'Weaponized' Prayer: How to Disarm How We Talk to God (and each other...)

This week, the Pennsylvania State House of Representatives had a moment of history, as it swore in its first female African-American Muslim legislator, Movita  Johnson-Harrell (D) of Philadelphia. 

There are enough historic milestones there for that to be newsworthy alone. But as so often happens in America, it wasn’t a black person’s achievement that was the primary story, but a white person’s reaction to it.

Invited to give the ceremonial opening prayer was (according to her Facbook page) ‘very conservative’ Rep. Stephanie Borowicz (R) who stepped to the mic and prayed thus (Note: transcribed from a You Tube clip, this is as faithful a transcript as I could manage of the prayer, which was improvised on the spot, so my punctuation might be sketchy):

Let’s pray: Jesus, I thank you for this privilege, Lord, of letting me pray, God, that I, Jesus, am your ambassador here today, standing here representing you, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Great I Am, the one who’s coming back again, the one who came, died, and rose again on the third day, and I’m so privileged to stand here today, so thank you for this honour, Jesus, God, for those who came before us like George Washington at Valley Forge, and Abraham Lincoln who sought after you at Gettysburg, Jesus, and the Founding Fathers at Independence Hall, Jesus, that sought after you and fasted and prayed for this nation to be founded on your principles and your words and your truths.

God, forgive us. Jesus, we’ve lost sight of you. We’ve forgotten you, God, in our country, and we’re asking you to forgive us, Jesus, that your promise in your word says that ‘If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek your face and turn from their wicked ways’ that you’ll heal our land. Jesus you are our only hope. God, I pray for our leaders Speaker (Mike) Turzai, Leader Cutler, Governor Wolf, President Trump. Lord, thank you that he stands beside Israel unequivocally, Lord.

Thank you that, Jesus, that we’re blessed because we stand by Israel, and we ask for the peace of Jerusalem as your word says, God. We ask that we not be overcome by evil and that we overcome evil with good in this land once again. I claim all these things in the powerful, mighty name of Jesus, the one who at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue will confess, Jesus, that you are Lord.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Many have criticized the prayer, calling it offensive and divisive.  By the last line, there were loud grumblings from the assembled audience, and House Speaker Mike Turzai was gently touching Borowicz’ elbow, gently urging her to finish up. She then exited the chamber in protest of a Muslim being sworn in as a lawmaker.

Johnson-Harrell herself said she felt the prayer ‘blatantly represented the Islamophobia that exists among some leaders’. 

Borowicz defended herself by saying ‘That's how I pray every day. . . . I don't apologize ever for praying.’

That’s a bit of a dodge, as no one was criticizing her for praying; the criticism she faced had to do with what she prayed given the place and the occasion.

To be honest, I don’t doubt that that is the way she prays; I spent over half my life in the Evangelical Christian subculture and can confidently tell you that this is the way that many Evangelical Americans pray.

That said, it’s a problematic way to pray.  

This was an almost textbook example of a 'weaponized' prayer, a prayer meant to publicly advance a religious and political ideology, and addressed to Johnson-Harrell as much as to God.

By using a specifically modern Evangelical understanding of the Founding Fathers; by making the explicit implication that America had fallen from such a pristine Christian foundation; by framing the occasion as a moment of national failure and needing God’s forgiveness; and by implicitly stating that American unwavering political support for the state of Israel was a mark of national religious righteousness, all seemed designed to send the message- and certainly send it to Johnson-Harrell- that this was no celebration.

A Muslim might indeed be elected to sit in that chamber, but it would never be fully ‘hers’…

This was a Christian place, the prayer seemed designed to make clear. Christians created it, Christians owned it.

Plus, by naming God, the ‘Lord’, and Jesus nearly two dozen times in just under two minutes, Borowicz’ prayer almost seems to be an incantation, invoking the name of God as some form of talisman, a protection against the presence- and the religious faith- of a dangerous ‘other’.

Again, this was a Christian making it plain that her beliefs, understanding, and terminology for God were good, right, and correct.

This is nothing less than a supremacist position- ‘Christian supremacy’. Other faiths might be tolerated, but they will never be afforded equality. They must know their place and not presume to seek after white American Evangelical Christianity’s unique and privileged public position.

