I recommend you read the full post for yourselves. It covers a lot of ground, from Fischer’s description of the Conflict Transformation module to her thoughts on the hell debate sparked by Rob Bell’s Love Wins.

The Conflict Transformation module features an intensive week at Corrymeela, where Little and Verwoerd guide the students through the process they use with various groups from opposing ‘sides’ in the conflict in and about Northern Ireland (and from other conflicts from around the world).

Fischer sees conflict as an inevitable part of life and she urges those in the emergent conversation to face up to – rather than hide from – it:

I bring this up here, because I see the danger of continuing a bad ‘family’ trait even into this new emergent generation.  I grew up in a non-christian home and a Christian extended family, both of which pretended that if we didn’t talk about conflict, it meant that we didn’t have any;  I studied theology at an inter-denominational college where conflict as a theme in and of itself was never addressed theologically; and I spent years in churches, seminars, conferences, retreats and missions (Evangelical, Charismatic, and Lutheran; in America, Sweden, Australia, PNG and Germany), where, besides an occasional reference to Matthew 18:15-17, and the ever-present lapel to forgive, there was no strategy and no underlying concept for helping their communities deal with conflict constructively.  The cardinal assumption being that good Christians don’t do conflict!

But rather than fostering fraternities exuding peace and justice in the world, this refusal to take conflict head on theologically, exacerbates the friction inevitable in any human plural, and conditions cultures to fester and fracture over matters both profound and piddling.  Of greater consequence even than the personal stories of disillusionment with Christian fellowships that abound, as grim as that is, however, is the general disconnect that many faith communities and institutions have toward complex societal ills, the prolific number of armed conflicts around the world, and trans-global injustices.  With the exception of my brief time in Church of the Savior, DC, of which Sojourners Magazine is a part, nary a mention of these realities in the Christian sub-cultures I’ve experienced in over twenty years!

She sees some of the present debate about hell, whether you agree with Rob Bell or not, as distracting from more important questions in the here and now such as dealing with conflict, and one of its roots, poverty.

As a lecturer, I’m of course pleased to see Fischer making links between one of our modules and debates in the emerging church. The emerging church is one of my current research areas and I’m always looking for connections between what I know from the fields of conflict resolution and reconciliation, and my work on the emerging church.

I’m also intrigued by her observation that Christians have refused to take conflict on theologically, other than issuing some rather glib urgings for victims to ‘forgive’.

This is not a million miles from the argument put forward in the new book about the churches in the Northern Ireland peace process by John Brewer, Gareth Higgins and Francis Teeney: that the churches as institutions didn’t adequately analyse the conflict sociologically or theologically – meaning that they struggled to help transform it.

I look forward to the emerging conversation moving forward on these themes.

That’s a question posed this week by Jon Hatch in the Church of Ireland Gazette (16 December), which features his front-page story on the ‘Occupy’ movement’s priorities.

Hatch’s article is based on a talk he delivered recently for The Churches in Ireland’s Church in Society Forum.

Hatch is a doctoral candidate where I work, the Irish School of Ecumenics. He has also been a resource developer for groups like Corrymeela and the Irish Peace Centres.

When the Occupy movement’s London protest settled down at St Paul’s, I couldn’t help but think it was the perfect location for the protesters to tap into Jesus’ radical message about challenging the rich who unjustly oppress the poor.

Apart from the Pharisees (the self-righteous religious virtuosos of their day), Jesus was most critical of the rich who rigged the rules of the economic game so that the poor stayed poor and the rich and powerful got ever more rich and more powerful.

I’ve been disappointed by the difficulties that the Church of England has had in accommodating the protesters, especially when I see so many resonances between their message and Jesus’ intensely political messages about economic injustice.

I recommend you get your hands on a copy of the Gazette to read the full story (or subscribe online for just £20 per year).

Hatch’s article offers a short explanation of the Occupy movement’s claims, followed by some theological reflection on what ‘a rigorous, public theology might look like in the midst of the Occupy movement.’

