wfn.org | [ENS] Ecumenism can be key to breaking violent cycles,

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@mail.epicom.org>]

Daybook, from Episcopal News Service

January 27, 2005 - Thursday Thesis: Meeting People of Purpose

Ecumenism can be key to breaking violent cycles, says Kearon

By Sean McConnell

[ENS, San Francisco] A pyramid of violence, built on the fears of
ordinary
people and topped by the terrorists who express those fears, is what
needs
to be dismantled for peace and reconciliation in the world-and though
people
of faith are part of the problem, they can also form a major component
of
the solution, according to the Rev. Kenneth Kearon, newly appointed
Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, speaking in San Francisco
January 24.

Kearon, born in Dublin in 1953, was keynote speaker at this year's
Wattson
Lecture at the University of San Francisco, a private Roman Catholic
university in the Jesuit tradition. The Wattson lectures, named for Paul
(James Francis) Wattson, the Episcopal priest who founded the Franciscan
Society of the Atonement, are conducted each year around issues of
ecumenical and interreligious dialogue.

A medical and bio-ethicist, Canon Kearon was director of the Irish
School of
Ecumenics from 1999 to 2004. The School of Ecumenics, with campuses in
Dublin and Belfast, combines peace and reconciliation studies with
interfaith and interchurch studies. It was his role as director that
prompted the invitation to keynote the Wattson Lecture.

His lecture, titled "Ecumenism: Reconciliation and Overcoming Violence,"
centered on the foundations for sectarian violence and conflict, and the
support structures that legitimate extremist religious and political
views,
and the ultimate extreme response of terrorism. Graphically represented
as a
pyramid, Kearon explained, sectarian violence begins with ordinary
citizens
(the base of the pyramid), "People who might express mildly sectarian
opinions or actions." These support the next level: "the leaders, who
either
through the pulpit or political platform, express stronger and clearer
versions of those same negative attitudes."

At the pyramid's next level are the "paramilitaries," who offer armed
protection for those who express a sectarian difference, and draw their
support from the clarified rhetoric of the religious and political
leaders
below them. At the top of the pyramid are the terrorists, whom the Irish
call "the mad dogs," who take the thinly voiced expressions of the
ordinary
citizens, clarified in the rhetoric of the religious leaders and
politicians, legitimated by the force of the paramilitaries.

"Breaking that sort of cycle," says Kearon, "is easy in any normal
society.
"What gives the dynamic permanence is the division in a given society
which
enables the other, the source of your fear, to be embodied in your
neighbor." The majority of citizens might not approve of a violent
expression toward their own neighbors, but the fact that there are those
on
both sides of the sectarian divide who do visualize their own neighbors
as
other, provides enough incentive for the leaders to draw upon those
fears in
support of their own power.

If the 'neighbor as other' dynamic gives the system of sectarian
division
and violence its permanence, the role of religion provides its
fortitude.
There is a sense that "religion in general is inevitably wound up with
division, because religions and Christian denominations make truth
claims
which are often incompatible with each other."

Kearon looks deeper into the religious under-girding of sectarian
division
by pointing out what appears to be a positive aspect of Christian
churches,
especially in the context of Northern Ireland. "All of the churches in
Ireland have a very strong pastoral base, and as such are deeply
bound-up in
the lives of their people. Very close pastoral relationships such as
that
can preclude, or at least make very difficult, a prophetic stance that
outsiders would demand of the Church."

Because of the ingrained belief systems and the 'neighbor as other'
dynamic,
Kearon feels that the churches of Ireland, working together, have had to
fulfill their capacity as agents of reconciliation. But, "if churches
are
going to preach the Gospel of peace and reconciliation in a context such
as
Northern Ireland," Kearon stated, "they must first hold up their hands
and
acknowledge their own contributions to the situation." Not so much
because
it would be a good public relations move on the part of the churches,
but
because "this naming and admitting of personal involvement has been a
liberating experience for countless individuals, and it can be so for
institutions also."

Kearon did not claim that his analysis of Northern Ireland easily
describes
all terror situations in the post-September 11th world, but he said it
does
point to a deeper understanding of the role the church can play in
building
and strengthening sectarian division. Even more, it illuminates the
steps
that a church must take once it has been involved in giving power to
such a
system, to name its own complicity, reverse the process of divisions,
and
move toward reconciliation and peace. Ecumenism can begin the process
of
reconciliation at a macro level, and model for the citizens, leaders,
and
maybe even the paramilitaries and "mad dogs," a path to reconciliation
and
peace.

--Sean McConnell is editor of Pacific Church News, the official
newspaper of
the Episcopal Diocese of California.

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