On a Monday May 10, 2010 our Volunteer In Missions group met at 3 pm with Reverend Harold Good who is a Winner of the World Methodist Peace Prize and was involved in decommissioning of IRA weapons. This is the fifth in a series relating his talk. In the prior blog posting we learned of the how Reverend Good and his congregation kept their church open for all denominations when there was a serious rumor something bad would happen in the Shankill Road neighborhood. Next we heard about stumbling blocks and stepping stones, in the history of indigenous and settler people in Ireland:
Our lives are filled with stumbling blocks and stepping stones – the stumbling blocks in Ireland are its history . The history of Ireland is a story of two peoples trying to share the same land. At this basic level, it is a fairly familiar story around the world, as well as part of the history in America. There are an indigenous people and a settler people. In the case of Ireland, the settler people coming from Scotland and England, and the indigenous people being the native people of Ireland before the settlers came. Each of these people having their respective distinctive cultures and traditions. The settler people being mainly Protestant, mainly Presbyterian and Episcopal. The indigenous people being Catholic. Those are their distinctive traditions.
It's too simple to say it is Catholic and Protestant. For many of the people involved in the conflict, and for many of the people involved in the violence, Church is far removed from their agenda, let alone their understanding of Christian faith. Someone who might state they are fiercely Protestant, perhaps hasn't been in Church since they were baptized at all. Also, there are Catholics who adhere to their Church nominally who didn't adhere to their Church or to the teachings of their Pastors about violence, and may do quite the opposite of those teachings. So it is too simple to say it is Catholic and Protestant.
What people are saying is that Catholic represents the Nationalist, indigenous, Catholic people of Ireland. And Protestant represents the settler people. When there was conflict over land, there was said to be conflict between Catholic and Protestant, in a shorthand way of referring to the sides.
That is not to say that religion has not been used. He already spoke of the Protestant clergyman who said it was okay to take tea together but not to pray together. Religion has been used by the Church leaders in the past to add to the conflict. Certainly, among the Protestants it was not considered wise to be too close to the Catholics who were so lost in their beliefs. The Catholic Church once had the position that Catholics cannot go the weddings or funerals of Protestants. They weren't to go into a Protestant Church. And it is wrong to marry a Protestant, and if you do, the children must be raised Catholic. All of that contributes to suspicion, division, and fear, and this very quickly can turn into hatred. On the other hand, a Church which has as a statement of belief that the Pope is the anti-Christ or Satan, as the Protestants once did, that doesn't do much for building good relations, does it?
It all gets mixed up. On the one hand we want to say it has much more to do with territory than theology, it has much more to do with culture than with creed. That's true! But on the other hand that religion has been used as a wedge to put suspicion and fear between people. And its gone unchallenged by the Churches, largely, and they allowed it to brew. They allowed people like Mr. Paisley to build their empires upon that kind of fear and suspicion.
Whether it's America or South Africa or Ireland, the settlers tend to have the feeling they are a chosen people. The Protestants in Ireland will tell you they have a responsibility because this is the land that God gave them. You may think that's ignorant. Reverend Good was in Texas recently he noticed on the breakfast table a little carton. It was from the Promised Land Dairy. There was a quotation from Deuteronomy (26:9), “He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey;”
We all have to think about how our religion, our biblical journey has impacted upon our politics. That is what has happened in Ireland. The Irish don't have a dairy called The Promised Land Dairy, but there are people who think this is the land that God gave them and that nobody can challenge that. They feel they have a right to be here and they had a right to take somebody else's land because it was God who gave it to them. (For those who don't know, the northern province of Ireland, called Ulster, was colonized, to use a neutral term, by peoples from Great Britain, mostly from Scotland, where they originally moved mostly into unoccupied areas, after the Flight of the Earls. This colonization took place in the 1600s.)
In 1922 the indigenous people wanted to become independent of Great Britain and came to be called Republicans as they were committed to a new republic. They happened to be mostly (Roman) Catholic. The settlers wanted to stay in union with Great Britain and came to be called Unionists as they wanted to stay in union. They were mostly Protestant. The simple seeming solution in 1922 was to draw a line and say those south of this line would be in an independent republic and those north would stay in a relationship with Great Britain. But the populace wasn't so neatly divided; therein lies the recipe for continued conflict.
