Archbishop Michael Jackson warns churches, communities and policing must rediscover hope, trust and shared belonging.
Religious institutions have failed to connect their message of hope with the things that matter to people, the Archbishop of Dublin has told the British Irish Association.
Archbishop Michael Jackson said churches continued to speak about hope but often did so in language that people no longer understood.
Preaching at Pembroke College, Oxford, on Sunday, 6 September, he said religious institutions had not done enough to connect their concerns with issues including institutional exclusion, racial justice, equitable distribution—and even laughter and having fun.
“People like me in the religious sphere are in many ways the worst at this and yet we refuse to admit it,” Archbishop Jackson said.
“We talk about hope but we have lost the technique of commending hope to others because we are talking a language they do not understand.”
The Archbishop was addressing participants in the British Irish Association’s annual conference, which brings together politicians, government officials, academics, faith leaders, businesspeople, writers, community workers and former paramilitaries.
His sermon explored identity, the treatment of those perceived as outsiders, social cohesion and the relationship between communities and policing.
The ‘density of Irish difference’
Archbishop Jackson began with the familiar blackboard scene from Derry Girls, in which supposed differences between Catholics and Protestants rapidly fill the available space.
“Such it seems is the density of Irish difference,” he remarked.
He said a confident sense of identity was important, but warned that identity could become destructive when it depended upon diminishing or excluding others.
Difference could prompt fascination and a desire for understanding, he said, but it could also lead to the excessive “Othering” of people whose personalities, gifts and abilities might be much closer to our own than we acknowledge.
“Such Othering rapidly de-humanizes the other person and shatters the first-second person relationship which might otherwise flourish,” he warned.
The Archbishop acknowledged that churches themselves could contribute to that process. He questioned the customary Christian description of different religious traditions as “Other Faiths”, preferring to speak of “Faiths Other than Christianity—to whom we ourselves are Other”.
Sacrifice for social cohesion
Archbishop Jackson argued that individual identity could not be regarded as an end in itself. It had to develop into relationship, community and what he described as “social sacrifice”.
“Sooner or later, we are all going to be faced with the question: What will I sacrifice—not accumulate—in order to grasp and to hold the greater prize of social cohesion?” he said.
When people come together, he suggested, they cannot each retain an undiminished claim to the whole social and spiritual space. They must instead negotiate a new shared space.
This, he said, was essential as communities confronted “a crumbling world” whose international and local pressures were now brought together almost instantly through social media.
The vivid images encountered online could cause people to reach conclusions before reading the accompanying information or subjecting it to careful analysis, he warned.
Archbishop calls for renewed confidence in policing
The sermon also marked the 25th anniversary of the introduction of new policing arrangements in Northern Ireland.
Archbishop Jackson described the reforms, which involved contributions from former combatants, community activists and politicians, as “massive and commendable almost beyond expectation or belief”.
He called for a renewed relationship between policing and civic society throughout Ireland, based on engagement beginning at the smallest and most local level.
Drawing on Matthew 18, in which conflict is addressed first through private conversation before wider intervention is sought, he proposed a “contract of escalating external engagement”.
Such an approach, he suggested, could revitalise tired communities while ensuring that people and institutions remained accountable to one another.
For that relationship to succeed, he said, it required both a confident police service and communities willing to express confidence in policing when challenged to do so.
Archbishop Jackson compared the difficulties facing policing with those encountered by religion. Both, he said, were frequently defined first by repression, although this did not tell the whole story.
Policing and religion could instead model an identity formed through service to others, supported by an ethic of mutual loyalty.
“We need to take up the challenge,” he concluded, “but not the cudgel please.”
Gyronny Herald 