Continuing on the theme of wildlife in Maynooth
Accipiter Nisus (Sparrowhawk) was back again this morning; this time successful in the hunt and using our back garden as its banquet site.
For the squeamish and those of an arachnophobic disposition (Cathy), normal theological discussion will resume from here on 😉
We don’t have many scary animals of any sort in Ireland.
This fella wandered across our kitchen floor yesterday and took time out to pose for a photo
Back in April I posted about the huge challenge facing Irish Bible Institute, to raise €1 million in 6 months.
So now, 6 months later, about €945,000 has been given and pledged.
And last week a deal was finalised and signed on the building, with deposit paid.
Now I tend to be pretty understated 😉 but that’s AMAZING
People have been praying all over the country and beyond. Some have organised their own fundraising events. The band Trinity even came over from the Netherlands to do three concerts gratis. A brilliant night was had at Vicar St with an amazing line up organised by an IBI Board member. A couple of Christian Trusts came on board and made a significant difference.
But at least 2/3 of the income came from hundreds of individuals as well as churches who have given generously and sacrificially.
And that sacrificial generosity included a few euros from some children who gave their saved up pocket money from a piggy bank. It included a significant gift from someone’s savings given away quietly and without fuss now rather than as a bequethal when they are gone. It included a church giving a generous % of an unexpected gift that came their way. It included another church giving a chunk of its missions budget. It included many people without much who gave beyond what they could afford.
So many stories.
But behind those stories is a story that is not told enough. A story of grace.
On this blog, there’s lots of talk and analysis of issues. And in all that talk, what can be overlooked is the heartbeat of Christian faith. And that heartbeat consists of ordinary people seeking to put their faith into practice daily in a host of ways through sacrificial service of others. And there are few more counter-cultural ways of doing that within an acquisitve consumerist culture than giving money away generously.
And that generosity speaks of the grace of God. For it is people who have had their hearts touched by God’s unmerited faviour who then show that grace in their lives.
So thank you to everyone who has prayed and contributed. And praise God for his grace!
This is no. 10 of a 10 point critique of complementarianism in dialogue with Claire Smith and Howard Marshall’s interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:8-15.
And in outlining these objections, I’m trying to imagine a robust debate with people I know and respect who don’t agree with me, not a war with enemies.
For Christians from both sides can agree on a lot: men and women are different(!); they are equal, both created in the image of God; both sexes are gifted by the Spirit for ministry; and no-one, whether male or female, has any ‘right’ to leadership. Leadership is a gift and calling of God to a life of loving and serving others under the shadow of the cross.
That said, this is not a trivial issue. It fundamentally touches upon understandings of leadership, ministry, Bible interpretation, the dignity and value of women, and whether half of the global church is permanently barred from serving the Lord using their gifts of leading, preaching and pastoring simply because of their gender.
Evangelical Christians differ on all sorts of things – church leadership structures, baptism, spiritual gifts, God’s sovereignty and human free will and so on. Most, if not all, of these revolve around issues of interpretation of Scripture, where, in good conscience and out of a sincere wrestling with the text, Christians come to different conclusions.
Women in ministry and leadership is such an issue.
Most evangelicals have lived with difference over baptism (for example) and cooperated in mission and witness without questioning each other’s commitment to Scripture and the gospel. This sort of big-tent inclusiveness goes right to the heart of what it means to be an evangelical beyond your own commitment to adiaphora – matters of theological ‘indifference’ to wider evangelical unity. This is despite baptism being an issue of deep theological sacramental and covenant significance that shapes church polity.
Why then I wonder is the issue of women in leadership continuing to be so divisive?
Carl Trueman recently asked this same question. I wonder if the answer lies in a challenge to power. Egalitarianism threatens both established leadership structures that give priority to men and a particular reading of the Bible that is used to endorse those structures. Regrettably, power is not given up easily, even when all Christian leadership is a call to ‘servant leadership’.
And I’m sure I’m biased, but it seems to me that this why some of the most divisive rhetoric is coming primarily from a complementarian-hierarchical perspective – Claire Smith’s book being an example.
