Archbishop of Armagh, the Most Reverend Robin Eames claims that individuals who reconnect with the core values of the Christian faith hold the key to the future of Christianity in Ireland. Speaking at the MacGill Summer School at Glenties, Co Donegal on Monday 18th July, Archbishop Eames will comment on the negative contribution resulting from an overly close relationship between denominational religion and political institutions in Irish society. He will call on the Churches and on individual Christians to refocus on the essential nature of Christianity in order to realise the potential good that Christians may bring to Ireland in the future.
"As a committed Anglican Christian, convinced ecumenist and as one who still believes in the Easter Gospel for society I believe Christianity has a future in Ireland. But the quality of that role far surpasses its traditional acceptance in an Ireland which continues to undergo a quiet Revolution taking it far from the comfort zones of unquestioned Church loyalty or obedience.
Text of Archbishop Eames speech is below:
The Macgill Summer School 2005. Will Ireland be Christian in 2030?
If some of my archiepiscopal predecessors in Armagh had been invited to address this question I doubt if there would have been much hesitation in their positive response. I believe they would have questioned why such a question could arise in an island of such clear Christian adherence and undoubted Church influence on life. They would probably have spoken of the dominance of Church control of education, Church attendance figures and indeed Church influence over how government dealt with many areas of social importance. In Northern Ireland they would have reflected on the pro-Union stance of Protestant and Reformed Churches and the dominance of the Protestant ethos at Stormont where the Reformed Churches could be really referred to in the same breath as a Unionist party yet to face a process of splintering and decision. They would have viewed the Roman Catholic Church in Northern Ireland as part of a minority scene which in political terms had yet to find equality in the prevailing pro-Union atmosphere. Indeed they might even have found it incomprehensible that come 1969 serious questions would begin to surface about the human rights of a minority, alienation of a minority or the right to equality of a minority. Christianity was for them what the Reformed tradition preached - and Reformed Christianity was safe for the future in a place of dominance for one party political outlook. In what was to become the Republic of Ireland my predecessors would have commented on Roman Catholic Church dominance, obvious influence over how the State was governed - and a failure of anything akin to ecumenism simply because there was no need for it.
Such therefore might well have been the reception years ago to this question by those who claimed to be successors of Patrick.
Behind what I have said about Church life over the generations was what I honestly believe about Irish religious history - Christianity was the Church and the Church was Christianity. As I read this history today I see a large scale failure by all the Churches to identify social and economic issues beyond their relevance to denominational doctrine and Church teaching. I see a failure before the sixties of a united recognition that what constitutes Christianity is in fact superior to denominational doctrine. I see a failure by the Churches, all of them, to step outside the comfortable pew, the protected pulpit or the untouchable sanctuary to ask questions about justice, rights and equality in society. While all this was to change it came about not so much as a pro-active examination of society but as a reaction to events outside the Churches which were to change the entire fabric of Irish society in our lifetime.
The Churches faced a changing Ireland in the late 50's and early 60's and identified questions and issues in society because those questions were compelling attention to such a degree that the outside world began to raise the conundrum of the land of saints and scholars and violent revolution, sectarianism and religious war - because the outside world began to note those contradictions - and because all the Irish Churches began to see that there was some truth in the maxim - if religion is part of the problem how can it become part of the solution? Ecumenism was born in Ireland once society was dissatisfied with denominational answers and because of a force to be reckoned with when Reformed Christianity and Roman Catholic Christianity were forced by circumstances to ask questions of each other and of their communities which in truth they should have asked generations ago. Yet Irish ecumenism remains a very tender plant ...
I have commenced my approach to this question in this way for two simple reasons.
First, holy Ireland has long defined Christianity by denominational parameters, interpreted in the lives of individual Protestants and Roman Catholics insofar as it has produced satisfactory and self-realisation in society in denominational terms and, second, Ireland has experienced changes in Church life and inter-relationships largely as a result of society and community revolution rather than as change prompted from within. It is in my submission these two ingredients to Irish life which control, indeed dictate, my personal response to the question posed by this paper.
If Christianity has a future in Ireland I believe the quality of that future will not depend so much on the separate influence of Churches as it will on the quality of life individual Irish Christians feel able to contribute to society. The Ireland I see in the future will be a place where the influence of the individual rather than the influence of the institution will command most attention. I am not speaking of the end of the institutional Church or anything like it - I am talking about the way Irish society will evaluate the importance of Christianity as it becomes more and more a place determined by secular norms and secular values. As one young person put it to me at a conference recently : "It is not that I have lost a belief in God - it is simply that I don't recognise anymore the value of the God I hear explained in the pulpit or the sanctuary."