Hatch says Occupy’s four claims are:

• Democracy is eroding
• The ‘rules’ don’t apply equally to everyone
• Global markets exert too much power over people’s lives
• The situation is getting worse, not better

To conclude, I’ll quote quite liberally from Hatch’s theological reflection, which I think provides some valuable insights:

First … God identifies himself as deeply concerned with justice, peace and equitable economies (Proverbs 11:1; Hosea 12:7; Amos 8:5).

In a world where some lives seem more valuable than others, the people of faith can unequivocally declare the absolute, basic, intrinsic value of every human in the eyes of God. We can say this in a very unique way and we need to be saying it as publicly as possible, at every opportunity. It literally underpins everything else we believe.

Second … the people of faith begin from a place that affirms that all ‘space’ is God’s; there is no place that he does not already occupy (Psalm 24:1; Psalm 139: 7-12) and we are his stewards …

Third … neither the State nor the markets have any rights over life and death. Neither has the right to devastate livelihood and ruin economies. We must not bow or make the sacrifices they demand. This was the witness of the earliest martyrs of our faith.

Lastly, there is hope. We must always and everywhere, as Christ did, proclaim as publicly and as openly as possible the good news of the Kingdom of God: life, equity, peace, justice, freedom and generosity.’

Further discussion is encouraged on the Living Church Facebook page. Each day this week, one of the five themes is to be discussed. Yesterday took up the theme of lay participation, while today the topic is open, welcoming, community.

Glenn is the author of the 2001 book, Not of this World? Evangelical Protestants in Northern Ireland. Claire and I were of course influenced by his book so we were keen to hear what he had to say about our research.

You can listen to Glenn’s remarks in full by clicking the play button below:

I’ve reproduced a selection of Glenn’s remarks here:

The evangelical community which has helped shape me to a large extent … [has] … been picked over and studied by so many people, as the abundance of the studies referenced [in this book] … bear reference to. … Academics … have pinned [evangelicals] wriggling to the page and picked them apart. Many of those studies have done that analysis, fixed them to the formulated phrase, without much by way of sympathy or the understanding of an insider. …

[But] what’s obvious to me … once you reach … the stories of the people … the book really does take off. And what I learned from this … was here were two researchers who had a deep sympathetic understanding of that community … and also an ear for a good story. It’s made up of stories of people who spoke incredibly honestly about their experiences of faith, some of which have been very painful. …

You [Claire and Gladys] are to be commended for what is a first class contribution to the sociology of religion, yes, but also to the understanding of this often much maligned community in Northern Ireland.

You reminded me of the gentle goodness of so much of evangelicalism, but also of the fear that constrains it so often, and also the social awkwardness of the community that sometimes holds it back and expresses itself in anger and disaffection.

… You captured some of the complexity of the evangelical community, demonstrating for me that there is no single coherent narrative that captures the journey of people, of evangelicals. Evangelical expressions of faith are as varied and different as the people that tell those stories. … For people outside that community that is a message that desperately needs to be heard.

… I think above all what you have done in the book is that you have dignified the stories themselves. You have respected those stories. Whilst you have the objectivity of the academic you have not coldly pinned those stories … you have dignified the stories, reminding me as I read of the heroic nature of the ordinary stories of everyday people who have had to face extraordinary events that have been part and parcel of growing up in Northern Ireland through the history of the Troubles. Stories that don’t make the headlines, but nonetheless are extraordinary ones. Extraordinary stories of people who have sought to make sense of faith, through a conflict here, through the framework of their faith.

…[To those of you here who were interviewed for the book, Claire and Gladys] have respected your stories, which is a serious and deep contribution as well.

[You are to be commended for] respecting and dignifying the stories of ordinary people trying to hold on to faith in extraordinary circumstances.

Claire and I are deeply grateful for Glenn’s complimentary remarks.

We thank him and everyone who participated in the production of the book, all those who attended the launch, and Prof Geraldine Smyth, Head of the Irish School of Ecumenics, who helped host the evening on our behalf.

The best way to purchase the book is via the UCD Press website, where you can get it at a reduced rate of €22.

You can read another review of the book, by Blogger Alan in Belfast, here.

