On Tuesday I participated in a roundtable on, ‘Can there be Peace? Faith Leaders and Healing after Violent Conflict’, sponsored by the Office of the Provost at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell.
The event was attended by members of local faith communities, academics, and students on UMass-Lowell’s Peace and Conflict Studies programme.
The roundtable included contributions from Rev Dr Thysan Sam of Eliot Presbyterian Church, who reflected on his research and experience ministering to survivors of the Cambodian genocide; and Rev Jerry Menyongai, of Christ Jubilee International Church, who emigrated to Lowell after experiencing the Liberian Civil War. The roundtable was chaired by Dr Aaron Shepherd from UMass-Lowell’s philosophy department.
Sam and Menyongai spoke passionately about their own experiences of trauma and healing, and how it impacts on their own ministries even after many years living in the United States.
My own remarks drew on my research in Northern Ireland. They are reproduced below.
Can there be Peace? The Troubles and Faith Leaders in Northern Ireland
Good evening. I want to thank the University of Massachusetts-Lowell for organizing this event. I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this discussion on faith leaders and healing after violent conflict.
My remarks are focused on Northern Ireland, where I have been researching the role of religion in conflict and peacebuilding for more than two decades. While Northern Ireland’s Troubles have often been described as a conflict between Catholics and Protestants, few would claim that the Troubles were a ‘religious’ conflict, in the sense that violence was motivated primarily by religious beliefs. At the same time, there is little doubt that Northern Ireland can be described as deeply divided along sectarian lines. Even today, nearly 25 years after the Good Friday peace agreement, widespread segregation persists: people from Catholic and Protestant backgrounds mostly live apart, send their children to different schools, and move in parallel social networks. Time does not allow me to delve into this complex history. To summarize, I will simply say that religion was implicated in producing division and justifying violence during the Troubles and the centuries that proceeded this latest phase of conflict. A long history of sectarianism – both at a social structural level and in the hearts and minds of individuals – has meant that during the Troubles, churches were often considered part of the problem.
At the same time, during the Troubles levels of religious practice and belief were much higher than in the rest of Europe. Faith leaders had (and still have) relatively high public profiles in the media and in local communities, not least through their role on the boards of (segregated) primary schools.
Some faith leaders have been heralded both in the public sphere and in scholarly research as ‘mavericks’ or ‘prophets’ whose contributions to peacebuilding outstripped those of the so-called ‘institutional churches’ (Brewer et al 2011). Some faith leaders, like Redemptorist priest Fr Alec Reid, were key players behind the scenes, mediating secret peace talks with the Irish Republican Army. Others were active in civil society, offering courageous public critiques of how their own faith traditions had contributed to division and violence. One of the most effective was an organization called Evangelical Contribution on Northern Ireland. ECONI critiqued not only the anti-Catholicism of the prominent preacher-politician Rev Ian Paisley, but also what it considered a centuries-long abuse of Calvinist theology to justify Protestant-Unionist political domination (Ganiel 2008).
But during my own recent research project about Presbyterian experiences of the Troubles, I was struck by how very few of the people in the pews thought much about what we might call public, prophetic leadership at all. Rather, their experiences of the Troubles were mediated through their local ministers and congregations. If we pause and think about this for a moment, this should hardly be surprising.
Yet few studies have taken these more everyday experiences of religion into account. And that means that they have not paid enough attention to some of the most significant roles of faith leaders in violent contexts: providing pastoral support through prayer and presence. In my research, Presbyterian ministers described how police would bring them on doorstep visits to inform relatives of the death or serious injury of loved ones. Those ministers then stayed with the family in the immediate aftermath of this heart wrenching news. They helped them plan funerals, and then conducted those funerals. Clergy also were among the first on the scene at the site of bombings, shootings, or in hospital wards after multiple-casualty atrocities.
In Considering Grace, a book for a popular/general audience that resulted from this research, I described clergy as fulfilling the role of ‘first responders’ (Ganiel and Yohanis 2019). Today, clergy continue to provide support for those injured and bereaved during the Troubles, particularly around Remembrance Sunday in November and anniversaries of deaths or atrocities.
Researchers have not really attempted to document and evaluate the impact of this type of pastoral care during and after intense violence, including the extent that it contributes to healing and, albeit indirectly, to peacebuilding. Many of the Presbyterian victims we interviewed reflected on how important their faith was in ensuring they did not become bitter, a process facilitated through the pastoral care they received from their ministers and congregations. In some cases, those whose parent had been killed spoke about the forgiveness modelled by the parent who had been left behind, usually the mother; or mothers spoke about their conscious decision not to show bitterness to their children.
