Relentless Love: Peter McVerry ‘Beyond Compassion to Solidarity’

Back in 1979 Jesuit Priest Fr Peter McVerry opened a hostel for homeless children in Dublin city centre. The Peter McVerry Trust now has 25 hostels where over a thousand homeless people stay each night. It also has 400 apartments where homeless people and families can have a home for life. It also runs four drug treatment centres, a drop-in-centre and a youth café.

Now that paragraph alone should be raising all sorts of questions in one of the richest countries in the EU. Why homeless children? Why a growing homelsss problem and now 25 hostels? Why 400 apartments? What is the story with the grip of drugs in the city?

A neat, comfortable, middle-class answer, shaped by market economics and a strong sense of personal responsibility, might be to say something like the following:

“Poverty, homelessness and drug-taking are the results of choices. In a country like Ireland there are state supports and free education, so it’s bad self-destructive choices that lead to the streets.”

Such self-righteous detachment (for that is what it is) has zero appreciation for the systemic inequalities in which we live. McVerry writes honestly of the huge social and economic advantages he grew up with:

As I look at my own life, I see that I have been given so much by God. I have been given a good family, good education, good opportunities in life; but there are so many people who have not had those opportunities or gifts. p. 179

As he tells some stories of the children and homeless people he has worked with, that last sentence sounds like an immense understatement. 11 year old boys forced into prostitution; 9 year olds sleeping rough; a 12 year old boy seeing his sister stabbed to death by a parent; another 12 year old having to help his mother inject heroin each day and becoming an addict himself; others victims of sexual, physical and emotional abuse; generational unemployment; a pervasive culture of hard drugs and associated crime and so on.

McVerry reflects that decades of work with some of the poorest and socially disadvantaged communities in Ireland has changed him in a number of ways.

1) He’s stopped judging people

What I am doing if I judge one of these young people? If I say: “There’s a little scumbag,” or ‘There’s a little junkie robber,” what I am doing? I’m actually judging myself, because I know that if I had been born into their circumstances, I would be exactly the same. pp 178-79.

2) Gratitude

The result of his work has been a deepened gratitude and appreciation for all that God has given him.

“My relationship with God totally changed – from being one of worrying whether I was on God’s side or not, to simply praying ‘Thanks for all I have received’. There is nothing else to say except ‘Thanks’.” p. 179

3) He sees God not as a judge, but as a God of forgiveness and compassion

So the God I came to believe in was no longer the judging God. God does not judge us – God forgives us again and again and again. And so, for me, God became the God who cares, the God of compassion. p. 179

4) Anger

Angry at injustice. Angry at Irish govt policy that allows and contributes directly to homelessnes in a rich EU nation. Angry at unnecessary suffering.

“I’m glad to be angry – I always say that when I lose my anger I’ll be no use to homeless people. They have made me angry because we as a society have failed them.” p. 179-80.

Beyond Compassion to Solidarity

McVerry has concluded that in combating poverty, compassion alone has its limitations. Compassion rests with the giver, who I choose to be the beneficiary of my giving. Who I deem worthy of my charity.

Solidarity, for McVerry, means putting ourselves in others’ shoes. It begins with compassion but goes beyond compassion to action to alleviate injustice and inequality. It envisages action for the common good based on solidarity within a common humanity made in the image of God.

Every one of those people living on the streets is God’s beloved child. p. 183.

Such solidarity has to lead to action if it is to mean anything. Without action the world will just see empty words, a church without compassion, a church of judgement and condemnation.

“It’s time to recover and show the solidarity and compassion of Jesus … So I tell young people: you will not find God in your churches, and you will not encounter God in your prayers and your hymns, unless you first find God and encounter him in the suffering, pain and distress of those around you.” p. 184.