(image: Claire Mitchell, Glenn Jordan and Gladys Ganiel at the launch of Evangelical Journeys)

The material I presented at the talk is still very much ‘work in progress,’ but I’m posting the powerpoint I used here. My powerpoint is of course mostly images and bullet points, so looking at it doesn’t  make the content of my talk self-explanatory. But I will offer some brief reflections on the research now.

First, I want to point out that the title of the talk ends with a Question Mark. It is titled ‘The End of Irish Catholicism?’ NOT ‘The End of Irish Catholicism!’

It is a deliberately provocative title, but that doesn’t mean that it is somehow declaring the end of a faith that has survived for centuries on this island.

Rather, one of the broad arguments of my talk is that a particular form of Irish Catholicism has ended. This is the traditional, perhaps now stereotypical, Irish Catholicism of generations past.

This is an Irish Catholicism that had a close link with political power in terms of its relationship with the Irish state, that controlled social institutions such as schools, hospitals and children’s homes, and that informed the identity, culture, and everyday religious practices of countless Irish people over the centuries.

I’m not the first person to argue that we have seen the end of this type of Irish Catholicism. The social and political processes, as well as the recent scandals, that have seen this type of Catholicism wane are well-documented elsewhere by scholars such as Tom Inglis and Roy Foster.

There were of course positive and negative components of traditional Irish Catholicism – but that was beyond the scope of my talk and certainly beyond the scope of this blog post.

Another of my talk’s broad arguments is that as traditional Irish Catholicism has declined, the institutional church has responded by:

• trying to defend the institution (this is seen in its careful apologies to victims of clerical sexual abuse, which never seem to go far enough to console the victims) and
• by trying to empower lay people through mechanisms such as lay parish councils and diocesan level initiatives such as ‘listening processes.’

But what my research has been primarily concerned with is how what I call ‘extra-institutional’ spaces are developing within the Irish Catholic Church.

I came up with the idea of extra-institutional spaces while conducting research for my School’s Visioning 21st Century Ecumenism research project. This project has involved eight case studies of various faith communities on the island of Ireland, not all of which are Catholic.

I see two of those case studies – Holy Cross Benedictine Monastery in Rostrevor, Co. Down and Slí Eile, the Jesuit Centre for Young Adults based in Dublin (now called Magis Ireland) – as examples of extra-institutional spaces.

How do I define extra-institutional spaces?

They are organisations or religious orders that, while very much part of the Catholic Church, are seen by the people who participate in them, or avail of their services, to operate outside of the institutional Irish Catholic Church.

So in the eyes of those who are involved with them, they remain untainted by the scandals that have rocked the Irish Catholic Church. Some people I interviewed during these case studies said they offered more meaningful inspiration for how to practice their faith than the Catholic Church they had been raised in. These people often contrasted their involvement with Holy Cross or Slí Eile to their rather dull and uninspiring experiences of Catholic education and/or parish life.

They also said that Holy Cross and Slí Eile seemed to them to be focusing on issues that the wider Irish Catholic Church is ignoring, as it tries to preserve itself in the face of the scandals. These issues included ecumenism, social justice, and spirituality.

Indeed, some of my interviewees said that they believed that organisations or places such as Slí Eile, Holy Cross, and other similar extra-institutional spaces are keeping the Irish Catholic Church alive in this time of scandal and decline.

So we may be seeing the end of Irish Catholicism as we have known it, but also seeing the beginning of new types of Irish Catholicism ..

These are types of Irish Catholicism that offer more meaningful participation to lay people, a greater emphasis on spiritual formation through prayer and bible study, and a renewed commitment to the social justice tradition in Irish Catholicism, which has perhaps been best exemplified in the work of Irish missionaries down the years.

Of course, to say that they are renewing and re-forming the Irish Catholic Church is to claim a lot for these extra-institutional spaces, which appeal to only a limited number of people. I don’t have enough sociological data or evidence to make informed comment on how significant or wide-ranging their influence may be. Further research is needed.