She talks disparagingly of those who disagree with her as people who ‘call themselves evangelicals’. She wrongly claims those who disagree with her say texts like 1 Timothy 2:11-15 do ‘not apply today’. (See in contrast Howard Marshall’s list of ten ways 1 Timothy 2 applies today). Elsewhere she talks about ‘formerly trusted teachers’ who have presumably fallen away from the truth. Her description of objections to her view as ‘It is God’s word but …’ also attempts, in a rather backhanded way, to connect egalitarian views with a rejection of God’s word.
Such attitudes are unworthy of civil Christian debate and should be repented of. But they are far from solitary examples.
Wayne Grudem is one of the strongest voices here in his insistence that egalitarianism is the ‘thin edge of the wedge’ towards liberalism, acceptance of homosexuality and the undermining of the authority of Scripture (Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth, 505). To disagree with the ‘complementarian’ interpretation is to disobey God.
[Of course, many many complementarians do not engage in such divisive rhetoric and happily can live with difference within a big-tent evangelicalism. And I’m sure that there are examples on the egalitarian side which are less than gracious, accusing the other side of misogyny or some such loaded pejorative label.]
I guess that this sort of aggressive-defensive reaction comes from a sense of losing ground. As the issues at stake have clarified, particularly over the last 3-4 decades, there is now a theologically coherent alternative, widely supported by a swathe of very significant evangelical scholars (Sarah Sumner, Rebecca Groothuis, Linda Belleville, Gordon Fee, Howard Marshall, John Stott [in favour of women’s ordination], F F Bruce, Scot McKnight, N T Wright, John Stackhouse, R T France, Craig Keener, Catherine Clark Kroeger, Steve Holmes etc) that is being increasingly successful in challenging questionable exegesis and hermeneutical assumptions within the older status quo.
I remember sitting in an ethics class back in the late 1980s where the lecturer was defending divinely ordained hierarchy between men and women in church and marriage. As a young guy, I hadn’t really thought about the issue much. What he said seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Looking back I can see why. As a man, it was a very comfortable thing to be told! I couldn’t quite ‘get’ why some women (and men) in the class were disagreeing strongly with what was being taught. It was only sustained study of the Bible over the years that shifted me from that place of comfort.
First, some realism: Can there be a recognition that neither side are going to ‘obliterate’ the other’s arguments, however passionately they believe the other is wrong? The tone of some of the debate is characterised by this sort of vain hope. The reality is that either side ‘ain’t going away you know’.
Second, evangelicals have lived with other such areas of disagreement for centuries. As with baptism, can there be a willingness to work together in mission and witness and a refusal to let this issue become something that threatens unity around the gospel?
Third, it is possible to imagine constructive and healthy debate on this issue for they are already happening (see here) where both ‘sides’ explore what they disagree about and affirm what they believe in common within a respectful dialogue. So can we please move on beyond the sort of divisiveness that thinks ‘If we can completely demolish their credibility we’ll win the argument once and for all’? Can we all repent of unchristian attitudes, forgive one another and commit speak well of one another in future as a sign of love?
Comments, as ever, welcome.
This is no. 9 of a 10 point critique of complementarianism in dialogue with Claire Smith and Howard Marshall’s interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:8-15.
And in outlining these objections, I’m trying to imagine a robust debate with people I know and respect who don’t agree with me, not a war with enemies.
For Christians from both sides can agree on a lot: men and women are different(!); they are equal, both created in the image of God; both sexes are gifted by the Spirit for ministry; and no-one, whether male or female, has any ‘right’ to leadership. Leadership is a gift and calling of God to a life of loving and serving others under the shadow of the cross.
That said, this is not a trivial issue. It fundamentally touches upon understandings of leadership, ministry, Bible interpretation, the dignity and value of women, and whether half of the global church is permanently barred from serving the Lord using their gifts of leading, preaching and pastoring simply because of their gender.
What is to be made of the C-H argument that men and women are equal but have different ‘roles’?
As I mentioned in an earlier post, we need to be clear that gender roles within C-H are not complementary, even if men and women are equals. Women are permanently and innately subordinate to men in the church where it is men who lead and preach. At home, wives are under the authority of their husbands. Regardless of who she is, her gifting, experience and ability, she is to follow, he is to lead. In other words, there is nothing a women can do that a man cannot also do within the church, but there are specific roles only a man has the opportunity to do because he belongs to the right gender.
