"Despite their condemnation of violence, the Churches were not seen as neutral and above the fray. They were seen as part of the problem. This made it very difficult for them to be seen as part of the solution.”
That was John Brewer, Professor of Post-Conflict Studies, one of the foremost sociologists of religion, conflict and peace in these islands with an ever growing international reputation to boot, speaking last month at the West Belfast Festival.
His audience in St Oliver Plunkett Church heard him go on to declare: “The institutional Church – by which I mean the Church leadership, chief office holders and bureaucrats – did very little in the peace process other than minimally condemn the violence.”
Controversial
It is controversial research-based conclusions like these that makes Brewer, the author or co-author of 15 books and Senior Fellow at the new Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at Queen’s University Belfast, one of the most interesting and challenging academics in Ireland today and a much sought contributor on the international conference circuit.
Twenty four hours after speaking to The Irish Catholic he was off to attend workshops on religion, conflict and peace over two days at the University of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur.
But significantly, as we shall see presently, his criticism is not just historical. Indeed he is at his most passionate and compelling when he moves from explaining his research findings on things that go back perhaps 40 years or more ago to lambasting what he sees as the failure of the Churches today to address burning issues arising from the conflict.
Negotiations
His comments are particularly relevant as they come at the start of the negotiations chaired by the United States envoy Dr Richard Haass.
Brewer is perhaps most famous for a pioneering study into anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland in which he “challenged Protestants to get the beam out of their own eye before they criticised Catholics”. (Macmillan Press 1998).
He has had an interesting faith voyage himself, born and brought up an English Catholic in Shropshire with an Irish grandmother who came to England in the 1890s and a third generation Irish grandfather whose own grandfather arrived from Co. Antrim at the height of the Famine.
Brewer left the Catholic Church in 1970 “on a point of principle” around Humanae Vitae and other issues. He converted to Presbyterianism and has had something of a peripatetic faith journey to the point where he is today “a non-denominational Christian”.
During the Troubles he says the leaderships of the Catholic, Presbyterian and Church of Ireland, “did little except speechify about the violence and write grand statements”.
In contrast, he says there were “courageous individuals on the ground who did a very great deal” and singles out Fr Alec Reid of Clonard, Rev. Ken Newell of Fitzroy Presbyterian Church and David Porter of Evangelical Contribution on Northern Ireland (ECONI) among others who “worked for peace in spaces that were outside the control of cautious, conservative and largely unsupportive bishops and moderators”.
Canon David Porter is the recently appointed director of reconciliation to the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.
Mavericks
Brewer describes such people as “religious independents, mavericks and individuals found in every denomination, on both sides, and of every gender”.
He says they were “often criticised by their church leadership or held out to dry when it became known they were involved” citing the treatment of Fr Alec Reid and of Rev. David Armstrong who was forced out of Northern Ireland after wishing happy Christmas to the local parish priest in Co. Derry.
He is particularly critical of the main Protestant “middle class” churches for “making working class loyalists feel like scum” pointing out many of these middle class Protestants were more likely to be found with Catholics in west Belfast than on the loyalist Lower Newtownards Road.
Brewer doesn’t flinch from going beyond the conclusions of his meticulous academic research to express challenging personal opinions on controversial issues on which there is little consensus in a divided society.
One of his duties as an academic “is not just to write boring books that nobody reads but also to influence public debate about the future” by giving talks like the one in St Oliver Plunkett and contribute to radio and TV discussions and interviews such as this.
Seamus Heaney was certainly not pointing the finger at people like him when he wrote Whatever You Say Say Nothing.
Professor Brewer says the late Cardinal Cahal Daly was not sufficiently critical of the British Government for fear of “confirming the Protestant stereotype that the Church was the IRA at prayer”. And that Dr Daly and his Church of Ireland counterpart Archbishop Robin Eames should have taken risks by talking directly to republican and loyalist paramilitaries. “Did Jesus see himself as incapable of dealing with outcasts?” he asks.
Leadership
Whatever the rights and wrongs of such criticism – and there are those who would say that without the moderate leadership of Daly and Eames and others, things would have been worse – Brewer is no less trenchant in his critique of the institutional Church in Northern Ireland today.
His charge is their collective failure to address the really big issues confronting a post conflict but still bitterly divided society 15 years after the Good Friday Agreement.
“The Church is silent on key things they have expertise in like forgiveness, civility, remembrance, victimhood, and tolerance,” he declaims.
Against the background of the street unrest of the past year he says the silence of the Church has created a vacuum “where the extremists are dominating” and this has caused “a feeling of hopelessness where people feel we are back to where we were”.
He says he has “even heard people in the BBC who should know better” say “we have slipped back to 1969” but he dismisses this out of hand saying it is too easy to forget “how far we’ve come”.
Brewer adds: “If truth is a casualty of war perspective is a casualty of peace.”
An antidote to any feeling of hopelessness he says is the message on the website www.hopeandhistory.com inspired by the famous Heaney poem which has received tens of thousands of hits in recent times.
It calls for humility, healing and hope in the run up to the Haass negotiations and has the support of many Church traditions and the four main Church leaders.
It has been organised by Brewer and Belfast-based members of his £1.26m international cross national five year research project on compromise among victims of conflict in Northern Ireland, South Africa and Sri Lanka funded by The Leverhulme Trust.
It is clear something drives John Brewer. When you ask the answer comes quickly. The seminal event in his life came at the age of two when he lost his father in 1954, a Royal Marine who survived World War II but was killed in a freak mining accident taking the full force of a rock fall to save the mine manager.
His 24 year old mother with another son two years older couldn’t really cope and he was effectively brought up by an aunt, a devout Catholic.
“I had to grow up very quickly, bottle everything up, and learned fast that life was very unfair, for me and for others”.
Social justice
As a result he developed “a deep rooted commitment to social justice, fairness and equality”, becoming the first in his village to go to university and a sociologist exploring justice related issues around e.g. racism, apartheid and anti-Semitism.
Sectarianism was added when he came from the University of East Anglia to Queen’s with his three year old daughter and pregnant wife to Belfast during the hunger strikes in 1981. “I was an expert in the study of conflict and Northern Ireland was a kind of laboratory.”
He stayed, raised a family here and after nearly a decade as professor of sociology in the University of Aberdeen returned to Queen’s this year to a place that has really been his home since he first arrived more than 30 ago.