turned it round to suggest that it was the Jews who did it and ‘we’ wouldn’t have done it. This is clearly nonsense. What we are being warned about is that even the people who have been told this for years end up in this position. This is their story as well and we’re the same. Essentially, we are all involved and need to be very careful before we claim innocence. GS: A number of people have written about the possibility of forgiving in Northern Ireland and it is acknowledged as important in the final Report produced by the Consultative Group on the Past in 2009. But who do those who write about it think they are talking to? DM: Forgiving is a moment of recognition, and this is repentance in its meaningful sense. It’s turning round to the point where people understand their own responsibility. You have to forgive something and you don’t forgive nothing. You forgive evil, so there has to be an evil to forgive. Forgiving always happens in the face of evil. But someone is accused of injustice and that accusation is the first thing. But as I have indicated forgiving has nothing to do with justice in the modern sense of the word. It has to do with a bigger and more holistic possibility. However, part of that process has to work socially and that is the bit that we have the biggest difficulty with. There are levels of responsibility which operate politically, individually or organizationally. We participated in a movement which was essentially about violent expulsion of our enemies and that’s what we did. Some people did that at a very personal level, some people did that because their organization told them to do it and some people did it because they could not find themselves saying that was wrong, thus giving political cover to it. It’s very easy to deny each of those circles. The people who did it are saying we did it because our community was attacked, but also because the rest of my community told me to do it. The organizations who were involved say we had to do some


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terrible things, but it was inevitably part of maintaining civilized law in the face of terrorism. And those such as the IRA say we did these things, but essentially we were part of a heroic defence of the nation against colonial imperial aggression and so on. GS: Perhaps as the link between the organization and the individual slackens, the individual may start to reflect on and recognize the need to forgive and be forgiven. DM: Or maybe it moves more into the political. The vast majority of people who weren’t directly involved in violence still came to identify profoundly with one side or the other, and found themselves trying to build political movements which supported one side or the other. To what degree the German people as a whole were complicit in the acts in the concentration camps is invariably a question that becomes diluted as time goes on. But we’re never totally free of it. The concern somehow still remains. GS: Perhaps the struggle to forgive is the most important thing. That there is never full closure, but through struggle one is able to embark on a process of change which transforms and generates deep understanding. DM: There are people who have forgiven and I meet them every day. These are people who really are not bitter, just sad. Bitterness forms no part of how they are in this world. There may have been some profound tragedy in their lives, but they’re not looking for revenge. They are determined to go on. Maybe for most of us this is a temporary state, it’s an occasional state that you get to and you move between different places. Sometimes you’re angry and sometimes you’re actually free from it. But at some degree it is an existential decision they’ve made, and they have found their way to another place. GS: Do you think there is something in their disposition which led them to forgive?

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DM: I think of it almost as two realities sitting side by side. There’s the reality of our feelings and our engagements and our responses to this terrible kind of injustice and violence that people have faced, and then there’s this possibility of forgiveness, and sometimes the two join up. Sometimes it’s very dramatic in personal relations, sometimes it is inner choices people make politically and sometimes it is through small steps, which people weren’t able to make before, when people are able to find their way. But these things interact. Forgiving remains a kind of radical notion, though, in terms of how it interacts with our lives. It would be inhuman to say that you don’t some days feel angry, and yet in another way, you just let it go. That’s the experience of how this works. GS: Do you sense that there is a growing awareness of the need to revisit and rethink questions about the possibility of forgiveness at this time, when a post-conflict Northern Ireland is in sight? DM: The big gap is still at the political level where there is very little willingness to provide a narrative which puts the victim at the centre. The political narrative is driven by victimhood, not by victims, and that’s the problem. We are still in a place where victimhood defines and divides and this is the difficulty with the peace process. A lot of people think the peace process is unjust because it’s asking me to do things which I shouldn’t be asked to do. So you have quite a resentful peace where people are saying I have no choice, but I’m going to have to do it. Because of this it doesn’t feel like a victory, or release or liberation. Rather, it feels like an obligation and something enforced on us through having no choice. GS: Have the churches done anything to try to develop the debate? DM: The churches have a doctrine about original sin which is incredibly misunderstood, the notion that we’re all sinners and we belong to imperfection, that this is our tragic reality and all human conversation of justice has to take place within this framework. All the churches’


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doctrines, Protestant or Catholic, of salvation or of justification, are about people who didn’t deserve it and all of those discussions are about beyond what you deserved, that you were loved beyond what you were worth, love is stronger than death, that kind of thing. I suppose my main critique of the church of which I am a member is we have totally failed to talk about ourselves as a failing people and failed to provide a language to facilitate that debate. I think the language we have comes from a faith-type of sensibility, which is why politics and faith are not the same and there’s things that politics can’t do. Politics regulates, decides power relations, gives order to things, and certainly that’s better than no politics, but as a language it’s not adequate to get us towards the forgiving sensibility. Politics may provide a type of force which creates order but there is another notion of order which comes from the sensibility we have been talking about here. GS: Do you get any sense that the churches are extricating themselves in any shape or form from the political situation? DM: Part of the problem is that their fingers are all over the conflict. That doesn’t mean to say that most people think this is religious, but it does mean that most people know that the churches didn’t extricate themselves from conflict very successfully. The reasons some people gave for killing or for discriminating or for excluding were to do with religion, and we didn’t manage to eliminate that as an idea. So first our fingers are all over the problem. Second they’re obsessed with the good things and the justification that they weren’t the ones pulling the trigger. And third they are now desperate to get out of this story, to the extent where they have now practically left the scene. I suspect that this will create problems in the long run for the churches because they’ll look like institutions that did not know how to repent and forgive. I think the actual liberation to be a human being who’s fully responsible for what we do and who we are is partly to do with coming to terms with that, and although there are some exceptions, overall churches have been places of reassurance rather than places of transformation.

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GS: The theologian Miroslav Volf talks about the struggle to remember rightly. He suggests that there can be constructive and destructive forms of remembering which shape how we act and react to others. The problem of remembering and how to remember is at the centre of the transformation process, don’t you think? DM: The start of remembering for Christianity is that before we understood everything we were invited into a meal and that is the story of the Last Supper. That is what one is taught to remember about the crucifixion, where you’re brought back into that reality. So all memory is to be brought back to the place of generosity and forgiveness; even as we’ve now discovered we didn’t deserve it, this is the starting point of Christian memory. The starting point of Jewish memory, I suppose, is the liberation from Egypt, that the power system was going to destroy us but there was a God bigger than Pharaoh who got us out. The Judaeo-Christian notion of memory, then, is the memory of undeserved salvation, or survival, and that there’s something beyond the power. So all memory needs to be taken into that space and understood from that start point. But that’s not where most churches do memory from. They start from the position that we’re the good guys; this happened to us, this was unjust and you need to pay. For ordinary people in ordinary situations, the reality is: that’s also our experience; we did not deserve this. The Catholic community needs to say to those people who died in the Catholic community, the way we prosecuted the war put some people at risk and you just happened to be them, so we’re partly responsible for your death. And likewise in the Protestant community, you died, but they were really angry against all of us, and in the way that we dealt with that you were in the front line. So our understanding is we’re victims of them, but actually we’re also victims of much more, much, much more and there’s a lot more forgiveness that needs to happen. The memory of remembering from the point of loss, of the value of the lost person and of the reality of the destruction: that is where we have to do our remembering from, as opposed to the political context which made that justifiable. So the


