Power, on the other hand, needs constantly to be tempered and challenged by a critical assessment of any entitlement to use it over against other people. It is not of itself bad but, all too often, is used to dismantle the authority of others - particularly children, women, disadvantaged, disabled, poor people - and to zap their capacity to ask for equivalence of status or make a contribution which they alone, from their perspective and position, can make.
The churches have the role of being the place where this sort of human accommodation is modelled. So, my third role for the churches is to be upholders of honourable first principles.
Conclusion
The churches have no automatic role in the future of Northern Ireland. The churches however, in my opinion, individually and yet at the same time from an agreed common perspective, have a strategic role of both service and leadership because: they are, as we hear endlessly, present throughout the total community; they have principles and practices which too often have become confused with prejudices and exclusivities and yet, once re-thought in the fresh contexts into which they wish to speak and act, can act as yeast.
They, in fact, need the society at large to ask more not less of them, rather than allow them to move increasingly into the lay bys and cul-de-sacs of an emerging society because not enough is being asked of them.
The society, in all its good and bad manifestations, will be experimental for quite some time and will change whether or not the churches decide to take up the role which lies at their feet, if not yet in their hands as a strong force for honesty, healing and cohesion.
Members of a fledgling democracy such as ours in Northern Ireland, living through the birth-pangs of political maturity and mutuality, have little time for theoretical musings.
They, that is we, will be receptive to practicalities and living examples of generosity towards others. They will also, whatever their creed, be sustained by a Christian witness which derives the parables of its teaching from unpretentious, complex contemporary life. And they will undoubtedly respond to an institution and its people who make the first move.
Acknowledging the past: remembering together in church and society conference
The Tara Centre Omagh, County Tyrone
12 November 2007