The truth as I see it is simply this : Christianity is greater than any one Church : Christianity can too easily become less significant indeed meaningful when linked with any one Church tradition : Christianity in Ireland has suffered because of our total allegiance to denominationalism. For generations Irish people have relied on denominational dogma to the expense of the depth and all-embracing nature of 'the Faith once delivered.' There is a strange comfort in total denominationalism. Human nature likes to retreat to the familiar. Family traditions in Ireland have encouraged denominationalism. Therefore ecumenism in its broadest sense has had an uncertain start in Ireland. Indeed for different reasons ecumenism has been feared in parts of Irish life. In the naked sectarianism of Northern Ireland ecumenism for some is a sign of failure, surrender and weakness. Ecumenism when linked to reconciliation is still a 'dirty word' to some. Equally, ecumenism when practised in its real sense of understanding, reaching out and acceptance of difference takes us to the heart of what I believe God is saying to His Church. Some years ago a little book was published with this challenging title : "Your God is too small.' Perhaps that says it all. Ecumenism must never become an alternative denomination on its own. But insofar as it encourages Irish Churches to look out beyond their own boundaries to see what can be learned from or admired in others, it can determine to a large degree the future of Christianity in Ireland.
Another dimension has become an important ingredient in this debate. Ireland north and south but particularly in the Republic, has become more and more a religious society of pluralism. The influx of other nationalities is compelling many traditional assumptions about the 'religious divide' to be revisited. Muslim, Hindu and the religious traditions of the wider Europe and the Far East are forcing a revaluation of what it means to be a minority religion in Ireland.
I recognise that what I have said on other occasions about the drift from the institutional Christian Churches does not command universal acceptance from within the traditional Churches. But I remain convinced the growth of new groupings and new localised so-called community Churches present a challenge to the accepted structures of Irish Church life. What is it they are saying about the influence or format of those traditional Churches which we need to hear?
Equally I must again express my opinion that Ireland is becoming a secularised society. Too often Churches in their proclamation of denominational Christianity have viewed this trend as a threat rather than an opportunity. I have little patience with those who warn Churches of the dangers of a secularised society. Today Churches on this island must reach out with a new degree of understanding of secular human-kind in Ireland - and have a new courage to teach what the fundamentals of the Easter message can hold for a society. I believe future generations will regard this as one searching for a new vision of what the good life means. This is just as vital in my view for the inheritors of the Celtic Tiger as it is for the disjointed and still violent society of Northern Ireland.
In my time as Anglican Archbishop of Armagh I have seen how more than 30 years of politically motivated violence and terror has changed people. Today we are beginning to see how really deep those wounds have gone. Christianity in Northern Ireland has to address the power of memory and how that power has influenced individuals and society in the north. No greater task faces the Church in Northern Ireland than to address this issue - but to address it together. No greater question will determine the future relevance of Christianity in the north than that. Of course the Churches must accept their responsibilities for the grim past. But equally they must recognise that to talk of a religious war is an over-simplification which contributes its own injustice to history.
The religious scene in Ireland has like many other features of Irish life two parts. In the Republic the Roman Catholic Church commands the largest majority of Christians. The Church of Ireland as the largest of the minority denominations is totally integrated into the life of the State. But neither Church in the Republic has had to address the tensions a society such as Northern Ireland has produced in which the uneasy cohabitation of the political and the religious has posed fundamental questions about power, authority, domination, alienation and tragically, human suffering. For them the freedom to believe in and to implement true ecumenism has been enjoyed without the obstacles of political/religious opposition.
In Northern Ireland as I have observed religious labels have been embraced as an identity which owes much to political hopes and fears and little to Church allegiance or involvement. Despite the obvious difficulties faced by such dilemmas the Churches in Northern Ireland are slowly, very slowly, but surely developing a Christian critique of society which is shaking off the baggage of generations - a baggage which has seen denominationalism over-identified with one political philosophy or other. The future religious map of Northern Ireland will largely depend on the success or failure of this process. While pastorally a Church must be sensitive to the needs of "its people", over identification of the Roman Catholic Church in Northern Ireland with Republicanism or Nationalism, and over-identification of Churches of the Reformed tradition with political Unionism can only be detrimental to the recognition of Christianity as a universal code for people's lives irrespective of community, political or denominational labels.
Has Christianity a future in Ireland?
It is my submission that for generations people will question the relevance of the Irish Churches when basic Christian truths are communicated to society on issues society believes are important - not because denominational doctrine is expressed in 'Churchy terms.' The real question remains - has Christianity expressed by institutional bodies anything to say about the progress of a society towards equality, justice and the recognition of human rights? If institutional Christianity can find ways of communicating its message in that way, so much to the good. But if it fails, other ways must be found to express the Calvary and Easter morning message in ways which are recognisable, have the ring of truth - and are understandable to society. To coin a phrase - over dependence on the historical Irish Church message of influence, denominational point-scoring and acceptance that the voice of the Church will be sought and listened to is over. In the market-place of pluralism, secularism and search for new moral codes of expressing the 'good life' much of the traditional Church communication-machinery is well past its sell-by date. There is no longer an inevitable question from the media - what does the institutional Church say about social or community issues?
As a committed Anglican Christian, convinced ecumenist and as one who still believes in the Easter Gospel for society I believe Christianity has a future in Ireland. But the quality of that role far surpasses its traditional acceptance in an Ireland which continues to undergo a quiet Revolution taking it far from the comfort zones of unquestioned Church loyalty or obedience.
Christian Ireland of the past is still Christian Ireland at heart. But future generations will not judge Ireland's Christianity by the Churches alone.