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discourse is very much about what you did rather than what I did. I would like to see the memory point moved from how it felt like from within some political struggle where we were always the victim, to what it looks like from the perspective of those closest to the people who died. Because once you’re there, all your notions that this was just fall away and actually what you’re left with is the devastation. Then you have the possibility of asking for forgiveness, because you can see what it is you’re asking for forgiveness for. I suspect that part of the reason we don’t have a truth and reconciliation commission is because some people don’t want to come and talk about what they did and acknowledge any mistakes, which they will have to admit. Moreover they might have to face the people who they hurt and through that interaction change their view. Northern Ireland is in a strange position, where it both accepts that there are victims, but won’t engage in the discussion. GS: Do you think the value of the Report produced by the Consultative Group on the Past offered a moment of opportunity to talk about victims which was lost in the media frenzy about financial recompense to victims? DM: It was totally lost, and it got lost because it was cart before the horse. The Consultative Group on the Past, having heard all the testimony, understand only too well that no enquiry in Northern Ireland will leave the notion of innocence intact. Therefore we will all be in the position of having to acknowledge the terrible price some people paid for what was essentially a ruthless and pretty bloody conflict, and that nobody will end up without blood on their hands. So we will all have to become a bit more humble, no matter what. Unfortunately not everybody has been in that space, and in a way that should have come at the end of a public process where all this becomes clear, rather than at the beginning. One of the things about law courts that’s very clear is how different they are from people with a ‘hang ‘em and flog ‘em’ attitude. When you actually put people in a court and you confront them with the situations and the actual

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stories of people and they have to listen to the evidence and they have to work their way through it, the courts come up with the same decisions as all the liberals, because they’ve heard the much more complicated story, they’ve seen people in front of them and they’ve made judgments on the nature of what’s going on. The 80 per cent for hanging approach disappears once you get into actual relationship with the person. GS: Is healing also forgiving? DM: I suppose there are different levels, but essentially healing and forgiving in this context are intimately interconnected. That healing is of the trauma and the trauma is the wound to which you always return, this thing that defines your life. So healing at some level is recognizing that a huge wound was caused but that the possibility of life returning comes back. Healing in that sense means I’m getting on with my life now. All traumatic and abusive action creates a double bind, where you want to be far away from people, but you can’t get away from them, and part of forgiving is the release that you are away from them, that they don’t occupy you any more. And part of the liberation of forgiveness is actually realizing that you’re not tied to this anymore. That it doesn’t define a person any more, it’s over. GS: One often hears the word forgiveness along with reconciliation. What is this relationship? DM: Reconciliation is the word to describe the restoration of the human relationship where there are no longer rivals or enemies: it’s a notion of freedom. After violence, I suspect reconciliation is only possible if there is forgiving going on and not just forgiving, but forgiving and repentance together. This is forgiving and acknowledgement, a process of both forgiving and acknowledgement of change. I want to be clear: forgiving, acknowledgement and change are probably interdependent. Whether one has to come first in some kind of formulaic order, I don’t know, but all are needed.


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GS: Does this challenge to forgive also require forgetting as well? DM: After forgiving, forgetting becomes a possibility. For some people, forgetting is a good thing; you don’t want to be kept up at night by the horrible traumas of these things, so forgetting is helpful in that sense. But what it doesn’t require and what is not helpful is repression. People are obsessed that they’re being asked to repress or deny, and so become very nervous about forgiving. The fear is that they’re being asked to pretend it didn’t exist, or pretend it didn’t have this impact, or repress their feelings or make it manageable. The law tries to do that through justice and getting people into the right place etc., but forgiveness is another possibility, and it allows for real legitimate forgetting. It doesn’t take away the wounds – after the crucifixion the wounds are still there, the resurrection doesn’t take place and deny the crucifixion, it is in the face of this, so it’s about the possibility to take this action in the face of all this other stuff. Forgetting almost belongs to another category to me where it says that things don’t matter or exist any more between us. GS: Does the forgiveness and reconciliation debate have any hold on public consciousness or does it amount to small groups talking to each other? DM: If you’re not forgiven, it’s still active in society and that’s the reality. Forgiveness is the possibility that it is no longer the active yeast in the society that creates the bitterness, the anger, the frustration and the injustice. What the peace process showed is that we are politically exhausted, at least for this generation. But if you can’t get your revenge and you can’t have justice and you can’t forgive, what happens? Do these problems just disappear? No it festers, like a terrible resentment, and so my fear in Northern Ireland, is that we settle back into a place of resentment and resignation; that the next stage for us is neither forgiveness nor revenge, but resentment and resignation, where Northern Ireland becomes a place unable to let go of its past but unable to act out the violent responses that that past

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would demand of it. I think it is still true that the back door is locked, you can’t go back to this, but potentially, in the short term, if we can’t find our way to a new relationship with each other, we then just stare at each other as enemies and resent. GS: Surely for the forgiveness argument to gain any purchase it has got to become unhooked from the ‘you’re letting them off ’ argument. DM: It is our passport to a better possibility that should be the emphasis. It’s not about letting them off the hook. As I have said, it’s not a law, we don’t have to do this, but the question we have to ask is: do we wish it? And I suppose the answer to that is ambivalent because along with that goes recognition of what we’ve done and that we don’t know. Clearly we’re frightened of that because it has big, big consequences. GS: The point you made about the Last Supper in relation to memory was particularly interesting. Is there an equivalent metaphor for Northern Ireland in terms of where memory begins from? DM: We have to ask what our Last Supper is and what the alternative to the crucifixion is. The alternative is people sharing food round a table. This is the image of community, a mutual sharing, but also a community around an expelled victim. Those such as Nelson Mandela pulling a South African rugby shirt on, or Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech, these are examples of people who found a way to conjure up this new reality. It did not take way from civil rights, it did not take away from what had to be done in apartheid, but it gave a context within which people started to think: we might arrive together. Forgiveness then becomes a mechanism through which we arrive together – to choose another biblical metaphor – of reaching the Promised Land. You don’t get to the Promised Land except out of this Egypt, you don’t get there except through a long desert, you don’t get there unless you make a lot of choices and a lot of mistakes. But the question of whether you want


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to get there has got to be presented as arrival and not as defeat. The promise of forgiveness is that it’s not defeat, but arrival. It is the route to an arrival and I think a lot of people have trouble or doubt with that. GS: Forgiveness is about the perpetrator as well as the victim, but is that an equal relationship or does the power in that relationship come from the victim? DM: The power’s with the victim and in some ways it’s the only power the victim has. But you have to break the logic of reciprocity, because once it becomes this kind of negative logic, that the only justice here is for the victim to teach the perpetrator what he taught the victim, then it becomes difficult to free oneself from that destructive spiral. The power the victim has is not to take part in that and not to return to it either.


Chapter 15

The Struggle to Forgive Chris Hudson

Growing up in the south Dublin suburb of Dun Laoghaire did not require any great understanding of forgiveness, other than making atonement as prescribed by parents for what they regarded as worthy of sorrowful regret. These were the usual misdemeanours such as breaking a precious vase, staying out late, or getting in fights. Many times in adult life I have had to say sorry, not always because I believed it was warranted, but because the other party appeared sufficiently wounded to require my apology. As a child I was educated by the Christian Brothers (a notorious religious teaching order which stressed retribution) and later as a teenager by the Presentation Brothers (who provided a lighter approach to punishment and retribution). Both religious orders consisted of celibate men, but the latter proved less brutal than the former. My memory of school is one of fear and brutality, where beatings were carried out for the least offence, such as not being able to recite a prayer. The influence this had on me later in life resulted in the belief that violence could resolve problems rather than cause them, and that there was no need to consider forgiveness given the instant impact of punishment and revenge. In recent years I have started to ponder more how such an attitude might have played out in the lives of Irish people, and whether the emphasis on punishment and revenge played its part in shaping the campaign of violence in Northern Ireland. After all, we are the sum parts of our experience and in particular the experiences of childhood. I often have difficulty 271