Sarah Sumner in her excellent book Men and Women in the Church, makes some telling and important points on this ‘equal but different roles’ philosophy. Underneath this debate is an argument about what constitutes ‘proper order’. And behind this are different philosophies of order. She unpacks two different models of order at play in this debate.
God’s commands simply need to correlate to God’s will for God orders the world as he wills. We don’t have to understand it, we have to obey it.
There will be a correlation between God’s commands and reason. God does things for good reasons that are understandable. There will be a link between divine law and natural law, between God’s will and creation.
People like Wayne Grudem and Claire Smith insist that women are fully equal with men in terms of status, image, and significance – it is just that God has ordained that men take the lead in family and church life. Equality does not mean equality of opportunity, it means ‘difference of role’. The fact that many women are gifted to lead and preach etc is also irrelevant in this thinking – giftedness is not the last word above God’s revealed will.
Egalitarians who point out the lack of rationale, the inconsistencies and weaknesses in the C-H argument (like I’ve been attempting to do in these posts), tend to be ignored by complementarians because they are perceived to be diluting Scripture and using human reason or ‘feminist thought’ to question God’s ‘good design’.
Complementarian-hierarchialists also argue that their position is traditional in the church and egalitarians are trying to introduce novel ideas (feminist influence again).
Yet to talk of ‘full equality’ combined with a hierarchy of function (or different ‘roles’) within home and the church is itself, as Kevin Giles has argued, a fairly new idea in the history of the church. Until fairly recently, the most common reasons given for women’s secondary roles was that they were more prone to be deceived and/or they were created after the man are so are secondary in rank. Within much of church history women did not have equal roles because they were seen as inferior to men. This at least was consistent!
Here’s Sarah Sumner’s main point: complementarians have changed the premise of church tradition (from ‘women are inferior’ to ‘women are equal’) but have maintained the conclusion (‘women are subordinate’). This is confusing and illogical – hence the mixed messages and the bewildering mixture of subjective complementarian practice.
In philosophical terms, C-H is a therefore a confusing mixture of Scotist and Thomist thinking.
Take the example of people like Claire Smith, Wayne Grudem, John Piper and Thomas Schreiner.
– As Scotists, they say women as equals should assume subordinate roles simply because it is God’s will. It’s a ‘creation ordinance’ and we are not to argue with God’s ‘good design’ or look for reasons why.
– As Thomists, they try to find logical reasons for this permanent universal subordination.. Some say women are equal ‘before God’ but should assume subordinate roles based on a (bad) quasi-analogy with the Trinity (where the Son is equal but subordinate to the Father).
– As a Thomist, you have John Piper proposing that mature ‘femininity’ itself is a predisposition to be subject to the leadership of the man. Mature ‘masculinity’ is a predisposition to lead well. In his words ‘a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide for, and protect women.’ In other words, the identity of men and women does NOT have a shared essential quality. And this is a ‘reason’ for female subordination.
– As a Thomists some (increasingly scarce) C-H arguments still try to find reasons for female subordination in the idea that women are more easily deceived or are innately not suited to lead or preach etc. Whatever the precise proposal, it is a search for logical ‘reasons’ for female subordination.
Notice what is going on here. The mixture of Scotist and Thomist ideas are self-contradictory.
On the one hand, the Thomist arguments are finding reasons why women should be subordinate to men. Inevitably this leads towards hierarchy and superiority, however much this is denied.
On the other hand, the Scotist argument asserts that men and women are equal.
Whatever you may think of egalitarian arguments, they are at least philosophically consistent. Equal status is linked to equal roles (for those gifted and called, either men or women).
So, despite complementarian-hierarchialists’ affirmation of women’s ‘full equality before God’, it is logically impossible to affirm that a woman is at once spiritually and ontologically equal to a man and at the same time permanently, comprehensively, and necessarily subordinate within a faith that is innately ‘masculine’. The talk of full equality with ‘difference in function’ is an attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable.