In addition, in research for my biography of Redemptorist priest Fr Gerry Reynolds (Ganiel 2019), he emphasized that his joint visits with Methodist Rev Sam Burch to families whose relatives had been killed (on both ‘sides’) were motivated in part by a desire to discourage young men in those families from taking revenge. Scholars have not even begun to ask how we might evaluate whether or to what extent first responding clergy’s pastoral care has contributed to components of peacebuilding like healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
While measures of religiosity have declined since 1998, the year of the peace accord, Northern Ireland remains more ‘religious’ than the rest of Europe or the Republic of Ireland; for example, monthly church attendance is about 46 percent among both Catholics and Protestants.
These high levels of practice and the continued public role of faith leaders point to religion’s continued, albeit declining, societal importance. Some faith leaders have argued that the churches can and should play a prominent role in ‘dealing with the past’, pointing out that Christian teachings on forgiveness and reconciliation could be especially relevant or helpful. Others have critiqued this position, arguing that Christianity re-victimizes people by exerting undue pressure to forgive. Indeed, in our research on Presbyterians one woman confessed that when her congregation recites the Lord’s Prayer she skips the part that says ‘forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,’ because she cannot forgive her loved one’s killer (Ganiel and Yohanis 2022).
But Northern Ireland has had no joined up process for dealing with the past, which means that the suffering of victims and survivors has not been recognized or acknowledged on an official level, as is arguably the case in societies where there has been a truth commission or other such mechanisms. Clergy are still ministering to direct victims. Younger people are experiencing secondary, inter-generational trauma, which has contributed to an increase in suicides since the Troubles. Moreover, competing societal conceptions of forgiveness, reconciliation and justice ensure that there is little agreement about how Northern Ireland should ‘deal with the past’. Faith leaders themselves often disagree on what forgiveness, reconciliation and justice would look like, both within and between denominations.
Having said that, I will close with two recent examples of how faith leaders have tried to contribute to healing after violent conflict (Ganiel and Brady 2021); followed by two insights for those who pursue peace.
My first example: In 2015 the Catholic and Church of Ireland (Anglican) Archbishops of Armagh, the Presbyterian Moderator, the Methodist President, and the President of the Irish Council of Churches began to work more publicly and deliberately together as what is now called the ‘Church Leaders’ Group’. On St Patrick’s Day 2021 the group issued the most comprehensive confession ever for the churches’ contributions to division and violence, signalling that they understood apology and acknowledgement as key to churches’ ability to contribute to healing. It had many of the hallmarks of a ‘good’ apology, in that it was quite specific about wrongs committed. It said in part:
As Christian churches we acknowledge and lament the times that we failed to bring to a fearful and divided society that message of the deeper connection that binds us, despite our different identities, as children of God, made in His image and likeness. We have often been captive churches; not captive to the Word of God, but to the idols of state and nation.
While I consider this a landmark statement, if it had come decades earlier, it would have received more public attention and had a greater impact on healing.
My second example: The research that resulted in my book Considering Grace was conducted as part of an action research project with the Presbyterian Church. The Presbyterian Church conceived the project as part of its contribution to dealing with the past. Considering Grace is primarily a book of stories, presented as far as possible in people’s own words. The concluding chapter advances the idea of a ‘gracious remembering’ that ponders the human cost of violence, gives victims a public voice, is self-critical about their own and their community’s actions, and listens to alternative perspectives and interpretations of the past (Ganiel and Yohanis 2019, 242-43).
The Presbyterian Church also sponsored the production of study resources to accompany the book. These were the product of focus groups conducted in six different locations throughout Northern Ireland, where participants discussed materials and questions from the then-unpublished Considering Grace. The resources are organized around the themes that emerged form the focus groups: lamenting, ministering, remembering, praying, forgiving, seeking a more reconciled community, and challenges for the church.
Unfortunately, COVID-19 stalled the project’s momentum and the resources have not (yet) been widely used. But I have some hope that as we emerge from the pandemic local Christians will use the resources to facilitate dialogue and shape their own responses to the legacy of violence.
So finally, to conclude, with two insights.
First: Our experience in Northern Ireland testifies that healing, forgiveness, reconciliation and justice are always partial. Some religions may unrealistically offer hope that such can be achieved quickly or easily. Christians, in particular, should be very careful about how they advocate for forgiveness, whether in the public sphere or when in conversation with victims.
Second: While there are plenty of examples faith leaders promoting healing, it is perhaps less often recognized that healing can be very slow: a lifetime for some individuals; a generation or more for some societies. In their pastoral work, faith leaders will be vulnerable to secondary trauma and may grow weary in their work. To minister effectively, faith leaders need to be equipped to minister for the long haul.
Thank you for your attention.