SOME COMMENTS

1) CONTINUITY WITH EARLY CHRISTIANITY

I’m reading Christianity’s Surprise by C Kavin Rowe at the moment. In it he talks about the radical innovation that Christianity represented in the ancient world. One of the most radical was the value of each human. Before Christianity,

no-one had thought that every human – whether high, low or anything in between – was exactly the same as every other, and no-one had thought that all of them were to be treated as if they were the very Lord of the world. p. 4

McVerry stands in continuity with that great radical Christian tradition of compassion for the poor, the outcast and the vulnerable and the ‘worthless’ who have nothing to ‘contribute’ to society. A tradition that has its origins in Jesus himself.

2) ORTHOPRAXIS

In the chapter McVerry is primarily telling a story of his life and ministry, not writing a theological paper. But theology keeps breaking into the narrative. There is a repeated emphasis on orthopraxy – that orthodox belief in itself is not enough. For belief to be ‘real’ it must be demonstrated in action.

This is again very much in the tradition of Jesus. His critcisms of the Pharisees frequently revolved around a disconnect between adherence to the Torah and a lack of compassion and love for people in need.

3) CATHOLIC SOCIAL JUSTICE AND INTEGRAL MISSION

Just to remind you if you have not read the first post on this book, it originates from a Micah Global Conference on Integral Mission. Micah Global is an evangelical network, fitting within the orbit of the Lausanne Movement and its Cape Town Commitment that embraces Christians and Christian mission organisations from all over the world, particularly the Global South.

As a guest speaker to the conference, Fr McVerry does not frame things in quite the same way that Micah Global or the Lausanne Movement do.

Evangelicals would resist setting love and judgment against one another, arguing that they are two sides of the same coin. Indeed, God would not be loving if he were not also a judge of the evil and sin that causes human suffering.

I suspect also that there are quite significant differences in Micah’s theology of the church, integral mission and the kingdom of God and an approach shaped by Catholic Social Teaching (CST). [We’ll come back to this in the next post in this series looking at my chapter comparing Trocaire and Tearfund’s theology of social justice].

But for armchair critics to nitpick at what Peter McVerry does or does not say, is to bring to mind the response of the nineteenth century preacher D L Moody to criticisms of his blunt evangelistic style.

“It is clear you don’t like my way of doing evangelism. You raise some good points. Frankly, I sometimes do not like my way of doing evangelism. But I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it.”

D L Moody

Yes there are differences, but in a focus on the poor and on orthopraxis, there are significant areas of common concern between Catholics like McVerry and evangelicals committed to integral mission. This points towards what Francis Schaeffer once called ‘co-belligerence’ between Catholics and evangelicals – a working together on issues of justice.

4) PERSONAL CHALLENGE

More personally, Peter McVerry’s ‘righteous anger’ at injustice – and his costly response in serving the poor – should challenge every Christian to ask two questions.

What injustice am I angry at?

What am I going to do about it?

Ireland and the Reception of the Bible

Just received a copy of this book, edited by Brad Anderson and Jonathan Kearney of Dublin City University.

The full details and list of 21 chapters can be seen here . I’ve pasted them in below as well.

Congratulations to Brad and Jonathan on bringing this big project to publication. I look forward to browsing the diverse range of chapters.

Chapter 11 is one I did on the use of the Bible by two Christian relief organisations – Trocaire and Tearfund Ireland: one Roman Catholic, the other Evangelical.

It took the form of a comparison and contrast of how each organisation uses the Bible in articulating their mission and practice.  I found it a fascinating topic – hopefully some readers will too! A lot of overlap and significant areas of difference. Perhaps a blog post on this to follow ..

WIth a price tag of €95 I guess it is a book primarily aimed at libraries and specialist collections.

