Ecumenism Can Be Key to Breaking Violent Cycles, Says Kearon
Episcopal News Service. January 27, 2005 [012705-1-A]
Sean McConnell, , Editor of Pacific Church News, the official newspaper of the Episcopal Diocese of California
A pyramid of violence, built on the fears of ordinary people and topped by the terrorists who express those fears, is what needs to be dismantled for peace and reconciliation in the world—and though people of faith are part of the problem, they can also form a major component of the solution, according to the Rev. Kenneth Kearon, newly appointed Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, speaking in San Francisco January 24.
Kearon, born in Dublin in 1953, was keynote speaker at this year's Wattson Lecture at the University of San Francisco, a private Roman Catholic university in the Jesuit tradition. The Wattson lectures, named for Paul (James Francis) Wattson, the Episcopal priest who founded the Franciscan Society of the Atonement, are conducted each year around issues of ecumenical and interreligious dialogue.
A medical and bio-ethicist, Canon Kearon was director of the Irish School of Ecumenics from 1999 to 2004. The School of Ecumenics, with campuses in Dublin and Belfast, combines peace and reconciliation studies with interfaith and interchurch studies. It was his role as director that prompted the invitation to keynote the Wattson Lecture.
His lecture, titled "Ecumenism: Reconciliation and Overcoming Violence," centered on the foundations for sectarian violence and conflict, and the support structures that legitimate extremist religious and political views, and the ultimate extreme response of terrorism. Graphically represented as a pyramid, Kearon explained, sectarian violence begins with ordinary citizens (the base of the pyramid), "People who might express mildly sectarian opinions or actions." These support the next level: "the leaders, who either through the pulpit or political platform, express stronger and clearer versions of those same negative attitudes."
At the pyramid's next level are the "paramilitaries," who offer armed protection for those who express a sectarian difference, and draw their support from the clarified rhetoric of the religious and political leaders below them. At the top of the pyramid are the terrorists, whom the Irish call "the mad dogs," who take the thinly voiced expressions of the ordinary citizens, clarified in the rhetoric of the religious leaders and politicians, legitimated by the force of the paramilitaries.
"Breaking that sort of cycle," says Kearon, "is easy in any normal society. "What gives the dynamic permanence is the division in a given society which enables the other, the source of your fear, to be embodied in your neighbor." The majority of citizens might not approve of a violent expression toward their own neighbors, but the fact that there are those on both sides of the sectarian divide who do visualize their own neighbors as other, provides enough incentive for the leaders to draw upon those fears in support of their own power.
If the 'neighbor as other' dynamic gives the system of sectarian division and violence its permanence, the role of religion provides its fortitude. There is a sense that "religion in general is inevitably wound up with division, because religions and Christian denominations make truth claims which are often incompatible with each other."
Kearon looks deeper into the religious under-girding of sectarian division by pointing out what appears to be a positive aspect of Christian churches, especially in the context of Northern Ireland. "All of the churches in Ireland have a very strong pastoral base, and as such are deeply bound-up in the lives of their people. Very close pastoral relationships such as that can preclude, or at least make very difficult, a prophetic stance that outsiders would demand of the Church."
Because of the ingrained belief systems and the 'neighbor as other' dynamic, Kearon feels that the churches of Ireland, working together, have had to fulfill their capacity as agents of reconciliation. But, "if churches are going to preach the Gospel of peace and reconciliation in a context such as Northern Ireland," Kearon stated, "they must first hold up their hands and acknowledge their own contributions to the situation." Not so much because it would be a good public relations move on the part of the churches, but because "this naming and admitting of personal involvement has been a liberating experience for countless individuals, and it can be so for institutions also."
Kearon did not claim that his analysis of Northern Ireland easily describes all terror situations in the post-September 11th world, but he said it does point to a deeper understanding of the role the church can play in building and strengthening sectarian division. Even more, it illuminates the steps that a church must take once it has been involved in giving power to such a system, to name its own complicity, reverse the process of divisions, and move toward reconciliation and peace. Ecumenism can begin the process of reconciliation at a macro level, and model for the citizens, leaders, and maybe even the paramilitaries and "mad dogs," a path to reconciliation and peace.