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understanding the violent reaction of members of the Catholic/ nationalist community to unionism in Northern Ireland alongside acquiescence to the brutality of the Catholic Church, as made only too clear in the recently published Ryan Report and its revelations of systematic Catholic abuse. From my own experiences, functionaries of the Catholic Church could both beat you and make you feel guilty at the same time. But, paradoxically, the only acceptable response to both these outcomes was to seek their forgiveness. The dominant image of forgiveness for Christians is that of Jesus on the Cross in agony and pleading ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do’. Most Christians understand this to mean that those who crucified Christ were not aware that he was the only son of God and therefore they were guilty of deicide (killing God). Nothing can be worse than deicide and yet Jesus called upon his Father to forgive those who persecuted him. The challenge for us is to follow Jesus’ example and forgive those who hurt us. However, the reality is that the followers of Christ used the death of Jesus to torment Jews, even though they did not kill Him (it was the Romans). And even if some Jews had killed Jesus (remembering of course that he was Jewish), the persecution of Jews per se was wrong. It amounts to both an escalation and violation of the very thing Jesus warns against, and we should note that the cry from Jesus fell on deaf ears. For centuries Christians have continued to turn a deaf ear to that plea from the Cross. Even though many acknowledge that God was compelled to forgive those who killed Christ, we are less inclined to carry that lesson into our own lives. The word forgiveness presents us with a problem of definition, and because of this allows for varying interpretations which can be stretched and manipulated to serve different ends and interests. The struggle to forgive is therefore also a struggle over meaning. I was never exposed to the concept of forgiveness other than its repetition in prayer, and this did little to facilitate any real understanding or grasp of its application and significance. Every Catholic (indeed every Christian) can recite the following words from the Lord’s Prayer ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass

The Struggle to Forgive 273 against us’, but in the culture that I was brought up in there was very little sense of forgiveness, only long memory about wrongs against ‘us’ Irish Catholics. We were fed on ancient hurts and grievances inflicted by Britain and we were educated to see ourselves as the offended people. We were never expected to seek anyone’s forgiveness beyond the Church because we were always the victim. And it is this self-perception which I believe has operated at the core of Irish nationalist ideology. Even though I no longer subscribe to the Irish Catholic/nationalism/republicanism worldview I still have victimhood firmly rooted in my DNA, and I recall as a young man working in England when losing an argument with an English colleague that I played the ‘what about the eight hundred years of oppression?’ card. What has stayed with me since I was a child is the memory of seeking the forgiveness of a priest in the confessional, and I remember as a ten or eleven year old confessing to a strange man in a dark box that I had masturbated. I always travelled into Dublin on the bus to confession with the Franciscan priests on Merchant’s Quay. They always seemed less judgmental, more forgiving and more compassionate. Local priests, on the other hand, sought too much information, especially if there was a young woman involved, and gave a greater penance. These penances involved praying at the Stations of the Cross (the chronological pictures of Christ’s passion in Catholic Churches), reciting the prayer ‘Hail Mary’ fifty times, and a few ‘Our Fathers’. This clearly indicated to others that I was a lad of ill repute but at least a chastened sinner. What I am attempting to say here is that growing up in Dun Laoghaire I did not learn a lot about forgiveness in school or in the Catholic Church. What I did learn a lot about was shame, guilt and retribution. Forgiveness is not an instinctive reaction and it does not come easy. Indeed, for most of us our immediate inclination is to recoil in self-protection when we feel we have suffered an injury by another party. It is not an instantaneous reaction to respond with forgiveness when we’ve been wronged. The question of why we should forgive is difficult to answer, given the different explanations

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and convictions about where forgiveness comes from. That we might view forgiveness as deriving from conscious choice, an act of will, a feeling or an emotional state of being indicates the potential complications. When we consult the Bible we find a number of insights and answers to the many questions about forgiveness, and it is worth reflecting further on this. For me, Christian understanding is based on the realization that the Lord will not forgive us unless our hearts are fully purged of all hate, bitterness and accusation against others. It is paramount to the Christian ethos not to show feelings of intense animosity, jealousy, anger, resentment or vindictiveness to our brothers and sisters. We are told that God cautions and warns us against the dangers of bitterness. When we read and consider the words of Hebrews (12:15) we learn of the dangers of bitterness: ‘Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled’. Again in Acts (8:22–23) we can ascertain that an essential ingredient at the heart of forgiveness is the lack of bitterness and that we cannot forgive with a heavy, angry and bitter heart; ‘Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee. For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity’. Bitterness has no role to play in having a heart which is open to forgiveness. It is a cautionary call to those who wish to forgive or seek forgiveness that they must first rid themselves of bitterness for actions done or inflicted by another. At the centre of the Christian message we are told that there is a need to rid ourselves of bitterness: ‘Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them’ (Col. 3:19). There is no place in the act of forgiveness or repentance for the bitter or resentful heart: ‘But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth’ (Jas. 3:14). For Christians the removal and banishment of such emotion is the only way the heart can accept forgiveness, and this at the end of a cleansing period where love and kindness give way to the forgiving act: ‘Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children

The Struggle to Forgive 275 of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself ’ (Lev. 19:18). We regularly hear from some paramilitaries that we are all victims. There might be some aspect of truth in that when one considers the reasons why people got sucked into terrorist violence. In any conflict situation one should not generalize but try to keep an open mind on each individual’s testimony about how that person ended up engaged in violent activity. Indeed, reaching the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement required accepting that a space be made available for such testimony. Yet one cannot blame most people if they adopt a cynical smile at the assertion that paramilitaries/terrorists are victims in the same way as those who were murdered, bombed or injured and did not take to conflict. This reminds me of the Christian Brother who in the process of beating me would inform me that the beating hurt him more than me and it was for my own good. With hurt and a pained expression on his face, no doubt the good Brother saw himself as a victim of my misbehaviour. Although forgiveness might involve some sort of reparation which recognizes wrongdoing, perhaps we also need to take into account the factors and attitudes which resist this. Are we realistic to expect unionists to say to the Catholic community ‘Forgive us – we were wrong to mistrust you and to exclude you from the institutions of this state, but we did not trust you and we were wrong?’ Similarly are we likely to hear Catholics say ‘We accept your apology and forgive you. Please forgive us for our brutal reaction to your violence against us. It was extreme and unwarranted. It was not helped by our own indoctrination of punishment and retribution’, and for both sides to do this with a sense of love, an absence of bitterness and with forgiveness filling their hearts? From this perspective the idea of people granting forgiveness to each other makes little sense if there is not some admission of culpability and recognition of input into the violence. In general, Protestant dislike for the Catholic is based on a reason, even if the reason is misguided. Likewise Catholic dislike for the Protestant is based on a reason equally misguided, and such reasoning

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needs to be examined and deconstructed if we are to move towards a position where forgiveness is possible across the communal divide. How does one deal with the statement from others that although they seek forgiveness, they had no choice but to take the life of their enemy? Does the act of forgiveness suggest that the violent deed was wrong or caused regret because of the injury created? We cannot assume that those seeking forgiveness are admitting guilt. They may be filled with remorse for what they have done, but could probably repeat the horrific acts of violence again if the same circumstances prevailed. It may also be that for that person at a particular time and because of particular conditions, he could see no alternative. Those who seek an apology for injury may also seek a statement of wrong doing and atonement, and those who committed horrific deeds may say there was merit in their actions but regret carrying them out. Have we a right to ask for more than that? Many in the security services may say they regret the hurt they inflicted on others in a riot or violent situation, but saw it was necessary in order to maintain order. This is where I have problems with those who advocate forgiveness as part of the ‘healing process’. Is forgiveness unconditional or does the forgiver seek retribution and regret? At this stage we would do well to we remember Rev Dr Ian Paisley, former First Minister of Northern Ireland, demanding that Sinn Fein leaders wear ‘sackcloth and ashes’ before the DUP would sit in government with them. Recently, I was talking about forgiveness to a former RUC officer who was badly wounded in the Troubles, and he shared some profound thoughts with me. He said that whilst one might seek the forgiveness of a specific person, this does not also mean seeking forgiveness on behalf of an entire organization. He went on to say that some of the RUC may warrant making an expression of regret, but that did not discredit the whole police force. He mentioned that some time before he was shot he had injured two people with plastic bullets. He might seek their forgiveness, but not on behalf of the police force. He also believed that to forgive, it was important to have empathy with the person seeking forgiveness and that in

