Life

Towards a robust, just and worthy reconciliation

A new conversation about reconciliation is urgently needed, says Dr Norman Hamilton

The 'Together Building a United Community' strategy won't work unless it is supported be a robust reconciliation policy, as the erection of flags at a mixed housing development underlines
The 'Together Building a United Community' strategy won't work unless it is supported be a robust reconciliation policy, as the erection of flags at a mixed housing development underlines The 'Together Building a United Community' strategy won't work unless it is supported be a robust reconciliation policy, as the erection of flags at a mixed housing development underlines

IN spite of, or maybe because of, the terrible years of conflict here in Northern Ireland, we are still in the kindergarten when we speak of 'reconciliation'.

That is not to deny that things have changed radically very much for the better, but one has only to look at the often shameful quality of public debate and discourse to hear language that demeans, devalues and scorns the views of others and what they hold dear.

In such an environment, the language of reconciliation lives in a far off country.

Other factors - such as our increasing devotion to individualism and personal rights entitlements at the expense of communal wellbeing - are making the climate for reconciliation increasingly chilly.

I want to offer four different but connected ideas that might help us restart a worthwhile conversation across our society on what a robust, just and worthy understanding of reconciliation might look like.

First, reconciliation must not be captured by, trapped by or ensnared with questions of national identity.

Reconciliation transcends constitutional questions, yet values very differing loyalties and identities.

This is a key lesson that our colleagues in Rwanda have been teaching us, and which we ignore at our peril.

In 1994, a murderous ethnic killing spree between the rival Hutu and Tutsi tribes took the lives of nearly one million people there.

As one leader there graphically put it: "The fact that you know your neighbour killed your entire family and now you're still in the house next to them and have to see them every day, a lot of people have sort of decided, 'I don't have a choice and either I can let my rage absolutely consume me, or I can accept the fact that I'm not going anywhere, and he's not going anywhere, and we have to make this work'."

This takes me to my second point. There is as yet no agreed working definition of what reconciliation is about.

It is certainly not some kind of politicised or political project, though the political arena has much to contribute. Neither is it core community relations work rebranded with a fancy name. Nor is it an attempt to persuade you to agree with me.

I want to suggest that reconciliation is fundamentally the restoring and healing of fractured relationships.

It is about the quality of relationships between people, communities and even nations who were, and still are, estranged from each other, often because of the intense pain and hurt inflected and experienced.

This leads me to the best day-to-day description of reconciliation that I currently have: working together for the common good, with generosity of spirit and care for the other at its very heart.

On this basis, we could carefully identify not only our own values, hopes, aspirations, needs and frustrations, but understand and appreciate much better the values, hopes, aspirations, needs and frustrations of the other.

With this done, the task would be to work out how to meet the needs of the other in a way that is mutually beneficial.

In Christian terms, this means doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.

This generosity of spirit and this working together would create more space for the development of the trust and changed attitudes that are necessary for reconciliation to begin to take root.

If reconciliation is to be genuine and sustained, it must have at its core benefit and blessing to everyone involved. Put very simply, each grouping, each party, each community should be prepared to be content if the other benefits even more than they do.

My understanding of reconciliation is of course massively shaped by my understanding of what it means to be a committed Christian - for example, the core teaching of Jesus to love my neighbour as myself and the dramatic outworking of that command in the story of the Good Samaritan - but equally I am convinced that such teaching is of huge value to those with a different view of life and even those who disavow any faith commitment.

Can any worthwhile view of reconciliation do less than affirm that reconciliation must bring benefit and blessing to everyone involved, and that I will be very content if you benefit even more than I do?

Those of us who, as individuals, cherish our faith have a personal responsibility to take those small steps of friendship and fellowship which have the potential to transform relationships across our community.

I am very aware of examples right across the faith communities where members have found such dialogue richly and mutually rewarding. As a Christian first and foremost, and as a Presbyterian on this island, I can do no less.

Thirdly, the healing of broken relationships can either be helped or hindered by the outworking of public policy, so social justice and key policy decisions matter a lot.

To put this in plain English: if we are committed to reconciliation, then we must and will ensure that our housing policy, education policy, funding priorities, investment and employment policies are explicitly designed to ensure that division, ignorance and bitterness are not transmitted to our children either consciously, or by unthinking default.

If the quality of education is low in a community and the levels of unemployment are high, then you can scarcely expect that community to be fired up by the need for reconciliation with another community perhaps in much the same situation.

I readily acknowledge the acute difficulty of doing this. One has only to look at the sectarian graffiti daubed at a Newtownabbey housing development last week.

That new development was an initiative under the Stormont executive's 'Together Building a United Community' strategy and had been marketed as a "mixed community where people choose to live with others regardless of their race, religion or background in a neighbourhood that is safe and welcoming to all".

That aspiration now seems dead in the water and is a salutary warning that even major public policy initiatives can be easily thwarted.

The response surely must be to build a robust reconciliation policy as well as building the houses and not simply cross our fingers and hope that good intentions with public money will deliver.

Finally, and perhaps the most demanding element of all in reconciliation, is this: forgiveness and the acknowledgement of wrongdoing must surface in public discourse across the whole of our society.

As we saw again last week, those who died in war can be commemorated, but conflict and war itself can never be celebrated.

Have we forgotten the words and the example of Gordon Wilson after the Enniskillen bombing in November 1987 in which his daughter Marie died?

His words - "I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge" - were reported worldwide, becoming among the most-remembered quotations from the Troubles. He said he forgave her killers and added: "I shall pray for those people tonight and every night."

His call for forgiveness and reconciliation came to be called the spirit of Enniskillen. That call has not been sounded loud enough in recent times.

:: The Rev Dr Norman Hamilton is convenor of the Presbyterian Church's Council for Church in Society and a former moderator. This is abridged and edited from an address he gave at the SDLP conference in Armagh on November 13.