Introduction: Situating Ireland and Socio-Cultural Reception of the Bible –– (Bradford A. Anderson, Dublin City University, Ireland and Jonathan Kearney, Dublin City University, Ireland)

Part One: Ireland and the Transmission of the Bible
1. The Multifaceted Transmission of the Bible in Ireland, A.D. 550-1200 CE — (Martin McNamara, Milltown Institute, Ireland)
2. The Bible and ‘the People’ in Ireland, c.1100-c.1650 — (Salvador Ryan, St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Ireland)
3. Translating the Bible into Irish, 1565-1850 — (Fearghus Ó Fearghail, Mater Dei Institute of Education, Ireland)
4. ‘The Little Ones Called for Bread and there was None that Would Break it for Them’: Some Notes on the Use of the Bible in the Sermons of Bishop James Gallagher — (Ciaran Mac Murchaidh, Dublin City University, Ireland)
5. Irish Catholic Bible Readers before the Famine — (Brendan McConvery, St Patrick’s College Maynooth, Ireland)
6. The Catholic Lectionary: Its Creation, Reception and Challenge — (Kieran O’Mahony, Diocese of Dublin, Ireland)

Part Two: The Bible and Identity in Ireland
7. ‘This Booke hath bred all the quarrel’: The Bible in the 1641 Depositions — (Bradford A. Anderson, Dublin City University, Ireland)
8. The Last of the Milesians: In Search of Ireland’s Biblical Past, 1760-1900 — (Brian Murray, King’s College London, UK)
9. Between Ulster and the Kingdom of God: Uses of the Bible by Evangelicals in the Northern Ireland Troubles — (Joshua Searle, Spurgeon’s College, UK)
10. Dancing Like David and Overcoming Enemies: Scripture and Culture in Christ Apostolic Church Dublin — (Rebecca Uberoi, independent scholar)
11. God’s Preference for the Poor: The Bible and Social Justice in Ireland — (Patrick Mitchel, Irish Bible Institute, Ireland)
12. How Sacred Text Becomes Religious Artefact: A Cultural Geography of the Book of Kells — (Eoin O’Mahony, University College Dublin, Ireland)

Part Three: Ireland and Beyond: Reciprocal Influences
13. Toland, Spinoza, and the Naturalization of Scripture — (Ian Leask, Dublin City University, Ireland)
14. Irish Travellers to the Dead Sea: The Interplay and Impact of Empirical Investigation and Biblical Exegesis — (Thomas O’Loughlin, University of Nottingham, UK)
15. The Chester Beatty Biblical Collection: A Treasury of Early Christian Manuscripts in an Irish Library — (David Hutchinson Edgar, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
16. ‘Casting Bread Upon the Water’: A Voyage of Discovery — (Carmel McCarthy, University College Dublin, Ireland)

Part Four: Cultural and Artistic Appropriation: Imagery, Music, and Literature
17. The Book of Kells and the Visual Identity of Ireland — (Amanda Dillon, independent scholar)
18. Imaging the Bible in Stained Glass: Five Stained Glass Windows by Michael Healy in St. Brendan’s Cathedral, Loughrea — (Myra Hayes, Mary Immaculate College Limerick, Ireland)
19. The Bible in Music during Dublin’s Golden Age — (Siobhán Dowling Long, University College Cork, Ireland)
20. Scripture, Music, and the Shaping of Irish Cultural Identities — (Róisín Blunnie, Dublin City University, Ireland)
21. James Joyce and the Study of the Bible — (Geert Lernout, University of Antwerp, Belgium)

Barna: Finding Faith in Ireland (1) – or ‘An investigation into the legacy of Irish Christendom’

For a blog called FaithinIreland, Finding Faith in Ireland: The Shifting Spiritual Landscape of Teens and Young Adults in the Republic of Ireland is a publication that invites some comment.

It is a Barna Report produced in partnership with Youth in Christ. Both are American organisations and the researchers, coming mostly from outside Ireland and working with people here, have done a very good job getting to grips with the complexities of the Irish religious landscape. It is a thoughtful, careful and objective summary and analysis.

A summary of the main findings is highlighted on the Barna website here. (I won’t repeat that much here but will just comment on some things that stood out to me).