The Struggle to Forgive 277 this relationship, just as the inflictor must have sympathy with the injured party, so the injured party must be able to empathize with the inflictor. Some might argue that forgiveness is not possible for those who do not seek it. To utter the words ‘I forgive you’ might be taken as a response to the plea ‘forgive me’. But this also raises the question of whether we wait for that plea or whether we offer forgiveness before it. Not only that, but when is the time ripe for perpetrators to ask for forgiveness and when are victims to respond to this request? Do we forgive but insist that those who killed our loved ones should still be prosecuted and face custodial sentences? Do we forgive and draw a line in the sand and ask that society moves on with no desire to see those who murdered our love ones punished? For some it is an imperative to prove that the State was somehow complicit in the killing of their loved ones, and this argument has been at the heart of their campaigning. Yet such people, more often than not, do not wish to see those that they support also brought to justice. Their campaign is not to offer forgiveness but to seek justice. But if this approach was followed by all those who suffered because of the conflict, it is hard to see how conflict would ever be brought to an end. There is a dilemma with both trying to forget the past, and trying to remember the past in that both have the potential to re-ignite conflict. In Northern Ireland there has been little consideration of the role forgiveness might play in the managing of the peace process. The late PUP leader David Ervine once commented that we should look to each other’s needs. If each community could consider the needs of the other community instead of being compelled by a third party to give a little at the eleventh hour, we might be in a better place. There is little sense of giving to the other community whilst under duress. Most people who have been injured during the Troubles bear their hurt in silence and with a sense of bewilderment and anger. The methodology of moving on is not to engage at any real level in what makes us angry or what has contributed to our perception of the other side. But even if we all forgive each other for what has happened, it still remains unclear how this in itself will move us

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on. Will it, to pose another question, help us to rid ourselves of the baggage that we still hold on to as if it was the essence of our existence? I have no answers to such questions, but it seems to me that the process of engaging with ‘them’ is important and that the space to converse about what forgiveness means as well as its potential advantages and disadvantages is a debate worth having. No doubt in that debate we will observe protectionism, loathing and fear, but these problems cannot be overcome through silence. That much we do know. In October 1994 when the Combined Loyalist Military Command (CLMC) made a statement declaring a ceasefire, many were genuinely moved by part of that statement which stressed ‘true and abject remorse’ (I refer in particular to the section which said ‘In all sincerity, we offer to the loved ones of all innocent victims over the past twenty years abject and true remorse. No words of ours will compensate for the intolerable suffering they have undergone during the conflict’). Whether some regarded it as clever piece of writing or a sincere gesture, it did provide a collective atonement by the UVF for past deeds, if not an acceptance that all their acts were wrong. In their eyes, even though the UVF inflicted pain and suffering on the other community and although they would still maintain the right to take up arms as a conflict response, the expression of remorse in such stark terms might have incited a wider discussion about the meaning of remorse and the apologetic moment in post-conflict development. It did not. Maybe by listening to others’ stories we learn to empathize and through that empathy dissolve bitterness. I remember during the Hunger Strikes I felt no sympathy for those men ‘on the blanket’ as they died. Indeed, like many others I shared in the jokes and indifference to their suffering. I allowed my anger with the PIRA and my political judgment to block out any sense of compassion. But when I saw Steve McQueen’s film ‘Hunger’ I was deeply moved, and felt regret for how I had felt during those difficult times. It did not compel me to compromise my view that they were wrong, but I did learn to empathize with them and their families. The film provided

The Struggle to Forgive 279 both the necessary distance and closeness to do this. It facilitated a space in which I could contemplate suffering at a human rather than organizational or communal level. Being invited to witness the suffering of Bobby Sands (played by the brilliant Michael Fassbender) I was invited to understand Sands’ conviction. For this to happen it is imperative to engage at a human level; to share common humanity. Some time ago with a number of others I introduced a vigil every Good Friday in the Dublin Unitarian Church. It consisted of reading the names of all those who died in the Northern Ireland Conflict, as listed in the book Lost Lives (McKittrick et al. 2004). The reading of the names was interspersed with prayers, readings and some music. It was a very moving ceremony and has received much media attention over the years. We selected Good Friday for obvious reasons, with its strong Christian message and of course because of the Good Friday Agreement. In that sense it was a response to both the religious and the political. However, as yet we still have not introduced this event into a church in Belfast because of the sensitivity of reading all names out together with no comment. There could be anger that an innocent loved one’s name could be read out next to that of a terrorist, or that a murdered police officer could be listed amongst republican colleagues of those who killed him. Perhaps when we feel confident enough to do this and people are not opposed to how it’s done, we will have moved some way to overcome the differentiation of victims and the use of that differentiation for reasons of political or organizational interest. Running parallel with forgiveness is the capacity to understand. I have come to the conclusion that if we can arrive at a destination called understanding, then this may have a greater impact than any complex insistence on the need to forgive, since if one is being called to forgive something there has to be a level of understanding first. To understand is to have knowledge, to discern, to be able to comprehend the other’s point of view, to be able to understand why the other feels the way they do and to understand why they react the way they do. In other words, understanding leads us to explain the motivation, hurt and mind of the other community. It allows

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us to distinguish truth from falsehood and see the possibility of an outcome. It will also lead us away (hopefully) from the recycling of falsehoods and myths which hinder the path to understanding. But to reach this point we need to know and be open to things we don’t want to hear. Much violence is conducted in the absence of listening. Listening will take us into the space where understanding becomes possible and this, it seems to me, is the starting point for forgiveness. On 31 July 1975, the Miami Showband, a popular band from the Irish Republic, was set upon by the Ulster Volunteer Force outside Newry in Northern Ireland. The band was returning home having performed in the Castle Ballroom in Banbridge, County Down. They were stopped by men in uniform, whom they believed to be members of the British Army; this was a common occurrence at that time in Northern Ireland. However, the armed and uniformed men turned out to be members of the loyalist terrorist organisation, the UVF. The musicians were ordered out of their van and stood on the side of the road. The UVF then attempted to plant a bomb in the van, which exploded prematurely killing two UVF members. The remainder of the terrorists opened fire on the band killing three, Fran O’Toole, Brian McCoy and Tony Geraghty. Steven Travers, severely wounded, was left for dead by the terrorist gang. In 2006 Steven contacted me to say that he was writing a book about this terrible incident and needed to talk to me. Steven hoped I could make possible a meeting with the UVF so he could state his case and put some closure on this incredible episode in his life. I was in a position to set up a meeting in my Church vestry in All Souls in Belfast with a prominent member of the UVF command structure. The ‘Craftsman’ (code name for the UVF man) agreed but stated it would be in a personal capacity, because the UVF had made clear their unwillingness to discuss individual cases by individual members. The UVF maintained that the statement by the CLMC in October 1994, declaring a ceasefire and expressing due remorse, was sufficient. Steven and I met with the ‘Craftsman’ along with a journalist assisting Steven with his book. Initially the idea was to meet for one hour but we were still there five hours later. The meeting is

The Struggle to Forgive 281 well rehearsed in the book Miami Showband Massacre (Travers and Fetherstonhaugh, 2008), but forgiveness was not part of the project. Steven did not seek an apology, nor was one offered. In a way I was helping Steven Travers to confront his demons by meeting a prominent member of the UVF. I was profoundly impressed at how Steven dealt with this meeting. Whilst a lot of time was spent on forensically discussing that night in 1975, there was time for discussion on the motivation, the intent and the eventual outcome. Steven was not there to seek remorse and grant forgiveness but to understand. Steven set out to understand where the UVF were coming from and what drove them. He wanted an insight into the mind of the UVF and to make them understand how he felt. He also wanted to speak out for friends Fran, Brian and Tony who died on that awful night. The experience has made me think more about understanding. Of course forgiveness is essential for many to move on and leave the pain of loss and destruction behind. But to understand the complexities of those we don’t agree with is profoundly liberating. It allows us to find some empathy with our opponents and come to terms with the space that they occupy. Maybe for a brief moment we can occupy that space and have a sense of their reality. The recent release of the Report by Lord Saville into the Bloody Sunday killings of 14 people by the Paratroopers in Derry on 30 January 1972 has had a major impact on the city of Derry/ Londonderry. Along with an apology from the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, it was a long-awaited but important liberation from the years of seeking justice for loved ones. The Report established what most knew, which is that those killed were innocent. This revelation has hopefully allowed the city to move on. However, some in the unionist community still found it difficult to come to terms with the findings of the Report and seek to invite parallels with other atrocities (specifically those committed by the PIRA). Meanwhile, some nationalists who view the Report as a sort of victory over the other side seek to move on to the next inquiry in an attempt to win the ‘victim war’. This is sad and leaves us all diminished in the wake, clarity and truth of the Saville Report. If Northern Ireland is to move