This is a form of Christianity that has never figured out how to live together well with any faith other than their own and (at a stretch) Judaism. They adhere to a zero-sum approach that sees ‘respect for’ as ‘surrender to’.

From my years living, working, and worshiping in the Evangelical Christian subculture, I’ve sat through hundreds of prayers like the one Borowicz gave. It was never pleasant. Prayer was designed to declare, to chide, to correct, and to advance agendas.

Prayers were often said for elected officials. Prayers for Republicans were filled with enthusiastic thanks given to God for their honour, wisdom, and courage; Democrats got earnest prayers for their salvation and hopes they’d abandon wickedness and turn to God.

Prayers for Evangelical leaders and organizations were full of thanks, blessing and hopes that they’d thrive and grow; prayers for Catholics focused on turning from dead religion to a living, vibrant faith.

Left-leaning Catholics like me always knew where we stood…

So I have two interrelated questions: First, how do we ‘decommission’ our weaponized prayers? And secondly, how do we live together well in a public space with our brothers and sisters who hold to different faiths?

Firstly, we can simply pray as Jesus in the biblical text told us to pray.

Jesus could be a fairly cryptic and opaque communicator; on any number of occasions, the Gospels describe people as being confused or offended by his teachings, if not just plain bewildered. It is for this reason that, when he gives a straightforward answer or, better still, a plain directive, it’s a good idea to take special notice… and on the subject of prayer, he does so.

When his disciples ask him to teach them to pray, he says ‘Pray then in this way’ (Matt. 6:9); ‘When you pray, say’ (Luke 11:2)…

The Lord’s Prayer, the ‘Our Father’, was what he gave us.

Praise to God, for his Kingdom to be established, food for today, forgiveness when we fall short, and strength for the journey.

That’s all. So little, yet everything…

If Jesus warned us, ‘do not practice your piety before others to be seen by them’ (Matt. 6:1), then the prayer he actually gave to his followers seems the perfect preventive.

But, I hear many argue- perhaps Borowicz herself?- how will God know what he needs to be doing, who he needs to be blessing, and who needs stopping if we don’t tell him so?

None of that is our concern.

How will others know our opinions of them and our agendas for them if we don’t cloak them in holy rhetoric? 

Speak for yourself… and let God speak for himself.

 Secondly, we can follow Jesus’ example in our approach to faiths other than our own.

Jesus lived his life and had his ministry in one of the most multicultural spots on Earth of that time- the eastern Mediterranean. A dizzying array of cultures, ethnicities, philosophies and religions- pagan, monotheist, polytheist, gnostic- jostled and interacted on a daily basis.

With that in mind, and with the inordinate amount of effort certain Christians take in trying to rein in, discredit, and marginalize other faiths, it’s interesting to notice that the Gospel writers felt no need to record Jesus giving an opinion or passing judgement on any other faith or philosophy.

We never find out his opinions on Zeus, Aries, Mithra, Plato, or Aristotle.

In fact, the only faith that he seems interested in critiquing is his own, arguing with the Pharisee movement, condemning Jewish legal scholars, and taking direct action against Temple practices.

If the biblical authors saw no need to record Jesus criticizing and condemning other faiths, then we can safely assume that there’s no real reason for us to do so either.

This would be seen as a huge sea change for many Christians. 

It takes extraordinary humility and radical faith to pray the Lord’s Prayer and nothing else, just as it would take great courage to simply live with and interact with good will toward non-Christian faith communities. 

What I see in Borowicz prayer is fear- of what she doesn’t understand, of what she thinks is dangerous, of what she sees as a slippery slope toward her own marginalization, her own loss of status, her own loss of power…

… and yet, the biblical text is filled with dozens of instructions to ‘fear not’. Trust God. Do what is right. Live at peace with your neighbours, regardless of their faith or lack of it.

Pray without ceasing…

As Jesus taught us.

The Lie of America's National Emergency

America is nearly a week into the National Emergency declared by the President on 15 February. 

It is an odd National Emergency; I never thought a National Emergency by President Trump would be so mundane. But even by his standards, it’s a bit of a let-down.

Given his endless, overheated rhetoric about the scale of the danger posed by the southern border’s supposedly weak security, coupled with his love for the ostentatious, I had wondered if we’d see tanks on the White House lawn, sandbag emplacements on the Capitol steps, special instructions given to the citizens…

… but in the end, all the President gave us was a very long and rambling speech (needless to say, no fourscore and seven years, no dates living in infamy, no asking not what your country can do for you) before leaving to play golf.

