The grandfatherly man who bent over me, smiling tenderly and gripping my shoulder to welcome me to Belfast, was, in fact, a killer.
I recognized him from a documentary I had watched in preparation for a trip to Ireland. Though he was not an official speaker for the group I travelled with, I knew that he had taken the lives of his neighbors. He had been part of a paramilitary group that fought during the Irish Troubles. Whether what he did should be called military defense or cold blooded murder, remains one of the central questions of that conflict.
I’ve found myself wondering what story he tells his grandchildren about his role in the fighting.
Recently, myself and twenty other ministry leaders travelled from Phoenix, AZ to the wet spring of Northern Ireland with the purpose of studying peacemaking. (The trip was funded by the Lilly Endowment.) We went to the heart of Belfast to hear stories and reflections on what the British obliquely–sometimes condescendingly– refer to as “The Troubles,” but what is known locally in Belfast as “The Conflict.”
Our group stayed in the Europa Hotel, which has the distinction of being the most bombed hotel in the world (38 times), though, as I told one of my sons over the phone from my 4th floor room, it’s perfectly safe now.
For those, like myself a few months ago, who are unfamiliar with the history of Northern Ireland from the late 1960s to 1998, the sobering reality is this: there were tens of thousands of injuries and maimings, and around 3700 deaths, mostly civilian, and largely neighbor-to-neighbor killings.
By military standards, this number can appear almost insignificant until it is remembered that Northern Ireland is a small place. A rough American equivalent would be hundreds of thousands, perhaps even up to half a million, of radicalized civilians brutally killing one another–not on a battlefield, but by stabbing their neighbors in the streets, or setting off bombs in local shops.
What was the conflict about? On the surface, the dividing lines were split along Protestant and Catholic –but this was not about theology. In fact one of our presenters joked, “When you come to Northern Ireland everyone asks: ‘Are you Catholic or Protestant?’ If you say, ‘I’m an atheist,’ then they’ll ask: ‘Well, are you a Protestant Atheist or a Catholic Atheist?’”
The conflict was not doctrinal but really about identity, politics, and land. It involved a long and complex history of English and Scottish (Protestant) settlers who came to Northern Ireland and shaped the culture for generations. It is about the nature of what it means to be Irish, how independent Ireland should be from her historically English colonizer, and who should have access to positions of influence and power.
The peace brought by the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 mostly put a stop to the killing, but produced an unhappy stalemate. The language used was flexible enough that both sides could read into it their own version of victory.
To this day, Northern Ireland remains essentially segregated, with Catholics and Protestants largely going to their own separate schools, gyms, and work places. Hundreds of murals are spread throughout Belfast, some with simple memorials for the lives lost, but most with overt messages of condemnation for the other side. Some murals even have messages of support or hatred for other world conflicts (like Israel and Palestine) mapped onto Northern Ireland’s own local divisions.
Physical barriers still separate some of the neighborhoods in Belfast. While no one is overly worried about violence anymore, the old barriers are considered a “security blanket”--a physical reminder that neighbors are still not ready to let go and trust completely.
I claim no expertise in this area of historical understanding of The Troubles or the process of peacemaking for that matter, but I came home from the trip with a burden about the way we Christians think about memory and, specifically, how we want others to remember our own lives.
In his book The Road To Character David Brooks popularized the term Eulogy Virtues to refer to living for the things that you would want said at your funeral. Eulogy Virtues, as opposed to Resume Virtues (accomplishment, success and achievement), refer to things like kindness and faithfulness and your capacity for love. It is about the overall impact and direction of your life.
After spending nine days in an area still visibly marked with reminders of violence and hatred, I found myself wondering: what must one morally do to reckon with the past in a way that truly heals and brings honor to Christ? Is it enough to simply stop doing wrong things and begin the path toward the eulogy virtues? Can one just start doing the right thing and let time heal, or is there a middle step needed as a bridge? And if a middle step is required, what would it be?
One of the themes of our training was that, wherever violence and pain have been experienced, there must be acknowledgement through repentance and lament. There must be a place to come together and for those involved to admit, “What we did was wrong.” There must be places of recognition that are free from intentional barbs and stirrings of past grievance. There must be honest memory, but without ill-intent.
We heard from many voices on the trip. We listened to the narratives of the Republicans (or Nationalists, largely Catholic) and the narratives of the Unionists (or Loyalists, largely Protestant). Everyone seemed sober about what happened. No one glorified the violence. All seemed grateful that the killing had ceased.
But beyond that, something was missing. To speak broadly, the narratives largely took this shape: “This is why we were angry, and I’m glad the violence is over.” What I did not hear, on either side, were things like “We were wrong” or “Our suffering was real, but our actions were unjustified” or even “We were misguided.”
Yet many involved in the conflict are now trying to shift to those Eulogy Virtue perspectives. Some of the men who spoke seem increasingly aware that the next generation cannot understand their anger. As they near the end of their lives, they seem to be aware that their violence will not be remembered well. So they frame their narratives exclusively in terms of military necessity or the defense of rights, rather than admitting any wrongdoing or prejudice.
Our guide for the trip, a retired minister himself, shook his head at one point and said, “When you come toward the end of your life, you want to be able to be remembered well. I understand why you wouldn’t want to tell your grandchildren what happened. No one wants to be remembered as a murderer.”
As a Presbyterian minister myself, I also found it difficult to wrestle with the legacy of Pastor Ian Paisley. Paisley, the founder of the fundamentalist leaning Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, was known as a firebrand of the Unionist cause, not necessarily pursuing violence himself but inspiring thousands of young Protestant men to take up arms against Catholics. His view that the pope was the Anti-Christ meant this conflict had not just moral, but apocalyptic dimensions. So peaceful compromise was akin to giving into spiritual darkness.
Yet later in life, Paisley softened to be more receptive to peace, more willing to compromise with his opponents, and more gentle in his communication. This turn in his leadership greatly helped the peace process. But, though Paisley changed his tactics, he never publicly said, “What we were doing in the beginning was wrong.”
There was no middle step. Could this missing middle step of repentance be the reason that many of our speakers used different versions of the same thematic phrase: “We have peace in Ireland, but we do not have reconciliation”? Or, said another way, is it possible to have eulogy virtue without full acknowledgement of past wrong? The brutal murals, the segregated gathering places, and the physical barriers between neighborhoods that remain even after several attempts to have them removed, suggests that we cannot.
Near the end of the trip, we did experience something different. In what was generally acknowledged as the most powerful moment of the training, we heard the recollections of two victims of the violence. We listened to the stories of a Protestant husband who lost his wife to a bomb and a Catholic mother who lost her son to a random stabbing in the street. They both sat next to each other, lovingly acknowledging each other’s grief, now decades old but still tender. It was clear that what they were modeling was both rare and necessary for true reconciliation to spread.
As we returned to Phoenix, our group naturally began to reflect on the possible parallels here in the United States. What are the places where Americans have come close to this type of unrest? Having spent time in a place as outwardly calm and courteous as Belfast, one does come away with a disquieting conclusion: this kind of violent outbreak could happen anywhere.
But we were encouraged by our guides to not rush to organize anything specific in our own context. Instead, we were challenged to wrestle individually and as a group to see what comes of extended reflection.
What this reflection has called to mind for me is my own family legacy and the necessity of repentance. I feel burdened to say I’m sorry even more. It makes me want to give more than surface level apologies, and to dig deeper and contemplate patterns that need to be named and forsaken.
There can be no eulogy virtues without the middle step of repentance. As Proverbs 28:13 says: Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.