Final word here to Sarah Sumner and it’s worth reading carefully I think,
No wonder conservative Christians are confused. We are given so many mixed messages. In one long breath, we are told that women are not inferior but that “the permanent facts of creation” reveal that women should assume subordinate roles; yet women are equal to men just as surely as the Son is equal to the Father, even though we don’s share the same status with men as the Son does with the Father; and men are not superior to women because both are created in the image of God, although men are uniquely designed (though not necessarily gifted) to be women’s leaders; and women are uniquely designed to nurture and affirm men’s leadership over them even if they themselves are more spiritually gifted than the men who oversee them. All this, we are told, to be honored – unless certain male leaders commission women to be exceptions.
…
By simultaneously adopting two theories of natural order that are mutually exclusive, some of us have promoted a lack of logic. It can’t be true that the only reason women are to assume inferior roles at church is because God said so, if indeed the permanent facts of nature also explain the reason why. I believe it’s unintentional, but many of us Christians in the evangelical community have unknowingly adopted a Scotist-Thomist view and called it biblical. With that, we have trumpeted a mixed-up view that says women, as equals, are allowed to speak and lead, but only unofficially as subordinates. (293-295)
Comments, as ever, welcome
This is no.8 of a 10 point critique of complementarianism in dialogue with Claire Smith and Howard Marshall’s interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:8-15.
And in outlining these objections, I’m trying to imagine a robust debate with people I know and respect who don’t agree with me, not a war with enemies.
For Christians from both sides can agree on a lot: men and women are different(!); they are equal, both created in the image of God; both sexes are gifted by the Spirit for ministry; and no-one, whether male or female, has any ‘right’ to leadership. Leadership is a gift and calling of God to a life of loving and serving others under the shadow of the cross.
That said, this is not a trivial issue. It fundamentally touches upon understandings of leadership, ministry, Bible interpretation, the dignity and value of women, and whether half of the global church is permanently barred from serving the Lord using their gifts of leading, preaching and pastoring simply because of their gender.
Picking up the conversation from the last post on ‘law’, once you get into the business of implementing law, you end up with artificial and unpersuasive distinctions of what constitutes teaching and how the ban is put into practice. C-H thinking leads to all sorts of inconsistencies as a supposed biblical ‘blueprint’ is applied in practice within church life (and marriage).
The biggest inconsistency is the attempt somehow to limit the universal subordination of women to men based on a ‘creation ordinance’ to a particular type of authoritative teaching in the local church and in marriage. Claire Smith’s reasons for doing so are based on an odd argument. Since only some men teach, it is only to some men, when they are teaching in church, to whom women are subordinate.
But if subordination of women is grounded in creation, then it applies in all contexts.
Other inconsistencies of application are numerous. Some complementarian-hierarchialists end up with detailed lists of what women can and cannot do. Marshall describes the complex dos and don’ts at the end of Wayne Grudem’s Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth as resembling Rabbinic Judaism.
– Some churches silence women altogether.
– Some have women who can preach occasionally (to do so regularly would confer too much ‘authority’ on her).
– Some women can teach and preach and plant churches – but as long as she is a missionary in a far-away place.
– Other churches insist on head-coverings for women.
– Some allow women elders as long as the ‘head pastor’ is male.
– Others have women on a leadership team but only male elders.
– Most allow women to teach impressionable boys (and girls) but draw the line at men.
– Anglicans have ordained women priests but many seem to have all sorts of problems with women bishops.
– Some don’t allow women to teach at mixed-gender theological colleges, others do.
– Some encourage women to write books full of teaching that are read by men, others prohibit all teaching by women to groups of men in various contexts.
Complementarian practice is a mess.
I haven’t got into complementarianism and marriage, and I may be wrong, but I suspect that many who are complementarians in theory don’t really put it into practice.
For what does it actually mean to say the husband should practice ‘headship’? For couples who love each other, listen to and respect each other, treat each other as equals, know that there are areas of life where the other will be more informed and ‘authoritative’. They are a team who work together in a truly complementary way. And this sits uneasily to say the least with the hierarchical idea of the husband as some sort of loving boss.
My hunch is most loving Christian marriages just get on with normal healthy give and take relationships. And therefore ‘headship’ is reduced to little more than the theoretical situation of the man being the ‘tie-breaker’ when there is disagreement or something like that. It’s revealing I think that even committed C-H advocates lament that it is not practiced as it should be.
Comments, as ever, welcome
This is no.7 of a 10 point critique of complementarianism in dialogue with Claire Smith and Howard Marshall’s interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:8-15.