It is well worth reading and for people in ministry to reflect on their implications.

The methodology is important to know – this is what was done (from the Barna website)

To understand the state of faith among Irish youth, Barna conducted a study that approached the question from several angles. In the first phase, Barna and Christ in Youth gathered youth workers from a variety of denominations for focus groups. In the second phase, four Irish interviewers spoke to young people and their youth leaders. Youth leaders who weren’t interviewed in person also had the opportunity to respond to the same survey online. The online youth study was distributed to young people in the Republic of Ireland, ages 14–25. A total of 790 youth participated in this research study. Based on this sample size, the sampling error for this study is 3.5 percentage points at the 95-percent confidence level.

Some of the key groupings for data purposes included:

• Practising Christians (with those identified as Christians, sometimes broken down between Catholic and non-Catholic Christians).
• Non-Practising Christians
• Non-Christians
• With many of the findings divided between 14-18 yrs old and 19-25 yrs old groups.

A critical issue in interpreting the data (for me anyway) is what these terms actually mean. In the report a ‘practising Christian’ is defined by Barna as

those who identify as Christian, say their faith is very important to their life and have attended a religious service in the past month (p. 8)

Which, of  course, is a very broad category, especially in a culture where ‘going to church’ now and then is still part and parcel of Irish culture. But you have to start from somewhere.

I may have missed it, but I couldn’t find definitions of what a ‘non-practicing Christian’ was. I assume someone who self-identifies as a Christian but does not tick necessary boxes to show visible sign of actual Christian practice? (To me, in effect this equals non-Christian. Christianity is not a non-practising faith).

Non-believers are identified, I assume, via self-identification.

Having two daughters in the age bracket born and raised here and educated in a local secondary school (not a private Protestant one which a sub-culture of its own), it’s interesting talking over findings with them. Their sense is that the broadness of the categories masks a much lower engagement with even basic Christian claims, let alone a personal response of faith, repentance and living a Christian life.

This report could be called: ‘An Investigation into the Legacy of Irish Christendom’.

Some years ago I did a couple of posts on comments from Archbishop Diarmuid Martin on the devastating failures of Catholic Christendom – here and here.

It’s worth repeating some of what he said then on the disaster of Christendom assumptions.

If faith centres on a personal relationship with Jesus, this will have radical implications for the rule-bound approach of traditional Catholic  catechesis.

If a mature faith in Jesus requires knowledge of the Scriptures, this will have revolutionary consequences within Irish Catholicism where most families do not possess a Bible.

If young people are going to develop in a personal authentic faith there will mean “revolutionising all our structures” including a fundamental reordering of the reliance on school-based religious instruction in Ireland to a rediscovery of the role of the local parish and of parents.

This will need “a new group of lay people” to be voluntary catechists in their parishes.

All this is needed because “we can no longer assume faith on the part of young people who have attended Catholic schools” or who come from Catholic families.

Ireland is today undergoing a further phase in a veritable revolution of its religious culture. Many outside of Ireland still believe that Ireland is a bastion of traditional Catholicism. They are surprised to discover that there are parishes in Dublin where the presence at Sunday Mass is some 5% of the Catholic population and, in some cases, even below 2%. On any particular Sunday about 18% of the Catholic population in the Archdiocese of Dublin attends Mass.  That is considerably lower than in any other part of Ireland ….

… That the conformist Ireland of the Archbishop McQuaid era changed so rapidly and with few tears was read as an indication of a desire for change, but perhaps it was also an indication that the conformism was covering an emptiness and a faith built on a faulty structure to which people no longer really ascribed.   The good-old-days of traditional mid-twentieth century Irish Catholicism may in reality not have so good and healthy after all …

… The change that has taken place in Irish culture requires radical change in the life of the Church of such an extent that in the face of it even experts in change management would feel daunted …

So the report is effectively putting flesh on the bones of the Archbishop’s words. It does not paint a pretty picture.

