My latest book, Considering Grace: Presbyterians and the Troubles, co-authored with Jamie Yohanis, is reviewed as the ‘Book of the Day’ in today’s Irish Times online.
The book is reviewed by Marianne Elliott, professor emerita at Liverpool University.
The full review is available only to subscribers. It also appeared in the print edition of the Irish Times this past Saturday (28 Dec 2019).
Below are some short excerpts from the review.
Review by Marianne Elliott, Irish Times, “[an] impressive and courageous book”
The 50th anniversary of the onset of the Troubles has produced a lot of soul searching. This book is part of that.
Do not be put off by the title and the theology which threads through it – it has, after all been conceived by the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. The book takes the form of multiple oral histories and the categories are well-chosen, its key theme how the church conducted itself during the Troubles and how that can inform ongoing peacebuilding.
… Oral history is not easy, though many seem to think it is. Gaining the trust of 120 interviewees to confide often very painful experiences is quite an achievement. The book captures a moment at the heart of Presbyterianism, when, in the words of Drew Harris – Garda Commissioner and formerly PSNI deputy chief constable – the church is “a bit lost” since the end of the Troubles.
It is not only the Presbyterian Church. Indeed, it seemed much easier to talk about the underlying causes of our divisions during the Troubles – their outworkings so brutally visible – than it is now. And yet there is enough evidence in this impressive and courageous book to show the way, when all the churches assume a role of leadership in peacebuilding, rather than hedgehog roll into institutional protectiveness, such a factor in the polarised living that still prevails in much of Northern Ireland today.