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on it is essential to have an understanding of each other in order to create a common space or shared space. Not to except the rationale or ideology of the other side but to be able to see their needs in a spirit of tolerance and genuine enquiry surely contributes to and sustains such transformation. A lesson can be learned here from John Locke, an Enlightenment philosopher/political theorist whose ideas inspired much of the thinking of our founding fathers as they struggled with the idea of the social contract, the equality of men and property rights, in a bid to reach constitutional understanding and agreement. Coleridge said that ‘understanding is the power of perceiving and conceiving, exclusive of the sensibility; the power of dealing with the impressions of sense, and composing them into wholes’, according to a law of unity. By understanding in this way we may in our ever-antagonistic diversity create a sense of purpose and, to paraphrase Locke, ‘compose our human faculties into a form of wholeness’. Perhaps it is also in this struggle to understand, and in our attempt to find some kind of wholeness in meaning, where we come face to face with the possibility of forgiveness. Perhaps, to put it another way, it is through the path of understanding where we reach the possibility to forgive. Michael Longley, the renowned Ulster poet, in his poem Ceasefire tells the story of Priam seeking the body of his slaughtered son from Achilles the man who killed him. Priam reminds Achilles of his own father, and in this moment Achilles has the body of Hector washed and laid out in a uniform so that Priam can take his son’s body home to Troy be buried. Achilles can understand and empathize with Priam. But what profound emotion is it that motivates Priam in the last two lines of Longley’s poem? ‘I get down on my knees and do what must be done And kiss Achilles’ hand, the killer of my son’. I wish I knew.

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References Longley, M. (2007) Collected Poems, London: Jonathan Cape. McKittrick, D., Kelters, S., Feeney, B. and Thorton, C. (2004) Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died in the Northern Ireland Troubles, Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing. Travers, S. and Fetherstonhaugh, N. (2008) Miami Showband Massacre, Dublin: Hachette Books.


Chapter 16

The Release and Gift of Forgiving: An Interview with Richard Moore

Richard Moore was blinded by a rubber bullet at the age of 10 in 1972. Brought up on the Creggan estate in Derry, Richard has embraced blindness as an opportunity to ‘see life in a different way’ and talks of his forgiveness towards the soldier who shot him and whom he recently met. As founder of the charity Children in Crossfire, Richard is dedicated to helping children caught in the crossfire of poverty and conflict around the world. Working tirelessly to promote the rights of vulnerable children, Richard has recently published his experiences in the autobiography Can I Give Him My Eyes? (2009). As His Holiness, the Dali Lama put it when talking about Richard’s story ‘Despite his own loss, he has found freedom through forgiveness’. GS: When you were blinded as a child, what kind of emotions did you go through, especially in the early years of your life, and how did you overcome them? RM: The emotions that I went through were probably all around the emotions of dealing with blindness itself. But there was almost a calm acceptance in my life of being blinded and in such a traumatic way. Looking back on it, there probably was a traumatic reaction to blindness, but in relation to anger, or bitterness or revenge, I didn’t have any of that. I think if I had of been 20 years of age instead of ten, the impact of being shot and blinded and how I felt about it would have been different. I was blinded by the British Army in 285

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Creggan, Derry, a young nationalist blinded by the British Army, and overnight I became a local celebrity. All of a sudden I was extremely popular so blindness and being shot became a positive experience. GS: How did your family react? RM: My mother was broken-hearted and I think that for two years after I was shot, she couldn’t remember too much, because I think she had a mental breakdown, although it was never diagnosed as that. But what I have heard about the things that she did and by the way she was acting, it sounds like that is what happened. My father cried when he heard that I was shot and blinded but I never heard either of them say an angry word. In fact I heard them promote the opposite. I had seven brothers who were older than me, and all were young impressionable men who were angry, yet I heard my parents always trying to calm the situation with them. GS: Did coming from a Catholic background make a difference in terms of your reaction to the trauma? RM: Yes, my parents were two very religious people and they went to Mass every day of their lives. My father and mother were two very devout Catholics and religious objects like holy pictures were in our house. My mother and my father would have said prayers every day as well as going to Mass, but it wasn’t something they banged like a drum in the house. They did it very passively, it was very implicit and I believe it was their faith that got them through what happened. It was their faith that gave them the forgiveness, the gift of forgiveness that they had, and it was the gift of forgiveness that they passed on to me. It was done in a very quiet and unspoken way; it was a witness, it was an experience. GS: Do you think that being of that disposition and coming from that background made it easier for you to forgive?

The Release and Gift of Forgiving 287 RM: I don’t feel it’s incredible to forgive because for me it’s the most natural thing. I didn’t wake up and make a decision. I always say I had family, community and opportunities and choices available to me and I availed myself of them. The fact that blindness didn’t become such a terrible thing in those early stages of my life meant that I had nothing to be angry about really. If I had of been 20 years of age and driving a car that the girls loved and everybody loved and I was in a job then the consequences of blindness would have been greater, and therefore I might have been angry. GS: How far is one’s the ability to forgive shaped by family background, do you think? RM: Not in every situation, but certainly I would say in quite a few situations for me family background was very important here. If my parents had been angry, or I was going into a house where my father was saying he was going to get his own back on those bastards, I may well have felt the same. If I was told never to talk to a British soldier again, the chances are I wouldn’t have, so family background is an important influence in that sense. GS: Was forgiving a process, an instant decision or something that just fell into place like an attitude? RM: I think it’s something that fell into shape – it wasn’t like a moment in my life, when all of a sudden I made a decision, I’m going to forgive the guy that shot me. It wasn’t a conversion moment, no. At a certain point in my early adult years when I began to think about my blindness and about how I felt towards the person responsible, I started to realize that the feeling I have is one of forgiveness. Nobody ever talked to me about forgiveness, nobody ever helped me understand what it was, or even if I had it, but it was there anyway. It was only through a process of having the opportunity to talk about blindness and the way I lost my sight that this emerged more clearly. Initially I never asked myself how I felt about the guy that shot me

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but then I began to think that I didn’t really mind the guy that shot me. These kinds of questions helped to shape and clarify my feelings about myself and what had happened. I’m not saying that blindness didn’t present its difficulties and I’m not saying blindness is a joy, because it’s not, but I’ve managed, through being blessed the way I am, with an ability to deal with it. GS: So your forgiving attitude was partly to do with the fact that you weren’t obsessed about the man that shot you? RM: I was never obsessed about him. In a strange way, he and I were in a relationship – you know, I’m blind, he was the guy that blinded me, and I don’t know the guy that blinded me, I didn’t know anything about him. It was just like a military wall had blinded me, it was just something called ‘the military’, or ‘soldiers’, but when you began to get down beneath that and see a person, a human being, a man, a decision, you start to ask how is he?, how does he feel?, where is he? Blindness became almost who I am, the work that I do, the personality that I have, and the fact that I was blinded by another person but I didn’t know who it was that interested me, but never did I feel any resentment towards him at all. I think there were times in my life when I wondered if he understood the hurt that he caused and particularly when I found out his name for the first time and began to find out more about him, that he was a retired major living in Scotland and had a B&B business. Then I began to think: well compared to my parents’ lifestyle, he’s had a reasonably good life and lives were made more difficult by his action. GS: For you, what is forgiveness? RM: Forgiveness for me is the ability to let go of any feelings of anger or hatred that you might have towards the person or thing that hurt you, or damaged you or offended you. It’s also about reaching out to that person, and almost having compassion towards that person. I suppose what you are seeking to do is replace anger with compassion,

