My new book, Considering Grace: Presbyterians and the Troubles, co-authored with Jamie Yohanis, was launched today at Presbyterian Assembly Buildings, Belfast.
The launch featured remarks from the Moderator Rev William Henry; Rev Tony Davidson, who oversaw the project; and readings of two stories featured in the book.
An initial report about the launch by the Press Association, featured in the Belfast Telegraph, can be found here. The Presbyterian Church’s press release can be found here. There are a further four launches of the book this month, in Londonderry, Ballymena, Armagh and Enniskillen.
Dr Nicola Brady, General Secretary of the Irish Council of Churches, responded to a book. She has kindly granted me permission to reproduce her remarks.
Nicola Brady on Considering Grace
In a workshop I organised recently on faith-based peace-building, one of the things we focused on was the danger, in a society emerging from conflict, of only hearing one side of the story. The reality of our segregated society is that people can still live out a considerable portion of their lives without being exposed to other perspectives — certainly not in a way that would contribute to greater understanding. Regrettably, new technologies and developments in social media, instead of opening up our worlds, can often just replicate and reinforce that segregation in the digital space.
There is a great need for this kind of work and churches are arguably uniquely placed to contribute because of the Christian values they espouse, their pastoral experience and the fact that the local church is a trusted community for many people.
Considering Grace reflects an awareness that within PCI there are different stories about the experience of violence and conflict and different views of the role of the church: positive, negative and mixed experiences.
Where we have had the opportunity in inter-church meetings and events to discuss some of the interim findings from this research it has prompted two responses.
The first is a spontaneous sharing by people of their own experiences, often things they have been reluctant to share before, and the second is to ask: “I wonder what we would find if we asked those questions in our church?”
So there is definitely a challenge for other churches here, but also a model that gives an answer to that all-important question: “Where do we start?”
For PCI the starting point was an invitation made in humility and openness to people from a wide range of backgrounds to share their experiences, including the hard truths they felt PCI needed to hear, underpinned by a commitment to respectful listening. Now that we have the book, just talking about it in other churches can be a way of extending that invitation to others, signaling that we are interested and willing to listen.
A desire to include stories from outside Presbyterianism was built into the design of the project and I was honoured to be invited to contribute.
It is a particular encouragement for me in my work that one of the significant good news stories that emerges is the positive impact of inter-church dialogue and collaboration on people’s lives, and also how much expressions of support and solidarity from across the community divide mean to people at times of suffering.
But here too space is given for those who did not have such a positive experience of inter-church engagement and there is useful learning in those reflections.
When we think of what is distinctive about the Christian contribution to reconciliation, forgiveness will often be at or near the top of the list, but as we know, and this is reinforced repeatedly in the testimonies shared, if we move too quickly to talk of forgiveness this can feel oppressive to people who have suffered a great loss.
Yet, when the space was created for honest and heart-felt sharing what emerged was this theme of Considering Grace and it was all the more powerful because it wasn’t imposed at the outset in a top-down kind of way.
This work is extraordinarily hope-filled precisely because is grounded in the hard realities and the hurts that people have lived through and continue to live with.
In this way it highlights the resilience of individuals and communities and this is something that, in the dominant narratives of the conflict, doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves.
As well as the single story, something else that can be limiting in faith-based peace-building is a narrow definition of leadership.
As someone who has facilitated a lot of conversations among clergy about these kinds of issues I really welcome the balance that has been struck here. On the one hand, there is a recognition of the particular pressures clergy face in dealing with violence and community trauma. On the other hand the work clearly demonstrates that leadership, even in a church context, cannot be left to clergy alone.
We can all feel so ill-equipped to respond to so much pain, but what is often striking in the stories are the simple expressions of concern and kindness that meant so much to people. Much of what is shared here shows the difference that we can all make as members of a congregation but also as family, friends and neighbours.
This is particularly timely as we are now beginning to mark the fiftieth anniversary of conflict-related deaths.
While one of the contributors rightly points out that, for those who’ve lost loved ones, “every day is Remembrance Day”, sometimes these significant anniversaries can be particularly difficult for people especially when there is renewed media attention. Hopefully the insights shared here will make us all more mindful of the need to reach out to our neighbours and give us the courage to make that invitation.