Over the next ten years, a thoroughly divided Christian witness will become an increasing conundrum and a focus of impatience to more and more people.
The churches, individually and together, have a role and a powerful one in the Northern Ireland of tomorrow if they give expression to the divine invitation to find God present and at work in today's Ireland.
It is the role of religion to talk about God. Again, this is a rather obvious thing to say. A religion devoid of theological purpose has already shrivelled and, unknown to itself, is crumbling.
If I speak of the causal link between creation and redemption; if I speak of the operational love of God in giving life to human beings with a free will and a responsibility for all aspects of creation you will, like everybody else, say either: I don't know what he is talking about or I think that is better left to the clergy.
But if, instead, I talk about respect for person and respect for place, about ecological awareness; if I talk about The Enniskillen Bomb or The Omagh Bomb or human trafficking, you will, I hope, see that there are tangible, everyday manifestations of the theological language which I used just a minute ago in terms of good and evil and how we respond to both.
And that is a totally, if unselfconsciously, theological thing to do. I think that the churches can and must do this work time and again within all aspects of contemporary life - ipods, internet access, consumerism, ecology, justice issues - precisely because of the fact that they did offer hope and compassion in the decades of human suffering, intimidation and death.
Most people think that normality is something which is always there. I disagree. Normality is something which needs to be fought for, constantly re-asserted and thought through from first principles. So, my second role for the churches is to be agents of courage and confidence.
(3) A third area where the churches have a role is in revisiting the use of language. Let me give you an example. Stick to your principles, whatever you do! How often have we heard it, or even said it? Yet very few of us, I imagine, are willing to own up to having prejudices.
Prejudices are what other people have. As I see it, a principle is a beginning, a starting-point to which we return again and again to find our bearings, to re-position ourselves, to set out once more on the same sort of journey of life which we all must take.
A prejudice is a mental attitude or decision where a judgement which we made once - in particular circumstances which we are convinced have not changed, or on the basis of something which we took over from others without really thinking it through for ourselves - holds fast and we will not, or cannot, deviate from it.
The irony is that it may well have started out as a principle but developed into something non-negotiable, that is a prejudice. And this brings me into a further area where the churches, through their title deeds and through the personal example of Jesus Christ, can play a role in challenging the many noxious misunderstandings of power and authority. Not only is authority earned, it is also derived.
