Northern Ireland

Michael T. McRay 4-21-2020

Herald Press

THERE'S A THEORY in peacebuilding that it can take as long to heal from a conflict as the conflict itself lasted. Depending on whom you ask, the conflict in Northern Ireland lasted 800 years, 400 years, or 30 years. The Good Friday Agreement officially ended the violence in 1998. Any way you spin it, this place isn’t very far along the healing journey.

The violence here lasted so long that it became almost normal. In my last taxi ride during grad school, the driver picked me up on the Antrim Road. “Do you like living here?” I asked. “I liked it better in the good old days—20 to 30 years ago,” he said. “It weren’t that violent. It were a pretty stable time, other than the bombs and guns and murders.”

I asked him if he’d been affected much by the violence. “No, not too much,” he said. “I mean, there was the time I saw my brother walking down the Falls Road, and a black taxi pulled up, rolled down its window, and blew his head off. I remember seeing my mother trying to put his brains back in.”

Layton E. Williams 1-31-2018

The "Hands Across The Divide" sculpture, by Maurice Harron, was erected in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland in 1992, 20 years after Bloody Sunday. 

ABOVE A 2002 article in The Irish News headlined “Priests present cheque to minister” is a photograph of a collared clergywoman surrounded by four Catholic priests. They stand shoulder to shoulder, all smiling, looking toward something ahead of them. Dominating the background is the burned-out shell of a church.

The backdrop of this image—destruction and religion—exemplifies Northern Ireland to much of the world. But the foreground, Catholic and Protestant clergy standing together, smiling toward an unknown future, might just represent what Northern Ireland—in spite of and because of its divisive and violent history—has to teach the U.S. and other countries who find themselves caught in a divisive and violent present.

During the predawn hours of Aug. 2, 2002, Whitehouse Presbyterian Church, on the north side of Belfast, went up in flames. The fire was first spotted by a Catholic taxi driver who lived across the street—he was up late that evening. He called the fire department, but there wasn’t much that could be done. By morning, as the bleary-eyed pastor and congregants of Whitehouse arrived, the building had burned to the ground.

Eventually, the fire was ruled arson—the third attempt in the year and a half that Rev. Liz Hughes had served as minister at Whitehouse, acts of destruction born of the ongoing conflict between Protestants and Catholics throughout Northern Ireland. By 2002, it had already been four years since the Good Friday accords were signed and peace was officially declared in the small, British-ruled country, but action had not entirely caught up to policy.

Abby Olcese 7-06-2017

Nick Hamm, director of ' The Journey'  

Olcese: In the creation of the film, did you find yourself sympathizing with one character or the other? Was one character easier to make more sympathetic?

Hamm: No. I couldn’t. I absolutely wanted to make the film balanced and fair to both sides. That was completely essential. Don’t forget, both these figures were not liked in Europe before they became statesmen. They were both radical. McGuinness was an ex-member of the IRA, Paisley was a firebrand preacher on the right. These were two men who were pretty much despised universally outside of their own base. It’s like The Odd Couple in the back of a car. I think what the humanity of that is when you take all that away, when you remove from the politician the artifice, and you get a chance to look at them as people, and I think that’s what happens in the movie.

Tim Breene 1-31-2017

When our desire for security is so great that it diminishes our humanity and our capacity, or willingness, to see the world through the eyes of another, we lose a precious part of who we were designed to be. Our hearts are hardened, calcified.

Image via /Shutterstock.com

In an about-face that has surprised many of his allies, a prominent gay rights campaigner has criticized a court’s decision in Northern Ireland to charge a bakery with discrimination for refusing to ice a cake with a slogan in support of same-sex marriage. Peter Tatchell of Great Britain, a leading voice on LGBT issues, came to the defense of the Ashers Bakery in Belfast with a column published on Feb. 1 in the Guardian.

Lisa Sharon Harper 7-14-2014
Irish countryside, Bildagentur Zoonar GmbH / Shutterstock.com

Irish countryside, Bildagentur Zoonar GmbH / Shutterstock.com

“If, as Christians, we believe that peace is rooted in Christ, then how we build that peace within us, in one way, is through the disciplines of solitude and silence; through spending time with God. Solitude is not necessarily extremely easy process, because it will bring to the fore all sorts of things that are within us. We will get to know ourselves in a fuller way. In solitude, where you know that God is with you, you can just be with God, and there is no need for a mask. Also, your humility might grow because you will see yourself as you really are — in a way that needs to be healed and transformed.”

 
Rose Marie Berger 6-18-2013
World map, Feraru Nicolae / Shutterstock.com

World map, Feraru Nicolae / Shutterstock.com

In the green hills of County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, the world’s leading developed nations agreed on Tuesday to make individuals and companies pay the taxes that they owe. With the release this morning of the Lough Erne Declaration the G8 countries plan to implement greater tax collection internationally through fairer tax policies, greater financial transparency, and open trade.

The G8 plans to clamp down on tax-evaders and require shell companies — often used to take advantage of tax loopholes or to invest money anonymously —to identify their effective owners or primary beneficiaries. Developing countries, reported CNN, lose more in tax avoidance than they receive in aid. With the protocols agreed to today, indebted poor countries will be given access to the global information they need to collect the taxes they are owed.

Some anti-poverty campaigners describe the G8 deal as a historic achievement.

Paige Brettingen 5-01-2013

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — When the Republic of Ireland apologized to the wayward girls who were sent to the Magdalene laundries for hard work and no pay, Teresa Bell felt encouraged. Surely, she thought, the government of Northern Ireland would do the same.

Nearly three months later, she’s still waiting.

Bell was one of thousands of young girls who were sent to the Magdalene workhouses run by Roman Catholic nuns when she got pregnant at age 16. She worked long hours washing clothes with no pay and little rest; after giving birth, her daughter was put in an orphanage.

Bell never recovered from the shame.

Cathleen Falsani 9-27-2012

God Girl's New Favorite Thing for Sept. 27, 2012: Northern Ireland's Rend Collective Experiment

I love music. I love Jesus. And I love all things Irish.

So when a friend introduced me to Rend Collective Experiment last year, chances were pretty good that I'd vibe with this band from the North of Ireland (Bangor, to be specific.)

But ... and this was a BIG but ... my musical proclivities, while decidedly ecclectic, generally steer clear of contemporary Christian worship music (especially if it's billed as such.) When it comes to having a musical worship experience, give me Chris Martin and his bandmates, or those other four greying boyos from a little farther south in the Republic of Ireland.

Without putting too fine a point on it, Rend Collective are very much a contemporary Christian worship band. But they aren't what you're thinking.

Neither painfully earnest nor woefully twee. They're fun and funky — earthy, too, in a grab-your-banjo-and-trilby-hat kind of a way.

Cathleen Falsani 9-27-2012

"High nigh br-eye-n, K-eye"? Come again? Rend Collective and Bart Millard (of the band MercyMe) give us a lesson in how to speak Northern Irish.

http://youtu.be/-S9R6CspOvs

Jim Wallis 6-20-2011

Yesterday was Father's Day. As a favor to a dear friend, I did a speaking event on Saturday night away from home, and planned on returning very early in the morning for Sunday and Father's Day.

Gareth Higgins 6-16-2010

For 14 people in my homeland, northern Ireland -- a place whose divisions are so fully on the surface that we still can't agree what to call it (the reason I spell it with a small 'n') -- the clocks stopped on January 30, 1972.

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