When giving a version of this talk at the bi-annual meeting of the European Sociological Association in Geneva last month, a member of the audience pointed out that the two cases I had analysed were examples of religious organisations whose values seemed in line with my School’s (the Irish School of Ecumenics) history. And she is absolutely right.

Holy Cross has an explicit vocation for Ecumenism, and one of the principal founders of the Irish School of Ecumenics was a Jesuit!

Of course there are other examples of extra-institutional spaces in the Catholic Church whose values would not be in-line with those  associated with the Irish School of Ecumenics: organisations, groups or orders who would advocate a more traditional form of Catholicism. These groups might think the Irish Catholic Church has sold out to liberalism or modernism, and see it as their duty to call the Irish Catholic Church back to what they see as ‘true’ Catholicism.

But sociologically, the concept of an extra-institutional space doesn’t depend on the ideas put forward within those spaces. What’s important is their position as a religious structure: 

The people occupying those spaces believe they need to somehow operate outside of the normal structures of the institution – while remaining uncomfortably within it – if they are to contribute to its re-formation.

And for me, that means that plenty of questions remain for future research. I’ll end with the questions I posed on one of the final slides in my powerpoint:

• How significant is the role of these extra-institutional spaces in reforming the church in light of scandal?
• To what extent do lay Catholics become more ‘empowered’ to participate in the church through these extra-institutional spaces?
• To what extent is there interaction between the institutional and extra-institutional spaces?

The talk, titled ‘Effective Non Violence in the 21^st Century,’ was co-hosted by the Irish School of Ecumenics and INNATE (Irish Network for Nonviolent Action Training & Education). You can listen to the talk here.

Given the non violent example of Jesus in the Gospels, non violence is a theme which I could fruitfully reflect on more often on this blog.

As regular readers will know, the theme of my blog is ‘building a church without walls’ – and that’s something that can’t be accomplished either through physical or psychological force.

Garate’s concerns weren’t specifically Christian or even religious, although he was keen to stress that WRI’s approach is a matter of principle, not simply of tactics.

WRI doesn’t choose non violence just because they think it works, they choose non violence because they think it’s the right thing to do.

Garate said the group’s two main guiding principles are:

• Refusing all wars
• Maintaining a strong commitment to non-violent resistance

The first principle of course means that WRI would not make room for Christian interpretations of ‘just war’ theory. The second means that apathy in the face of the violence and oppression of others should not be an option.

Like most of you, I don’t often get asked my opinion if a conflict is ‘just’ before the protagonists wade in, guns, bombs and drone missiles blazing. But I often choose the apathy option (out of apathy more than anything else!) when it comes to questioning, challenging or resisting the current array of wars, conflicts, etc in the world around me.

While of course welcoming pragmatic reasons for choosing non violence rather than violence, Garate said that it was his experience that many authors and activists who focus solely on tactics, at the expense of principle, tend to overlook ‘structural violence.’

Structural violence is a term associated with Johan Galtung, a giant in the field of Peace Studies. Structural violence is produced through social processes in which social, cultural and political structures (including inter-state, state and civil society institutions and laws, etc) keep some people mired in positions of poverty and disadvantage. I would add that the churches can sometimes contribute to the maintenance of structural violence.

So victims of structural violence may or may not face direct, physical violence – but they are exploited and marginalised – and this can often breed direct violence in the form of class conflict, riots, and so on.For Garate, then, structural as well as direct violence should be a target for non violent resistance.

I think that this resonates with liberation theology’s preferential option for the poor – as well as Jesus’ preference for the poor as portrayed in the Gospels.

Garate also provided descriptions of a few examples of WRI’s work, including support for the Right to Refuse to Kill programme for conscientious objectors, a Campaign of Military Counter Recruitment in Europe, work on War Profiteering, and recent research on the impact of drone missiles.

He claimed that the keys to effective non violent campaigns are unity, planning and non-violent discipline – as well as a spark of creativity.

Being creative can mean catching your adversary off guard through mass demonstrations, humour, or targeted networking campaigns. As an example of creativity he cited the ‘War Starts Here’ campaign, in which activists camped out and used pink paint to try and cover a major NATO military base in Sweden.

