I awoke this morning to find a flurry of tweets and checking in found that the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland has convened. If this year is anything like last year, and the the first day is proving that to be the case, the PCI GA meeting will generate the most official tweets of any of the Assemblies. So far today alone we have had 137 tweets from @pciassembly since the session began including the tweet “Twitter got overloaded.” No wonder.
The Assembly actually began last night with worship and the installation of the new Moderator the Rev. Dr. Norman Hamilton.
So if you want to follow along it helps to have the documents.
- Agenda and Preview/Narrative order of events
- Reports
- News Updates including Daily Reviews
- Daily Minutes and other downloads
- Live Streaming
- Official Twitter from @pciassembly but there does not appear to be any hashtags in use. You can search on pciassembly for replies.
What has caught headlines so far is the address of the incoming Moderator last night where he condemned sectarianism. He actually talks about this in a larger context involving the church. After beginning by enumerating a number of pressures on the world at the current time he turns to the hope of the church:
All of this may seem rather downbeat and maybe even depressing — not what we all come to the opening night of the General Assembly for! Yet it is in this new context that there is great opportunity for the light of the Bible, the love of God and work of the Spirit to bring hope,encouragement and much needed grace to individual lives, local communities and indeed the whole land. So let me sketch out very briefly a little of what this might look like.
The OT prophet Jeremiah was quite explicit when he made it clear to God’s people that one of their key roles was to seek the welfare of the whole community where God had placed them, and that included the welfare of those who had even oppressed them. Jesus followed this through with his astounding command in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5.44) to ‘love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’. The apostle Peter repeated the message when he wrote to a church under serious pressure that Christian people were to be a blessing to others as a pre-requisite to being blessed by God themselves. (1 Peter 3.9)
A bit later he goes on to say:
We really do need to resist the temptation — and it is a strong one –that man lives by politics alone. We do not. Politics is certainly important. Indeed democracy is one of the jewels of a good Christian heritage — and I want to say that publicly here tonight with some of our political reps present.
We value you personally, and we value the work that you do. But the privilege of choosing political leaders and representatives can — and often does — degenerate into passing the buck to them for every perceived problem and evil, and then criticising them when they appear powerless to fix them for us. How often do so many of us who are Christian people complain about our leaders – long before we even think it proper to pray for them and ask for the Spirit of God to guide themin their work. Giving in to the temptation to always expect Stormont or the Dail or Westminster or the local council or the doctor or the teacher or the social worker or the community group (the list is endless…) to fix things for us is to deny the power of prayer, the work of the Spirit and the Biblical imperative of active warm hearted Christian citizenship which was regarded as normal – right throughout the Scriptures. (emphasis added)
For the non-PCI reading this be sure to read that section, especially the part I put in bold, with the Presbyterian Mutual Society failure in the back of your mind. But the Moderator’s primary concern here is not the Society situation. He goes on to talk about Christians being engaged in their political world and says “we want to bring our best insights into scripture to public policy.” He continues:
For the claims of atheists and secularists to have the truth themselves or to argue that they are in some neutral faith-free zone — such claims too need to be vigorously challenged and properly refuted. And, it has to be said, the church throughout this whole island is desperately short of people able and willing to do this… which is itself a terrible commentary on our spiritual and theological weakness.
But what he has in mind the problem of sectarianism. Here is an extended portion of that section as he approaches his conclusion.
One of the most pungent areas where we desperately need a recovery of righteousness in public is in the area of community relationships, both inside communities and across communities.
You might expect me to say this, coming as I do from 22 years in North Belfast, but the healing of relationships is a real Christian priority for every single one of us here this evening, whether we live in the city, the town or in a rural area, – whether we live in Cork or in Coleraine — Dublin or Derry.
Let me give you an example from the areas OUTSIDE of Belfast.
The latest figures from the PSNI – and I have them here – show that in 10 of the 25 District Council area outside Belfast, there had been arise of over 25% in sectarian motivated incidents between 2008/09 and 2009/10. In only 2 of those councils had there been a reduction of more than 25%.
There is a problem with sectarianism right across much of Northern Ireland, and it is acute in what might be seen as some very surprising places.
The failure to agree a community relations agenda and community relations strategy is, in my view, a public disgrace, given our history.That disgrace is heightened by the apparent failure of much of wider society to even be concerned about it, never mind outraged by it.
And it is a huge discouragement to the many individuals and groups whose vision and work for a healthy and integrated society over the years continues to be so unappreciated and undervalued. Our apparent contentment with widespread social apartheid is, to quote again those words from the book of Proverbs, a disgrace to the nation.Made no less by the fact that this is not a new issue at all — St Augustine, 1600 years ago, wrote: ‘For it is one thing to see the land of peace from a wooded ridge, and another to tread the road that leads to it’
I would love to be part of a public discussion, carried out with grace and with rigour, as to how to face this demon in our midst. I might even be bold enough to say that I would like to help kick start the moribund, even non existent, public discussion about what a coherent,shared and healthy society looks like. And I would want to do so, on the basis of bringing my best understanding of Scripture to that discussion. Every generation, every society, every individual… we all need to bring our failures to the Lord and have them exposed — for as Jesus told us plainly in John’s Gospel (8.32) it is the truth that liberates… Isn’t it strange that such liberating truth from the lips of Jesus seems so unattractive at times? As does the call of Micah(6.8) in these profoundly discomforting words… He has showed you Oman, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
I look forward to seeing how he works with this theme in the Assembly and throughout his Moderatorial year.