Nor are the findings surprising to anyone living here. After decades of being one of the most Christendom countries on earth, the findings show deep confusion over the even the most basic ideas of Christianity, let alone the shape and basis of the Christian life.

The 19-25 age group will be more significant and realistic because the 14-18 yr olds’ attendance at church events will be influenced by parental practice and how religion is still embedded in the school system.

I’ll focus on actual practices because they are somewhat more telling than abstract questions about belief in this or that doctrine which may or may not be understood.

• 80% of 19-25 yr olds are non Christian / non-practicing. (And that remaining 20% merely represents those whose faith is important to them and have been to church in the last month)
• Yet 70% of the sample of 14-25 yr olds identify as Christian.
• Traditional Catholic practice is in deep trouble – only 13% and 14% of 14-25 yrs olds have prayed the rosary or go to Confession in the last 6 months. This will be lower again for 19-25 yr olds. This represents virtual abandonment of Catholic piety.
• 11% of 14-25 yr olds have read the Bible on their own in the last 6 months (again this will be lower for 19-25 yr olds). (The Bible is pretty well a closed book to the vast majority of young Irish people. Virtually nothing can be assumed about the basic outline of the gospel story or the storyline of Scripture).
• 8% of 14-25 yr olds have attended a Bible study in the last 6 months (again will be lower for 19-25 yr olds).
• Even for Communion – only 42% of 14-25 yr olds have participated in the last 6 months. For many this will be have been in school or at events like Easter of Christmas. For 19-25% it will be much lower I guess. Since the vast majority of these figures are for Catholic youth, even Mass attendance, the core of Catholicism’s sacramental theology, is in crisis.

Overall there is a strong sense of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, a term coined by Christian Smith and Melina Denton in the USA which goes something like this:

1) God created the world and watches over humans. 2) God wants people to be good, nice, and fair. 3) The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about oneself. 4) God doesn’t need to be involved in one’s life except when there’s a problem 5) Good people go to heaven when they die.

The Barna Report calls this a “morality of self-fulfillment” (p. 33). This is not surprising – after all we are all Americans now are we not? 😉

In terms of moral values, the report asked a couple of questions:

“I personally can’t live by the Church’s teaching on sexuality”

Which is a question that raises more questions than answers: What Church? What aspect of its teaching on sexuality? (e.g. if Church = RCC [as it would for most] then I would be in the 31%). That only 31% of those identifying as Christians could endorse Church teaching fully does say a lot – but it would need teased out more specifically.

“I think the Church’s teachings on sexuality and homosexuality are wrong”

A slightly less broad question. Throwing in ‘sexuality’ in again muddys the waters a bit. I suspect most answered on the issue of homosexuality.

• ‘Christians’: only 20% said this was ‘not at all true’. 37% ‘completely true’
• ‘Non-Christians’: 16% ‘not at all true’. 65% ‘completely true’.

This is as expected: – it is in the areas of sexual ethics, individual choice, liberation from oppressive religion, and that ‘nothing should stand in the way of love’ that contemporary Western culture is coming into sharpest conflict with historic Christian sexual morality. [For more on the beliefs behind these developments see this post]

There’s lots more in the report. And, just to be clear, I’m not at all ‘throwing hands up in despair at the youth of today’. I have a vested interest in at least two 🙂 – and admire them and their friends as they navigate life with love and courage in a very different Ireland.

Christendom in many ways was far more corrosive in its enforced hypocrisy and fusion of politics, identity and religion in an all-embracing package deal.

Again and again in this report, the sense comes over of how ‘Christianity’ is little more than external behaviour, arbitrary morality and irrelevant beliefs. I wouldn’t believe in that sort of religion either.

There is a lot more clarity and honesty being expressed as the fog of Christendom lifts. Post-Christendom is in many ways good news for Christians and Christian mission. Increasingly there is no comforting social and political bulwark for churches to rely on, let alone control.