Garate added that in the past year three significant movements have employed non violent tactics to effective ends, although it remains to be seen how much these movements will accomplish.

The movements are: a student’s movement in Chile which self-organised a nation-wide referendum on free education; a movement for direct democracy in Spain; and the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Garate also provided a useful list of sources for people interested in learning more, ranging from the work of Gene Sharp (whose From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation was famously used by activists in the ‘Arab Spring’ movements) to recent academic scholarship by authors such as Maria Stephan and Diana Francis.

(Image: Protesters from the War Starts Here campaign, after using pink paint to decorate part of the NEAT military base in Sweden. Photo by Natverket Ofog, sourced on flickr)

Sources:

International Centre on Non Violent Conflict

Documentary and video game: A Force More Powerful

Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (2011) Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan

From Pacification to Peacebuilding: A Call to Global Transformation (2010) Diana Francis

Civilian Jihad: Nonviolent Struggle, Democratization and Governance in the Middle East (2010) Maria Stephan

Handbook for Non Violent Campaigns (2009), War Resisters International

People power and protest since 1945: a bibliography of nonviolent action (2006) compiled by April Carter, Howard Clark and Michael Randle.

From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation (1993, 2012) Gene Sharp

Gandhi as a Political Strategist (1979) Gene Sharp

The Politics of Non Violent Action (1973) Gene Sharp

This talk is based on research conducted for my School’s three-year IRCHSS-funded research project, ‘Visioning 21st Century Ecumenism: Diversity, Dialogue and Reconciliation.’

The project has three main components:

• surveys of faith leaders and lay people, conducted in 2009
• eight case studies of various expressions of faith on the island of Ireland
• theological reflection

For me the talk is a bit of a warm-up for a seminar series titled, ‘Visioning 21st Century Ecumenism: an Irish Contextual Theology,’ which begins on Saturday 22 October at Trinity College Dublin’s Long Room Hub.

As a social scientist who has gathered much of the empirical data for this project, I’m curious to see what sort of theological reflection comes out of the seminars. Most of the speakers will have read initial drafts of the project’s empirical work, which I eventually hope to publish in a book.

The project’s intersection of social science and theology strives towards the ideal of ‘Ecumenics,’ described in my blog post yesterday on Fr Michael Hurley’s definitions of Ecumenical Theology and Ecumenics. (I’ve also written a post on Fr Michael Hurley on Ecumenism.)

The publicity for the seminar series describes it this way:

The series is concerned with the re-articulation of the ecumenical project in light of the increasingly multi-religious and secular contexts of today. Taking, as its particular frame of reference, the rich resources which have been generated through reconciliatory responses to Ireland’s civil and religious conflict, the aim is to develop an Irish contextual theology which will contribute, at the global level, to an ecumenical vision for the 21st century. The seminars will address the issues through the lenses of ethics, theology and ecclesiology.

Reshaping the Ethical Imagination – 22 October

Speakers:

‘Public theology in an Irish Key,’ Enda McDonagh

‘Restoring the Fabric of Irish Economic and Social Life,’ Gerry O’Hanlon

‘Relations of Reciprocity: Contemporary Religiosity and Convictional Pluralism,’ Celia Kenny

‘Public Theology of Reconciliation,’ David Tombs

‘Broken Dialogue, Fractured Faith and Elusive Truth,’ Peter Admirand

In Search of an Irish Church – 2 November

‘The Nature and Mission of the Church: A Global Perspective,’ Peter de Mey

Respondents: Adrian Cristea, Mark Patrick Hederman, Anne Thurston

‘The Ecclesial Shape of Repentance,’ Andrew Pierce

‘Addressing the Legacy of Abuse: Ecumenics as Resource and Method,’ Geraldine Smyth

Embedded Memory and the Theological Contours of Division – 19 December

‘Unfinished History: Religion and Identity in Ireland,’ Marianne Elliot

‘The Theological Contours of Division,’ Alan Ford

‘The Churches and Embedded Memory,’ Oliver Rafferty

The seminar series is free and lunch will be provided. To register, please RSVP cgkenny@tcd.ie

You can download a poster about the series here.