Over the last number of weeks, Rev Steve Stockman of Fitzroy Presbyterian Church in Belfast has preached a series of sermons on ‘Being with …’ On 17 November, he preached on ‘Being with the Troubles’, using examples from my new book (co-authored with Jamie Yohanis), Considering Grace: Presbyterians and the Troubles.
You can listen to the full sermon here (about 28 minutes).
I attend Fitzroy, so it might be expected that Considering Grace would get at least a wee mention from the pulpit.
At the same time, I’ve been told that other Presbyterian ministers have read from the book or spoken about it during services since its launch earlier this month.
I’m grateful that attention is being brought to the book in this way, because it was written partly in the hope that it can contribute to healing within congregations.
Near the end of his sermon, Steve says:
[Considering Grace] is a phenomenal document. … I encourage every one of us to read it, because it is about our discipleship [and] … how we are with the Troubles and their consequences today.
Throughout, Steve notes the variety of stories in the book, which provide a fuller perspective on how Presbyterians tried to cope with the violence and mayhem around them.
He pays tribute to ministers who served congregations along the border, recognising that their contributions have not always been appreciated:
‘… There is no doubt that those ministers who pastored those who lost loved ones come out of it very positively. [They served] in ways that I can never imagine. In fact, I’m not sure that as a denomination we have ever recognised or remembered or given credit to those ministers, particularly those at the border.’
He also acknowledges the ‘recognition in the book that PCI failed in a number of ways.’ Some people we interviewed were critical that there was ‘no peace theology’ within the denomination, in large part because of an excessive focus on a ‘vertical’ relationship with God at the expense of ‘horizontal’ relationships with our ‘neighbours’ (who in a Northern Ireland context are Catholics). Others criticised PCI for not standing up to the Rev Ian Paisley of the Free Presbyterian Church.
In addition, Steve identifies ‘challenges for all of us in the book’:
- How do we continue to pastor victims who lost loved ones during the Troubles?
- Have we given victims enough space to share their stories and to remember?
- How do we offer ‘a robust, prophetic challenge’ to continuing divisions and sectarianism?
- How do we understand and engage with loyalism?
- How do we say something prophetic about forgiveness and peacemaking?
- How do we avoid ‘compartmentalising’ peacemaking in our churches? [Steve even wondered if the Clonard-Fitzroy Fellowship had allowed peacemaking to become compartmentalised within Fitzroy, alleviating the wider congregation of responsibility.]
The closing stages of the sermon focus on some examples of forgiveness in Considering Grace, including the Rev John Hutchinson, a former loyalist paramilitary; and Rev Terry Laverty, whose story gives the book its title.
Steve also quotes the contributions of Janet Morris, a lecturer at Belfast Bible College and member of Fitzroy, whose writings on forgiveness are used in the final chapter. I conclude with her words:
‘Forgiveness is a grace which is orientated towards the future …’
(Photo of Fitzroy from Wikimedia commons)
