Affirming our faith in the reconciling power of God

Steph and I have been living at Corrymeela in Northern Ireland for more than four months. I have written very little during this time, there is much to say about life here but it isn’t always easy to know how to express these things.

Corrymeela is a Christian organisation which exists to promote peace and reconciliation. The 150 members are asked each year to affirm their faith in the reconciling power of God in Jesus Christ.

Christianity holds a peculiar space in the society of Northern Ireland. Christianity is at the heart of the conflict. The two sides self define themselves as Catholic or Protestant. Many church leaders on both sides do very little to challenge sectarian thinking, their defence of segregated education being one example of this. There are, and have been, many examples of preachers angrily criticising the other. Many people have been damaged in the name of faith.

So there is a persuasive strand of thinking which argues for the road to peace being found in a rejection of Christianity. Removing faith from society would be a positive move towards peace. Atheism = Peace. At the heart of this thinking is a belief that the experience of God separates people one from another. We imagine a God who divides humanity into group, an in-group and an out-group. Our image is of a God who loves us conditionally and favours those who do as we imagine he commands. Many people here have rightly rejected religion because this understanding of God is the only one they have ever experienced.

This God of separations is still worshipped by many. It is lived out in the practises of many groups whose religious ideology is exclusive. Those in our group are favoured by God, while those in the other group are not. Christian identity is too often formed in relation to what we are ‘not’ rather than what we ‘are’.

Here at Corrymeela we experience a lot of this kind of ‘Religion is part of the problem’ thinking. Our most important role here is to attempt to live in a way which proclaims a different gospel. As Catholics, Protestants and Agnostics we are called to live in way which proclaims a God of unconditional love, a God who makes no distinction between peoples. We are called to be inspired by an encounter with a God who is continually goes out to meet those on the outside. We are called to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, embracing a way of life which is constantly looking outwards, to wider relationships, to wider community and to deeper sharing. Our challenge is to live our Christianity as a religion of reconciliation which pulls people closer together.

Our little lived community here does not exist to talk about reconciliation, nor does it exist to be perfect all the time but rather to show that when we fail reconciliation is possible.

This is our vocation. We don’t always live it very successfully.