And that is not a bad place for the church to be – a place of weakness and humility and having to think anew about its mission within a culture that has less and less connection with its Christendom past.

In the final section there are some suggestions around the need for spiritual guides and mentors.

I’ll come back with some thoughts on responses to the findings in the next post …

Comments, as ever, welcome.

 

Transforming post-Catholic Ireland

Over at her blog Gladys Ganiel has a summary of a book launch event ‘author meets critics’ (of which Gladys had invited me to be one) in TCD about her recent book, Transforming post-Catholic Ireland: religious practice in late modernity (OUP).

My sense from reading Gladys is that she is arguing that present religious practice in post-Catholic Ireland is an improvement on the past. Three big arguments of the book are that:

• Increased diversity in the religious market gives increased space for personal transformation; space is created on the margins where people can work for religious, social and political transformation.
• The prevalence of extra institutional religion counters hard secularisation theories: it exists as an intermediate space between pure individualism detached from church all together and institutional religious expression. Extra-institutional religion is not totally free-floating, it happens in relationship and community, often with a concern for social justice.
• Gladys argues extra institutional religion has potential to contribute to reconciliation more than other traditional institutional Christian churches.

Stories of individuals told in the book ring true to the diverse, blurred and sometimes contradictory religious landscape of contemporary Ireland. They brought to mind some very recent conversations with friends

• someone who while still involved locally in a church that he gives thanks for, describes himself as an ‘exile’ within the institutional church. It is an alien place; he is a ‘stranger’ in the midst.
• two recent separate conversations with friends who both struggle with the irrelevance gap between church and their high pressure, competitive and intense worlds of work. Spirituality, for both, is found ‘extra-institutionally’
• a friend brought up in a conservative Protestant denomination, with little or no natural contact with Catholicism, Irish culture or identity – now finding a richness and depth within Catholic spirituality and enjoying a silent retreat in a Jesuit centre near Dublin
• friends who have journeyed away from the Catholic Church, drawn to a more personal, warm, inclusive and less sacramental expression of Christianity within an evangelical community church

How would you describe your relationship with institutional Christianity I wonder? Or, to put it another way, where most do you find authenticity, spiritual refreshment, spiritual growth and learning? Where most do you find space for building relationships across boundaries and opportunities to work for justice?

However you read Gladys’ book, the trends and stories within it pose questions to historic denominations in particular – and whose membership is in relatively rapid decline.

One response may be to decry ‘extra-institutional’ spirituality as a sign of an individualism shaped by consumerism – religious shopping for the I-generation. A spirituality that all too comfortably side-steps the demands of Christian discipleship – accountability, community, costly mission, a willingness to be rejected and marginalised?

But such a response locates the ‘problem’ externally – with those pesky individualists who don’t go along with the status quo. It ignores their passion for serving others, for social justice and a pursuit of community.

The better response to a book like this (for churches) is to look within; to listen; to reflect on practice that, in Christendom, meant that churches became what Gladys calls religious ‘public utilities’ dispensing services to all while relegating personal faith and authentic living of the Christian life to the background.

I think there are fruits of such self-examination, listening and reflection on practice within some churches in Ireland. Perhaps you know and have experience of some. Places where there is space for diversity; personal transformation; community; a passion for social justice.

And it’s here that I find sociological categories too general and abstract. For behind such descriptions of behaviour lie beliefs that motivate and shape that behaviour. That’s why contemporary debates about the nature of the gospel and how it plays out within the Christian life are so important ….

Sociological analysis can helpfully describe and interpret trends, but as a Christian I want to argue that spiritual renewal and authenticity comes from a nexus of things like grace, the good news of the risen Lord Jesus Christ, the empowering and transforming work of the Spirit, repentance, faith, humility, love, self-sacrifice,  care for the powerless and oppressed and so on.

In other words, is the search for authentic spirituality within extra-institutional spaces really a quest and longing for ‘the church to be the church’?