This talk is continued at a blog posting entitled "First Stepping Stones to Peace In Ireland".
Showing posts with label Episcopal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Episcopal. Show all posts
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Reverend Harold Good on Similarities Between Sectarian Versus Racial Conflict
On a Monday May 10, 2010 our Volunteer In Missions group met at 3 pm with Reverend Harold Good (many sources spell his name “Good”) who is a Winner of the World Methodist Peace Prize and was involved in decommissioning of IRA weapons. This is the second in a series relating his talk. In the prior blog posting we learned of the influences when he was a child and young man. Next we learn of further influences from that time as well as later ones.
Reverend Good related another influence on him was his father who was the President of the Methodist Church of Ireland in his time. When the violence was just beginning in what would become known as The Troubles, the 30 year sectarian war in Ireland, the violence first flared in particular in the border areas. His father suddenly had to deal with the fact a young policeman from his congregation was murdered by sectarian assassins. His father was affected greatly from his prior history with the young policeman. His father had baptized the policeman and had known him as a child.
As a consequence, his father wrote a letter to the leaders of the other churches in Northern Ireland: Presbyterian, Church of Ireland (Related to the Episcopal Church in America), Roman Catholic, and Methodist. After his father passed away, Reverend Good found copies of the responses his father kept. His father's letter had asked the other religious leaders, “In the light of all that is happening in our land and in light of what looks like a potentially dangerous situation in this shift toward sectarian conflict, I feel we as leaders of our respective churches should meet.” Now, these leaders had never met and he suggested the four of them should meet to see if there was something they could do. All four replies are similar. They say, “It's a thoughtful idea. We appreciate your letter. But the time is not right.”
His father was shocked that the leaders of Christian communities could not bring themselves to work for peace. His father went to a Methodist Conference in 1959, and told the attendees how, in the absence of a support from the other leaders, he himself had gone to see the Republican leaders to plead with them not to engage in a campaign of violence, and to suggest to them that if they wanted to campaign for a united Ireland, they should do it in a non violent way. The “Republican leaders” phrase was probably a veiled reference to the IRA.
After telling us where he came from, Reverend Good noted his early experiences caused him to react as he transitioned into adulthood, rather than remaining unaffected.
Reverend Good decided he wanted to see the wider world, outside Ireland. He was given an opportunity of serving in Ohio. Shortly after he was married, he and his wife set off to serve on the staff in a large church in the Northeast Conference in Ohio as a youth pastor. He and his wife served for two happy years. After two years, he felt he had more to learn. He had an opportunity to go back to school, so he went to Indianapolis where he did Pastoral Education and got a Masters.
He wasn't to realize at the time the impact all this would have upon his ministry. It not only helped him to understand how you engage with people, it helped him look at a wholly different way of looking at how to engage people, and trying to understand people in situations he never would have encountered formerly. Not only did he get a Masters of Technical Education, while he was there in the mid-60s in the USA it was a difficult time. This was a defining time in history there and in the life of the churches too. He remembers extraordinary things.
When he was in the church in Ohio, there were two black families who wanted to join their church. There had to be a meeting of the church board to see if these black families could be admitted into membership in the church. Of course, the church had a long history of overseas missions to bring people who were entirely black into the family of God. So Reverend Good couldn't get his head around why the color of these people's skin was an issue. Now he heard things being said like he'd heard in Ireland, but the context was different. In Ireland the remarks weren't made about the color of someone's skin, but the color of someone's politics. He began to realize some of the parallels between racism and sectarianism, particularly the subtleties.
The people of that church would not thought of themselves as racist. They were saying is it fair to these people to have them come into our congregation? Will they be comfortable with us? What about some of our young people, will they feel comfortable with their children? He thought, “Where have I heard all this before?”
Later when he went to Indianapolis, he had made it known to his management he was available for any part time work in the church and such would go along with his studies. He ended up being a pastor at a church with an entirely black congregation. He was at this church when the news came Martin Luther King was assassinated.
He remembers very clearly that week and saying to the members of this church you'll want somebody from your own community to minister to you in on Sunday. He said he wasn't sure he'd be well equipped to minister to them in this situation. There was a wave of grief across the nation. It was a grief for a person who had symbolized all the things of which the black community had dreamed. But his congregants said no, you're our pastor. You minister to us. Then he found what it was like to try to enter into the feelings of a community where he didn't know so much.