The Release and Gift of Forgiving 289 understanding and possibly even friendship, although not everybody gets to meet the person, or it could be a whole institution that’s hurt you, but it’s your ability to replace anger and resentment with some kind of love. I also think forgiveness is an emotional thing because it’s a way of dealing with how you feel about something. GS: Did you have to understand the circumstances of the man who shot you in order to forgive him, or had you forgiven him long before you knew about him? RM: It helped to know him, but I didn’t have to know him. I forgave Charles long before I ever knew his name and I think that’s very important. I think one of the big things about forgiveness that can often be overlooked is that it’s not about the person that you’re forgiving, it’s about yourself. GS: In that it gives you freedom? RM: Oh absolutely, the freedom that I found within myself meant I didn’t have all that baggage, all that hatred, and I was free within me. It’s been great to meet Charles but it doesn’t mean you have to do that to develop compassion. The freedom for me in the first place is in the peace of mind, the tranquil place that you go to when you can sit in the privacy of your own thoughts. That’s what this is about, it’s not about how I impress you, it’s not about what I say to the general public, or what I say to my friends, it’s about how I feel when I am sitting without all the masks that life sometimes forces us to wear, sitting in complete privacy and being honest in my own mind to say I don’t have hatred. GS: Was there a pressure on you not to forgive, living in the environment which would have been strongly opposed to the British Army? RM: First of all, pressure comes from within, right? Nobody ever put me under pressure to hate the Army or hate the British soldiers,

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but I think there were pressures on me that I felt. For example, I was conscious of the fact that other people had been brutally injured and hurt by the British Army and I remember the Bloody Sunday families, who I have tremendous respect for because what they’re dealing with is not just any ordinary death; they were dealing with enormous things on a daily basis and I was conscious that through my forgiveness and reaching out I might in some way be hurting them. But nobody challenged me about my desire to forgive. GS: When you met Charles, what were your reactions towards him at the time? RM: I found out his name around 2005 and it was a television production company that was making a documentary about my story who tracked him down. I had always said I wanted to meet the soldier, but I never thought it would happen. Then they tracked him down and I began to realize this was actually going to happen. And then they gave me his first name, which is Charles. When I got a name, everything changed. GS: How? RM: Well, it humanized him. I was dealing with a person called Charles, who I knew was then in his 60s, was a retired major, had a wife, had a family, had a business, had a life. I used to wonder about him, where he was in the world, was he even alive, or what was he doing, but when it’s actually presented to you, when you become aware of it, you start to think: what if this guy is not the type of person that I would like him to be? What if he says things that I don’t want to hear, or I find hurtful, am I ready for that? So there were all those emotions going through my head and then I began to wonder what the hell I was doing, opening up a door that has been long slammed shut, and that I was maybe providing a platform for the guy that hurt me and hurt my family to cause more hurt. I was worried that this would hurt me in a way that I was not ready for.

The Release and Gift of Forgiving 291 GS: Were you expecting him to apologize? RM: No, I had no expectation. I’m a great believer in humanity and all of us are human beings; it doesn’t matter what we’ve done in life, we’re still basically that human being, and I suppose I just felt that this person, once I meet him at the human level, probably wouldn’t be a bad person anyway. GS: What happened at that first meeting? RM: As you can imagine it was awkward for the first ten minutes or so. He was meeting a blind person whom he blinded. I was meeting the guy who blinded me. And so it was a kind of fingers and thumbs situation for maybe 20 minutes or so. What I said to him, and I can say this almost verbatim because I thought it out in my head so many times before I went, I said ‘Look Charles, I’m not here today to talk about 4 May 1972 endlessly, I’m not here to be confrontational, I’m not here to make you feel guilty, I’m not here to make you accountable to me, I’m here to let you know that I forgive you and I’ve always forgiven you, I’ve no hatred towards you and I never had any hatred towards you’. GS: What did he say to that? RM: He thanked me, first of all, and he said that he regrets what happened that day, that when he fired the rubber bullet he never meant to cause the damage that he caused, that he fired a rubber bullet in the hope that it would just frighten us all off and that if he had realized the damage, if he had known the damage it would cause, then he wouldn’t have fired it and he wishes now he had never fired it. I think maybe initially he was shocked by what he had done, he was saddened by what he had done, but I think also he had moved on. GS: Is forgiveness something you’ve got to work at?

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RM: I can see why for some people it’s something they may have to work at, but for me, it was very natural and I suppose it was assisted by the fact that Charles was a nice enough man. I mean, if he had been completely ignorant, or in some way insensitive, then I think that maybe forgiveness, my ability to forgive, would have been challenged, but it wasn’t. But in every act of generosity there’s an element of selfishness, and I suppose the selfishness for me is how I felt so blessed and gifted that particular day to tell Charles face on that I forgive him. GS: Do you think that part of the ability to forgive comes from being able to see your predicament in a positive way rather than a negative way? RM: I embraced blindness and I didn’t see blindness as a negative thing. I managed to navigate around blindness and live a life where blindness was a part of it. I had my difficulties, and there’s the emotional side of blindness, and there’s the physical side of blindness to contend with. The physical side can obviously impact on the emotional side but the thing is, I managed to deal with both and put them into perspective in relation to the rest of my life. I’m not saying that I won’t be sad about blindness tomorrow. I’m not expecting to be sad today, tomorrow or whenever, but there are probably times in my life when blindness becomes more emotionally difficult to deal with, which has happened and will happen again. Yet the fact is that I navigate around all those difficulties, all those emotions, all the practical, physical things, and basically accept the limitations that I have in my life and focus on the things that I can do, rather than what I can’t. This also meant that it was easy for me to be more positive about forgiveness. GS: What about people who feel they can’t forgive, because they’re angry, they want revenge, and they want the perpetrator to be dealt with, however that is perceived? RM: I think there is a tendency to expect victims to be something

The Release and Gift of Forgiving 293 special, to do something that is maybe beyond their capabilities, which isn’t fair. What I would say to any victim, or anybody that’s gone through trauma and loss, is that there’s nothing to be achieved from feeling angry. Also forgiveness isn’t all about the other person, it’s all about you in the first instance, and about being able to free yourself up from that anger. Alongside this we need to remember that sometimes in unusual situations people do unusual things. I believe that Charles was serving as a British soldier in the Rosemount area of Derry on the day he shot me, in a very unusual situation. It wasn’t a normal society, and when you have that backdrop then sometimes people do things that are not normal. And I think if we can accept that, then it puts some kind of understanding into the picture which can start to shift us away from the dominance of anger and resentment. GS: A lot of people see forgiveness as somehow excusing the crime, but you never saw it in that way did you? RM: First, perhaps one should ask is your perception of forgiveness about the other person, or is it about you? For me forgiveness is first and foremost about me and how I feel. One of the benefits is that it is something you can offer the other person but if you tie the forgiveness to the other person, then in some cases it might be impossible to forgive; you might then be presenting a situation which makes it impossible to move beyond. GS: But what about letting the perpetrator off the hook, the idea that what they have done is morally indefensible and an affront to justice? RM: If Charles doesn’t feel sorry about what happened to me, that’s for him to deal with. If he turned round to me and said that I deserved to be shot, well, that’s for him to deal with too. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t agree with him, I differ fundamentally from what he’s saying but that’s not what forgiveness is about from my viewpoint. I forgive Charles, whether he thinks that I deserve to be blinded or not. I forgive him for the hurt that he caused. As I said before, I think part