The Bible in Irish memory

One of the (many) peculiarities of Irish history, is the uneasy and ambiguous place of the Bible within Irish culture and memory.

I’m trying to do a bit of reading and writing around this theme at the moment.

A rough sketch of some ideas on Irish ambivalence towards the Bible goes something like this:

1.The strong historical association of the Bible with Protestant proselytism.

One example is the Pre-Famine ‘Bible War’ of the 1820s between the revitalised missionary zeal of the Established Anglican Church and a newly resurgent and defensive emerging Catholic Church. In this struggle of faith, politics and identity, the Scriptures were perceived as a tool in a religious zero-sum competition for converts. Few places were more contentious than schooling.

Donnelly writes that Protestant missionaries became more active after 1815

in circulating the Scriptures, in distributing anti-Catholic literature, and in establishing schools aimed at the children of the Catholic poor. The Religious Book and Tract Society for Ireland claimed in 1823 to have issued over 1,160,000 tracts and 86,000 books since 1819 alone.

Formal schooling, however, was a far more serious and contentious affair. The controversies that raged after 1819 at the national level about schools under Protestant auspices, their management and funding, and the use of the Scriptures within them were in part a reflection and in part a cause of strife at the local level. [1]

In Munster and Connacht there was particular Catholic clerical opposition to the Baptist Society schools and the London Hibernian Society “whose inspectors required that children in its schools recite the Scriptures from memory.”

And such polarisation around the Bible and social action reached a climax with charges of ‘Souperism’ (converting in order to survive via the Protestant soup kitchen) during the Famine itself – with the legitimacy of that charge continuing to be debated to this day.

And Catholic resistance to the Bible as a dangerous tool of Protestant evangelism can be traced right up to the middle of the 20th Century – with documented occasions of evangelical missionaries distributing Bibles and Bible literature being run out of towns.

2. The sacramental structure of Catholicism itself

Whereby the Bible, while revered and affirmed as the Word of God, is sidelined in the actual daily practice of living the Christian life. The altar at the heart of a Catholic Church as opposed to the pulpit in a Protestant one speaks of what is central to spirituality. The Bible has not had a central role in Catholic spirituality – for many ordinary Catholics it has been a closed book.  I think this is a fair observation that increasingly many Catholics also affirm – and want to change.

[And such has been the decline of the place of the Bible in Protestant spirituality (including evangelicals) that I wonder what % of ‘Protestants’ actually ever regularly open a Bible – but that is a topic for another post!]

3. A post-Christendom scepticism towards the Bible

Where, in a culture rapidly divesting itself of the vestiges of a claustrophobic Catholic Christendom, the Bible is seen in postmodern terms as a tool of control, power and injustice; a weapon, for example, of inequality against those of LGBT orientation. The Scriptures, rather than being seen as radically liberating for all, are viewed with a hermeneutic of suspicion as a source of institutional legitimation and self-preservation of a fading era of Church domination. The church and its Scriptures are seen as marginal and irrelevant to the pressing questions of modern life.

Now that may all sound rather negative. But if even partially right, this gives a flavour of the missional challenges in contemporary Ireland.

Some words come to mind:

Unconditional Love. Earning Trust. Transparency. Honesty. No strings evangelism. God’s grace. Integrity. Gospel centered. Jesus focused. Embrace of Irish culture and identity. Selfless service of others. Care for the poor. Listening. Humble confidence in God’s Spirit to speak through God’s Word.

These are some attitudes and actions that need to characterise mission in contemporary Ireland.

Comments, as ever, welcome.

[1] James S. Donnelly Jr, ‘Pastorini and Captain Rock: Millenarianism and Sectarianism in the Rockite Movement of 1821-4’ in Samuel Clark and James S. Donnelly Jr, eds., Irish Peasants: Violence and Political Unrest, 1780-1914 (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003) 102-142.