Martin O'BrienRev. Ken Newell recalls shaking off ‘a cramped evangelical mind-set’ with Martin O’Brien
The conscious effort of Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness, joint leaders of the newly formed DUP-Sinn Féin power-sharing administration to signal their intention to pursue a new and constructive approach would surely not have come a moment too soon for Rev. Dr Ken Newell.
Rev. Newell is a remarkable Belfast born and bred Presbyterian minister who took huge risks for peace in the years leading up to the ceasefires more than a quarter of a century ago. He also never tires of using the image of the Niagara Falls in an attempt to convey the power of God’s grace in the world.
Just before the formation of the new Executive, Rev. Newell (73), a former Presbyterian Moderator, co-founder of the Clonard Fitzroy Fellowship and joint recipient, with his dear friend the late Fr Gerry Reynolds CSsR, of the Pax Christi International Peace Prize, spoke to The Irish Catholic.
The interview marked the publication of his refreshingly frank book Ken Newell – Captured by a Vision – A Memoir (Colourpoint).
Ceasefires
Reflecting on the state of Northern Ireland some 18 years after the Good Friday Agreement and almost 22 years after the republican and loyalist ceasefires (that he strove for with others), he sighs ruefully, a deeply-committed Christian disappointed at so little generosity of spirit.
“There is a sort of peace, but there hasn’t been healing. The violence to a large extent has receded and has been taken over by democratic politics. But peace is always a product of good relationships and I don’t think we have got those yet. Quite the contrary.”
He lamented the failure of the main political players to develop any obvious friendship during the previous Assembly mandate and warned that the situation in Northern Ireland is still dangerous notwithstanding the undoubted progress.
Rev. Newell said: “There has been progress politically towards stabilisation, but it is certainly not yet where you would want it to be. The politicians debate with each other, but I am not sure there has been any development of friendship. I think we need to recapture the idea that political leaders become an image of what the country should become. “They should lead in promoting positive, warm relationships within the context of very serious political debate.”
This would, he says, enable politicians to “disagree without being disagreeable” and create conditions “where putting each other down is being replaced by challenging each other, intellectually, morally and economically on the big issues”.
Rev. Newell, holder of an OBE for services to community relations, warned: “I think we are in a dangerous position. There are still strong animosities and we are still circling the top of a still active volcano that is centuries old and I don’t think the politicians will be able to achieve any form of reconciliation.”
Dr Newell said this placed an enormous responsibility on the Churches.
“The clergy have to get together to show what kind of country Christ can create. And that would mean moving from the spiritual ice age where people are distant from each other to where there are good relationships. The Church has to move away from spiritual apartheid into spiritual integration.”
Rev. Newell said that during the Troubles perhaps 10-15% of ministers and priests got together to create the “type of inclusive lifestyle, a vocation to create a new kind of Northern Ireland” as he and Fr Reynolds and others had done but for various reasons that percentage had, he said remained the same today.
Speaking in the newly- developed welcome area of Fitzroy Presbyterian Church, where he was minister from 1976 until his retirement in 2008, Dr Newell said that congregations should build welcome centres where people of all communities, Protestants, Catholics, churchgoers and non-churchgoers and people from ethnic minorities are made welcome and barriers are broken down.
Rev. Newell, a passionate supporter of Crusaders FC in north Belfast from childhood, said that the leaders of sports organisations, soccer, Gaelic, rugby and hockey could give a lead by “presenting a bigger vision for sport that is more inclusive”.
Chaplain
He asked why GAA teams could not have a local Protestant minister as a chaplain as well as a Catholic priest and while he accepted that many Protestant ministers wouldn’t be interested others would be, “such as ministers in the North who had previously worked in the South”.
Rev. Newell describes a remarkable personal pilgrimage.
This includes his journey from being an Orange chaplain in 1965, marching past St Patrick’s Church in Donegall Street when the band “suddenly ratcheted up the volume of the music” to his appointment as a chaplain to Belfast’s first Catholic and nationalist lord mayor in 1997.
He resigned from the Orange Order shortly before his ordination in 1968 as he “was moving away from the Order’s view of the Catholic Church and I also felt strongly that being ordained as a minister of the Gospel required a transparent loyalty to Christ alone, as well as an unqualified commitment to love all people”.
He recalls taking leave of “a cramped evangelical mind-set” for “more generous and encompassing perspectives” which enabled him to affirm both the Catholic Church and Protestant Churches as “integral branches of Christ’s one church”.
As a very young minister he befriended Catholic priests first during a four-year stint in Timor, and later when he returned to Belfast.
He saw this outreach to Catholics as something of an antidote to the influence of the late Rev. Ian Paisley: “I felt his belligerent attitude was creating deeper and deeper division.”
He charts the remarkable story of the Clonard-Fitzroy Fellowship and his extremely deep friendship with Fr Reynolds who “taught me how, like Christ, to act from a calm centre in a busy life and to look for the best in others”.
It was Fr Reynolds and Fr Alec Reid CSsR, “two men I utterly trusted” who paved the way for Rev. Newell and a small number of other senior Protestant figures to engage in secret high risk dialogue with Gerry Adams and other republicans for around two and a half years between 1990 and 1993, at a time when he had already been engaging with loyalist paramilitaries.
“I have always had this belief that God opens doors for you. You were dealing with people involved with violence and murder but I couldn’t close my heart any more than God would close his heart to anyone.”
To some it may appear naïve and idealistic to expect politicians, particularly in a deeply divided society that has experienced so much conflict, to demonstrate friendship.
But not to Ken Newell, a person who exudes serenity and the peace of Christ and whose mission is to proclaim God’s love to all.
He attributes the fall-off in attendance at churches in the Western world to Church institutions which have let both Protestants and Catholics down but stresses the resultant disconnect doesn’t in any way reduce “the real hunger and yearning for God”.
He stresses this yearning for God is spelt out beautifully in chapter one of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and by John Calvin, who spoke of God having put “the seed of religion” into the heart of every person.
There are more pictures of Fr Gerry Reynolds in the memoir than anyone else, apart from Ken and Val, his wife, and more references to Gerry in the index than to anyone else, reflecting their deep friendship.
Fr Gerry died suddenly at the end of November 2015, just after Ken had completed writing the book.
Dr Newell speaks of his “awful shock” at Gerry’s death and treasures the memory of his last visit to him for dinner just a month before he died which he thoroughly enjoyed, their prayers together before he returned to Clonard, and their usual frequent contact by phone and e-mail afterwards.
“I carried Fr Gerry’s coffin into Clonard and I wanted to do that more than anything else. As dear friends we talked about such [final] things.”
Dr Newell said: “Gerry was a localised version of the Niagara Falls. To put it very simply, he was a man from whom the Niagara of grace, divine love, flowed into other people’s lives right through in a non-coercive way.”