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of it is that I realized that here is a man that carried out an act which in a normal society he probably wouldn’t have carried out. More than this, as regards the act itself, I would rather be sitting in my shoes than his. I also separate forgiveness from justice. I know that people will think that when I forgive Charles in some way I’m almost justifying what happened but I’m not. It is wrong to blind a ten-yearold boy. Charles shouldn’t have fired a rubber bullet at a group of children. I’m not saying that the person who perpetrated the crime against you shouldn’t face the law because you forgive them. To me, you can forgive totally, but that doesn’t mean the person shouldn’t face and be dealt with by the law, but I don’t think that should be a condition of forgiveness. If I take a gun and shoot you now, then your wife could forgive me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have to face the law and serve my time for the crime committed. Yet for me, that is different from forgiveness which operates at another level. GS: A lot of people would still equate forgiveness with an absence of justice however. RM: They try to connect justice to the act, of course, because they think that a perpetrator should not get off with what he or she does, but once forgiveness comes into play the preoccupation with justice starts to evaporate. Of course, you may not even have broken the law to warrant somebody’s hatred, but you still hurt the person, so forgiveness is not always about justice as administered by the courts. Forgiveness is more embracing. It operates at all levels, whereas justice tends to be tied in with the law and social order. GS: One of the things that interests me about the word forgiveness is its perceived generality. Since every person has to come to forgiveness as an individual, its meaning is inevitably individualized rather than generalized, would you not say? RM: There might be people who are happy to forgive, but never want to meet the perpetrator; they don’t want to be asked to make

The Release and Gift of Forgiving 295 that step. Forgiveness is invariably a personal thing and some people think the minimum the perpetrator can do is say sorry. They would say the perpetrator has to show regret for forgiveness to follow. But these categorizations create expectations or rules that I am not comfortable with. Moreover, what is being sorry about? Am I sorry to you, am I sorry I did it, or sorry for myself? Forgiveness has to work with and through these distinctions and levels and to do this forgiveness needs to be unconditional; which for me is what it is. GS: Do you think then that conditions make forgiveness more difficult? RM: I don’t think it makes it more difficult, but I think it qualifies forgiveness. For me, forgiveness is not a word that means something less than that, it’s not forgiveness, but that’s what it is. In one way there’s too much of an expectation on victims, but from another perspective, I don’t want a victim to feel that because they can’t forgive they’re less of a human, or that they’re a terrible person. It is understandable not to forgive. We need to understand the circumstances which are different for everybody. GS: What does forgiveness feel like? RM: It’s about not feeling angry, it’s about not having that feeling of anger dominate one’s life. It’s such a gift that I nip myself every time I think about it and I genuinely do, because I am such a lucky person, such a blessed person, to have that feeling. GS: The general consensus seems to be that perpetrators should show some kind of repentance for what they have done, but presumably you would see this position as restrictive because of its conditional emphasis? RM: The general view seems to be that if I do something to you that I cannot cope with, if I’ve done something to you which is

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dreadful, then I have to go and seek forgiveness, I have to go and seek repentance in some way. But what do we mean by repentance and in my case, what do we mean by repentance in Charles? If he comes to me and says I am heartily sorry for what I have done to you, please forgive me – is that repentance? Does he sit him down and listen to me say: ‘Do you realize I will never see my children? Do you realize I have to pay a painter to come round and paint the outside of my house? Do you realize I have to pay a guy to come and cut my grass? Do you realize I have to get a taxi to work every day of my life? Do you realize my father and mother were broken-hearted about what you did?’ Is that what repentance is, for him to sit there and listen to that? Is it for me to bombard him with emotional rubber bullets that are going break his mind down so that he’s an emotional wreck? What is repentance and what is achieved by it? I might be happy, but is he? It seems that if we are not careful, repentance is about making the other individual live their life on sinking sand, as an emotional wreck. Not only that, but if I said all those things and Charles did all those things, could I then forgive him? It doesn’t give me back my eyesight, it doesn’t take away the hurt that my family went through for thirty-odd years, it doesn’t let me see my children who I have never seen, he can’t give that back to me. So if I’m making this thing called repentance a condition of my forgiveness, will I ever be able to forgive? I’ve heard people talk about restorative justice, that the person has to do this or that for the rest of their life. In my case would Charles have to come and cut my grass, paint my house once a year for the rest of his life? It reduces handling the problem to infantile levels. If I make repentance a condition, could it be argued that this is actually a measure of revenge? OK, you’re not pulling a trigger, you’re not beating the living daylights out of him, but you’re doing something else, you’re making them him do something, that in some way makes them repent. But in doing this are we also saying that to forgive, one must punish the person in some way? I couldn’t make my forgiveness a condition of that. You know, when you forgive somebody, it has to impact on them. How can it not? All I’m saying is, that for me, Richard Moore, and for the forgiveness that I

The Release and Gift of Forgiving 297 understand and the experience that I’ve had in my life, unconditional forgiveness is where it is and I don’t believe that there’s any other word that goes in front of or with forgiveness.

References Moore, R. (2007) Can I Give Him My Eyes? Dublin: Hachette Books Ireland.


Conclusion

The essays and interviews in this book are intended to stimulate a social and political conversation about the value of forgiveness and reconciliation in Northern Ireland. If such a contribution is to have social value it must take into account those opposed to forgiveness and reconciliation. Though the essays and interviews both directly and indirectly acknowledge the implications of this opposition, it should be said that forgiving will amount to little if it is unable to meet the criticisms and objections of those who do not want to forgive. The point of dialogue is to bridge such differences, but to do so within a space which reduces neither position (and others in between) to mere defensive posturing or arrogant presumption. This requires us to re-examine the political and social implications of the stories which have dominated the Troubles and re-engage with the meaning of those stories from other vantage points, for it is through the creation of new narratives that the dominant positions of conflict will give way to the potential for dialogue and discourse built on commonality. Perhaps it is time, then, to suggest that seeing commonality through difference now needs to give way to seeing difference through commonality. There may be an inclination for some to try to reduce arguments about forgiving and reconciliation to empty idealism, the work of ‘do-gooders’ who do not have to live with the effects of conflict every day or face the incessant consequences of sectarianism. Then there are the people and communities who have lives far removed from 299

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those of politicians, who prefer such people to be ignored if foreign investors are to be enticed, or the image of political progress is to be sustained. Either way it is imperative that such dislocation and alienation be addressed within the forgiving and reconciliation context. If such a process is to have substance and credibility it must confront full-on the arguments against, and if purposeful and constructive social interactions with the ideas in this book are to take place they must take place with those opposed to the arguments made. The arguments for forgiving and remembering, in other words, need to engage those who feel marginalized from dominant social and political discourse and whose primary reaction is that debates of this kind are about either attracting public money or appealing to a postconflict industry of enquiries which might bring truth, but certainly won’t bring reconciliation (Ryder 2010). On the face of it, the political realm seems to function in the opposite way to this aim. Modern politics after all depends on not forgiving, and remembering only to reinforce difference – the impression of moral superiority seen as necessary to perceptions of party differences and the appeal to voters, an appeal based largely on how each party is different from and better than the other. Yet as the political part of the ‘peace process’ has shown, there has also been a moral imperative to end conflict. On one level this moral imperative was always about trying to strengthen political credibility and influence, but a moral conviction to shape a new Northern Ireland was at the heart of the engagement nonetheless. The problem is that this conviction has now been reshaped to support political interest and conceive of the social as an extension of political preferences and decision-making. Only a re-activated social sphere can reverse this outcome and shape decision-making to serve public concerns and interests. Since the debate of forgiveness and reconciliation has an overarching social significance, it is beyond the political. The political can and should be an aspect of these debates, but not the basis of the debates themselves, when dialogue risks becoming an extension of political interest and selectively narrowed to meet specific political perspectives. If this happens then forgiveness and

Conclusion 301 reconciliation debates will be used only to prop up divisive outlooks and serve communal/political ambitions. Important though politics is, the issues at stake are far too important to descend into prevarications about who was responsible for what and who made who do what. It is important, then, that discussion about forgiving and remembering is not used to manipulate politically the image and presentation of that discussion in ways which only support political positions and aspirations (Salmon 2010). The significance of the social within peace processes is well expounded by Brewer (2010). On the point of politics which is used to reinforce segregated identities, Brewer notes how political activity all too often ‘reproduces rigid social structural cleavages and zero-sum notions of group identity’ (ibid: 198). For peace processes to be effective, Brewer argues, they must ‘reduce the saliency of the social cleavages that marked the social structure in the past, either through elimination of the divisions or by transcending them to allow them to be reproduced in non-violent ways’ (ibid: 199). Alongside the political road to change there ‘must be a social peace process’ which ‘is about the repair and rebuilding of social relationships, interpersonal and inter-group reconciliation, the restoration of community and the social bond, and social and personal healing’ (ibid: 200). What is clear for Brewer is that a successful peace process must have emphasis on both the political and the social in order to take root and grow. The debates and issues which are addressed in this book are a potential contribution to the social peace process. But they are also debates which marginalized communities, groups and individuals can engage in and of which they can take some control. With the help of churches, support workers, community groups, group leaders, charities and social and political organizations, dialogue about forgiving and remembering can not only help confront the destructive and damaging impact of the past, but can begin to underscore the social peace process which is necessary to avert a return to conflict. Much good work is going on already in these areas, but there seems to be a growing disconnect between the social

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and political arms of the peace process. Shared understanding and dialogue on forgiving and remembering can help close that gap.