And in outlining these objections, I’m trying to imagine a robust debate with people I know and respect who don’t agree with me, not a war with enemies.
For Christians from both sides can agree on a lot: men and women are different(!); they are equal, both created in the image of God; both sexes are gifted by the Spirit for ministry; and no-one, whether male or female, has any ‘right’ to leadership. Leadership is a gift and calling of God to a life of loving and serving others under the shadow of the cross.
That said, this is not a trivial issue. It fundamentally touches upon understandings of leadership, ministry, Bible interpretation, the dignity and value of women, and whether half of the global church is permanently barred from serving the Lord using their gifts of leading, preaching and pastoring simply because of their gender.
The overall direction of a complementarian-hierarchical concern to implement ‘law’ leads, in my opinion, towards a legalistic form of continual assessment and evaluation of when ‘headship’ is being usurped or properly acted upon.
I’m not saying that everyone holding to the hierarchial model is legalistic, for Christians love should be the attitude that shapes all praxis. But the focus is on keeping watch that men and women keep to their divinely ordained ‘roles’. This comes through repeatedly in Claire Smith’s book. Men need to step up and women need to learn to be submissive.
It is worth stepping back a moment to notice the scope of what is being proposed: the imposition of a universal permanent grid of what is supposedly ‘God’s good design’ for female subordination within all marriages and in every church in all cultures globally.
This concern of limiting something good (gospel teaching) and saying something awfully dangerous and wrong is happening when a women expounds and teaches God’s word to the body of Christ sits badly with the liberating ministry of the Spirit.
Might an alternative be possible – that we might have got this deeply wrong? That ironically by insisting on the ban on women teaching and leading that the very thing Paul is most concerned about in his letter to Timothy – the credibility and witness of the gospel – is being damaged?
To use a title of one of the late and great New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce’s most famous books, Paul was an Apostle of the Free Spirit. Complementarianism’s focus on imposing universal law and artificial restrictions within the body of Christ caused Bruce, near the end of his life, to comment that “I think Paul would roll over in his grave if he knew we were turning his letters into torah”. (this is from a story Scot McKnight tells in The Blue Parakeet)
Comments, as ever, welcome
This is 6/10 of a 10 point critique of complementarianism in dialogue with Claire Smith and Howard Marshall’s interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:8-15.
And in outlining these objections, I’m trying to imagine a robust debate with people I know and respect who don’t agree with me, not a war with enemies.
For Christians from both sides can agree on a lot: men and women are different(!); they are equal, both created in the image of God; both sexes are gifted by the Spirit for ministry; and no-one, whether male or female, has any ‘right’ to leadership. Leadership is a gift and calling of God to a life of loving and serving others under the shadow of the cross.
That said, this is not a trivial issue. It fundamentally touches upon understandings of leadership, ministry, Bible interpretation, the dignity and value of women, and whether half of the global church is permanently barred from serving the Lord using their gifts of leading, preaching and pastoring simply because of their gender.
A further reason to affirm an egalitarian view of women in ministry is that this seems to be the approach of the Spirit of God who gives his gifts generously to men and women alike.
You see this in Luke-Acts and the remarkable outpouring of the long-awaited Spirit (Acts 2:16-21). No-where is there a hint that gifts are given according to gender, either in Luke or in Paul or Peter. The language is overwhelmingly inclusive to all the church, male and female.
Peter mentions the gift of ‘speaking the oracles of God’ (1 Peter 4:11). In Paul, the gifts in Ephesians 4:11 of apostles, prophets, evangelists and pastor-teachers and in Romans 12:3-8 which includes prophecy, teaching, exhortation and ruling are for everyone. Similarly in 1 Corinthians 12:28-30 the gifts include apostles, prophecy and teaching.
Priscilla (pictured) is a Bible teacher to a man; she is called Paul’s co-worker – a term used for those partnering with him in the ministry of the gospel which included proclamation and teaching (and included other women as well).
Phoebe is a diakonos (probably ‘minister’) and prostatis (‘leader’ is more accurate than ‘helper’) in the church (Rom. 16:1-2).
Egalitarianism can be summed up as being ‘for whatever God’s Spirit grants women gifts to do.’ This is an argument that the biblical texts point to the equal place of women in all aspects of the new covenant community of the people of God. People, men or woman, are to be recognised by the church to positions of leadership according to giftedness bestowed by the Spirit who gives gifts to whosoever he chooses – men and women alike.