This was another defining moment which lead him to his future.
This talk continues at this post entitled, "The Clergy of Shankill Road and Falls Road Meet"
Reverend Good related another influence on him was his father who was the President of the Methodist Church of Ireland in his time. When the violence was just beginning in what would become known as The Troubles, the 30 year sectarian war in Ireland, the violence first flared in particular in the border areas. His father suddenly had to deal with the fact a young policeman from his congregation was murdered by sectarian assassins. His father was affected greatly from his prior history with the young policeman. His father had baptized the policeman and had known him as a child.
As a consequence, his father wrote a letter to the leaders of the other churches in Northern Ireland: Presbyterian, Church of Ireland (Related to the Episcopal Church in America), Roman Catholic, and Methodist. After his father passed away, Reverend Good found copies of the responses his father kept. His father's letter had asked the other religious leaders, “In the light of all that is happening in our land and in light of what looks like a potentially dangerous situation in this shift toward sectarian conflict, I feel we as leaders of our respective churches should meet.” Now, these leaders had never met and he suggested the four of them should meet to see if there was something they could do. All four replies are similar. They say, “It's a thoughtful idea. We appreciate your letter. But the time is not right.”
His father was shocked that the leaders of Christian communities could not bring themselves to work for peace. His father went to a Methodist Conference in 1959, and told the attendees how, in the absence of a support from the other leaders, he himself had gone to see the Republican leaders to plead with them not to engage in a campaign of violence, and to suggest to them that if they wanted to campaign for a united Ireland, they should do it in a non violent way. The “Republican leaders” phrase was probably a veiled reference to the IRA.
After telling us where he came from, Reverend Good noted his early experiences caused him to react as he transitioned into adulthood, rather than remaining unaffected.
Reverend Good decided he wanted to see the wider world, outside Ireland. He was given an opportunity of serving in Ohio. Shortly after he was married, he and his wife set off to serve on the staff in a large church in the Northeast Conference in Ohio as a youth pastor. He and his wife served for two happy years. After two years, he felt he had more to learn. He had an opportunity to go back to school, so he went to Indianapolis where he did Pastoral Education and got a Masters.
He wasn't to realize at the time the impact all this would have upon his ministry. It not only helped him to understand how you engage with people, it helped him look at a wholly different way of looking at how to engage people, and trying to understand people in situations he never would have encountered formerly. Not only did he get a Masters of Technical Education, while he was there in the mid-60s in the USA it was a difficult time. This was a defining time in history there and in the life of the churches too. He remembers extraordinary things.
When he was in the church in Ohio, there were two black families who wanted to join their church. There had to be a meeting of the church board to see if these black families could be admitted into membership in the church. Of course, the church had a long history of overseas missions to bring people who were entirely black into the family of God. So Reverend Good couldn't get his head around why the color of these people's skin was an issue. Now he heard things being said like he'd heard in Ireland, but the context was different. In Ireland the remarks weren't made about the color of someone's skin, but the color of someone's politics. He began to realize some of the parallels between racism and sectarianism, particularly the subtleties.
The people of that church would not thought of themselves as racist. They were saying is it fair to these people to have them come into our congregation? Will they be comfortable with us? What about some of our young people, will they feel comfortable with their children? He thought, “Where have I heard all this before?”
Later when he went to Indianapolis, he had made it known to his management he was available for any part time work in the church and such would go along with his studies. He ended up being a pastor at a church with an entirely black congregation. He was at this church when the news came Martin Luther King was assassinated.
He remembers very clearly that week and saying to the members of this church you'll want somebody from your own community to minister to you in on Sunday. He said he wasn't sure he'd be well equipped to minister to them in this situation. There was a wave of grief across the nation. It was a grief for a person who had symbolized all the things of which the black community had dreamed. But his congregants said no, you're our pastor. You minister to us. Then he found what it was like to try to enter into the feelings of a community where he didn't know so much.
This was another defining moment which lead him to his future.
This talk continues at this post entitled, "The Clergy of Shankill Road and Falls Road Meet"
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