References Brewer. J. D. (2010) Peace Processes, Cambridge: Polity. Ryder, C. ‘Truth but no reconciliation’, The Tablet 19 June 2010, 6–7. Salmon, C. (2010) Storytelling: Bewitching the Modern Mind, London: Verso.

List of Contributors

Jo Berry is a peace activist and runs the organization Building Bridges for Peace which seeks to explore the potential for common ground in conflict. Her father, Sir Anthony Berry, died in the Brighton bomb blast of 1984. David Bolton is a social worker who has lived in Northern Ireland for thirty years. As a manager of health and social services, he was responsible for the responses to a number of incidents associated with the Troubles, including the Enniskillen bombing of 1987 and the Omagh bombing of 1998. He is Director of the Northern Ireland Centre for Trauma and Transformation. David Clements is a Methodist minister who has worked in Ireland for twenty years and has been a board member of WAVE (the largest cross-community support group working with victims of the Troubles) for 15 years. His father, a policeman, was killed by the IRA in 1985. Chris Hudson is a Unitarian minister in All Souls Church Belfast. He acted as a go-between with the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Dublin Government from 1993 until recently. He received an MBE for his leadership role with the Peace Train Organization in 1999. Chris worked as a trade union official in Dublin for twenty years before taking up his ministry in Belfast. 303

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Michael Jackson has been Church of Ireland Bishop of Clogher since 2002. He grew up in County Fermanagh. His diocese stretches from Belleek to Carrickmacross and is comprehensively cross-border. Glenn Jordan is involved with the Skainos Project in east Belfast and author of the book Not Of This World? Evangelical Protestants in Northern Ireland. Timothy Kinahan is ordained in the Church of Ireland and has served in a variety of parishes. He is a former member of the Community Relations Council and the Faith and Politics Group. His books include Where do we go from here? Protestants and the Future of Northern Ireland, A More Excellent Way: A vision for Northern Ireland and A Deep but Dazzling Darkness: A Christian theology in an interfaith perspective. Brian Lennon SJ is a Jesuit priest based in Armagh, NI. He has been involved in a number of reconciliation projects and is the author of After the Ceasefires: Catholics and the Future of Northern Ireland and more recently So You Can’t Forgive: Moving Towards Freedom. Patrick Magee is a former IRA volunteer who was convicted of planting the Brighton bomb in 1984. Receiving eight life sentences, he was subsequently released from prison in 1999 under the early release programme as part of the Good Friday Agreement. Since 2000 he was worked with Jo Berry in areas of conflict resolution and post-conflict dialogue. Johnston McMaster is a lecturer with the Irish School of Ecumenics and Co-ordinator of the Education for Reconciliation Programme in Northern Ireland and Border Counties. He has been especially involved with peace-building programmes in South Korea and Sri Lanka and has written extensively. He has co-authored Communities of Reconciliation and just published A Passion for Justice: Social Ethics in the Celtic Tradition. He is also a regular broadcaster.

List of Contributors 305 David McMillan comes from east Belfast and was for twenty-five years a Baptist pastor in Northern Ireland, ministering in Newry, Co Down and then in south Belfast. He was for many years a member of ECONI and is currently involved in research and training. Richard Moore lost his eyesight to a rubber bullet at the age of ten. He is Director of Children in Crossfire, which is based in Derry. An account of his life and work Can I Give Him My Eyes? was published recently. Duncan Morrow is Chief Executive Officer of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council. His publications include A Worthwhile Venture (with Karin Eyben and Derick Wilson), Northern Ireland Politics (with Arthur Aughey) and Churches and inter-community relationships. He was also appointed as a Northern Ireland Sentence Review Commissioner responsible for implementing the early release of paramilitary prisoners as part of the Good Friday Agreement. Michael C. Paterson is a Chartered Clinical Psychologist who has published articles on stress and trauma in the emergency services. He teaches postgraduate students at Queen’s University Belfast and trains mental health professionals. Through a number of meetings with those he would have previously seen as terrorists, Michael has come to understand the importance of viewing such actors as people rather than merely the manifestation of political ideology. He has been awarded an OBE for his work. Ruth Patterson is the Director of Restoration Ministries. In 1976 she was the first woman to be ordained in Ireland. She is the author of A Father Shore, Journeying Towards Reconciliation and most recently Looking Back to Tomorrow. In 2003 she was awarded the OBE for public services.

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Graham Spencer is Reader in Politics, Conflict and the Media at the University of Portsmouth and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. His books include The Media and Peace, Omagh: Voices of Loss and The State of Loyalism in Northern Ireland. He is currently working on a book Protestant Identity and Peacemaking in Northern Ireland. David Stevens was General Secretary of the Irish Council of Churches from 1992–2003 and a member of the Faith and Politics Group. He was also Leader of the Corrymeela Community and a member of the Community Relations Council. His books include The Land of Unlikeness: Explorations into Reconciliation. Aidan Troy is a Passionist priest who ministered at Holy Cross Church, Belfast from 2001–2008. In 2001 he mediated the Holy Cross primary school dispute, which was an international news event, and published a book about the experience, Holy Cross: A Personal Experience. He was elected to the general government of his order in 1994 and is now based in Paris.

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Encyclopedia of Conflict Resolution

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Northern Ireland and the Divided World: Post-Agreement Northern Ireland in Comparative Perspective

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Conflict and Consensus: A Study of Values and Attitudes in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (European Values Studies)

50 Activities for Conflict Resolution

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Conflict resolution: theory, research, and practice

The A to Z of the Northern Ireland Conflict (The A to Z Guide Series)

Forgiving Jason

War and Reconciliation: Reason and Emotion in Conflict Resolution

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The Northern Conquest: Vikings in Britain and Ireland

State building and conflict resolution in Colombia, 1986-1994

Informal Reckonings: Conflict Resolution in Mediation, Restorative Justice, and Reparations

Paradox and Paraconsistency: Conflict Resolution in the Abstract Sciences

Paradox and Paraconsistency: Conflict resolution in the abstract sciences

State Building and Conflict Resolution in Colombia, 1986-1994

Paradox and Paraconsistency: Conflict Resolution in the Abstract Sciences

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Dispute Resolution and Conflict Management in Construction An International Review

Forgiving and Remembering in Northern Ireland: Approaches to Conflict Resolution

The Northern Ireland Conflict: Consociational Engagements

Lost in Transformation: Violent Peace and Peaceful Conflict in Northern Ireland (Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies)

From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation

Politics and performance in contemporary Northern Ireland

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: From Conflict Resolution to Conflict Management

protestant identity and peace in northern ireland

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: From Conflict Resolution to Conflict Management

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: From Conflict Resolution to Conflict Management

Encyclopedia of Conflict Resolution

British Counterinsurgency: From Palestine to Northern Ireland

Getting to resolution: turning conflict into collaboration

Northern Ireland and the Divided World: Post-Agreement Northern Ireland in Comparative Perspective

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