Comments, as ever, welcome
Ben Witherington says YES to this question in a personal account of his own committment to pacifism within an American culture that so often exalts war. Some clips from what he says,
Jesus, as it turns out was a hard core pacifist and he was serious as a heart attack about that non-resistance, turn the other cheek, take up your cross and be prepared to die at the hands of your enemies stuff. He was, to use an oxymoron, an adamant even a belligerent pacifist. ‘Those who live by the sword die by the sword’ was his warning, and when his disciples tried to take up swords for the sake of the Kingdom Jesus not only told them ‘enough of that’ but he then repaired the damage to the ear of the high priest’s slave. Jesus was in deadly earnest about being the Prince of Peace …
What makes the journey of a pacifist long and hard is because of course you are swimming upstream in America, and sometimes you are swimming against a torrential flood in the other direction. You get used to being called a coward, unpatriotic (and a few unmentionable things) …
In my book, to be truly pro-life across the board, one needs to be opposed to abortion, capital punishment, and war. Period. That is to be totally pro-life. I don’t much understand what the disconnect is for people who at the same time are adamantly pro-birth, nevertheless are some of the strongest advocates for guns, capital punishment, and war. I realize that war, capital punishment, and abortion are not the same issue, but they are very much related life issues, and one’s life ethic, one’s worldview approach to them should be broadly the same, or so it seems to me …
This much I know for sure. I am proud to be a follower of Jesus Christ, and if that puts me at odds with my country’s official policies about abortion, capital punishment, or war, well then— so be it. I want to be totally pro life until the day I die. I don’t want to be like Lady MacBeth with blood on her hands which she curses again and again saying ‘out out, damned spot’ but she never can wash herself clean.
For me, part of being holy, being pure, being clean, being like Jesus, is being a pacifist. And whatever the cost, I do not regret it….and I doubt I ever will.
Comments, as ever, welcome.
This is 5/10 of a 10 point critique of complementarianism in dialogue with Claire Smith and Howard Marshall’s interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:8-15.
And in outlining these objections, I’m trying to imagine a robust debate with people I know and respect who don’t agree with me, not a war with enemies.
For Christians from both sides can agree on a lot: men and women are different(!); they are equal, both created in the image of God; both sexes are gifted by the Spirit for ministry; and no-one, whether male or female, has any ‘right’ to leadership. Leadership is a gift and calling of God to a life of loving and serving others under the shadow of the cross.
That said, this is not a trivial issue. It fundamentally touches upon understandings of leadership, ministry, Bible interpretation, the dignity and value of women, and whether half of the global church is permanently barred from serving the Lord using their gifts of leading, preaching and pastoring simply because of their gender.
Claire Smith reiterates a standard complementarian-hierarchalist position that prophecy is of different order of authority from preaching and teaching. She claims that while preaching / teaching is not ‘under’ other people’s authority, prophecy in 1 Corinthians is “under the authority of other people.”
What does it mean that a man’s preaching is not under other’s authority anyway? Is not all preaching and teaching only authoritative as it conforms to God’s word?
The reason that this distinction is made in such an arbitrary way is because of the unambiguous evidence in 1 Corinthians that women were prophesying within the church gathering. Paul clearly sees prophecy as the most important ministry in corporate worship (1 Cor 14). It is set above teaching (1 Cor 12:28) and in Ephesians 2:20 he states that the church is founded on apostles and prophets, not teachers.
This is consistent with the crucial and high place prophecy has within the whole Bible, OT and NT. Jesus is a prophet and a teacher, as are the leaders of the church in Antioch in Acts 13:1.
The only reason C-H argues for a downplaying of the authoritative role of prophecy is a prior theological commitment to a ‘creation ordinance’, derived primarily from prioritising one text. This is another example of a faulty hermeneutic driving exegesis rather than the other way around.
It is made all the more untenable by Junia, the outstanding apostle (who Claire Smith pretty well ignores). The first apostles were ‘first’ in the church and the ones on whom the church was founded (Eph 2:20). They undoubtedly were teachers.
Comments, as ever, welcome.
FaithinIreland 