I don’t think anyone who reads me regularly will be surprised I think the President’s national emergency- like the President himself- is a fraud. No facts surrounding the issues of immigration, national security, drug enforcement, or refugee asylum point to more physically-reinforced infrastructure as a positive or even necessary solution.

It’s for that reason that I’ve posited that Trump’s wall is an idol- a manifestation of fear, lack of trust, misplaced identity and cruelty, the antithesis of the God  of love, life, and liberation.

Now, please don’t think for a minute that I don’t believe there is an actual national emergency unfolding in America; there is. And once again, I think a theological lens helps us bring it into focus.

You can theologically critique Trump from any number of directions- his disdain for the poor; his disdain for the refugee and the stranger; his almost pristine narcissism; his arrogance, and all of those critiques would be entirely credible. But there is one issue that I believe underpins them all.

Ask yourself: what is the most condemned action in the biblical text?

What sin is proscribed more often than any other?

Is it the rather awkward issue of all these homosexuals that God just keeps manufacturing much to the disgust of so many in the Church? Oddly, no.

Murder? Nope.

Sex before marriage? Not even close.

Profanity? Hell, no.

By a huge margin, the most proscribed sin in the Biblical text is lying.

Various nonpartisan, credible fact checking services report that the President lies anywhere from 70% to 90% of the time. We’re not talking about finessed facts, spin, or half-truths; we’re talking about patent falsehoods;

Events that didn’t happen;

Conversations that didn’t take place;

Statistics that are completely false;

Invasions, attacks, wars, peace agreements that no one has ever heard of;

Successful results to problems that didn’t occur, and egregious problems concocted to cover up inconvenient successes;

Lie after lie after lie after lie, day after day, night after night, tweet after tweet…

I am not, nor have I ever been, naïve about the nature of politics. The US- and many other nations- have had leaders in the past who have withheld information- for security reasons, for political reasons, for strategic reasons, and even for criminal reasons. Whatever your country or nationality, we’ve all had leaders who have lied before.

It’s not right, it’s not pleasant, it should be condemned, and the guilty parties held to account…

But that said, I think it’s safe to say that America has never had, in its history, a President who seems un-moored from any commitment to reality itself, who simply announces what he wishes to be true without any care for whether or not it is.

With this man, and presumably for those who work with, support and enable him, verifiable truth simply has no value.

That, I believe (and I think a welter of biblical texts backs me up), is the national emergency.

When a person in power resorts to a private reality, they effectively lose the ability to govern. When objective facts regarding any number of national issues are placed before them, and they say, in effect’ ‘I don’t accept that this is true; in fact, the opposite is true’, any understanding of leadership falls away.

In a politically specific way, any semblance of healthy democracy becomes unworkable; more generally, profitable human interaction ceases to function. 

Of course Christian faith understands lying to be a sin, but it’s always important to understand that sin is more than an ethical shortcoming. The reason that lying carries the theological weight that it does is because of the way it relates to the character of God. In I John we read:

God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.  If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.  If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.

Lying is the antithesis of God, who is whole, perfect… ‘light’. God cannot cease to be God, nor can he deny reality for reality emanates from God. A liar does both; a liar attempts to be other than he or she is and distorts reality for their own ends.

Truth requires humility, introspection, and self-understanding as a human trying to live in the truth- the reality of God- understands that they fall short. But, as the text expresses, Forgiveness follows repentance- repentance being the outward, active expression of humility and self-understanding.

In Jesus’s encounter with Pilate in John 18 he says:

‘In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.’

 ‘What is truth?’ retorted Pilate. 

Jesus declared himself ‘the truth’, insomuch as the purpose of the incarnation was not for him to disseminate teachings or devise an ethical structure, but to be the the image of the invisible and indivisible God. Pilate accepts neither Jesus nor God, not by denying Jesus’s goodness- in fact he acknowledges Jesus’s innocence and the injustice of his trial- but by sarcastically calling truth itself into question.

The liar does exactly the same thing, and by doing so becomes an atheist, anti-christ. Just as there is no lying in God, there is, as it were, no ‘God’ in the lie.

America’s ‘national emergency’ is not along the southern border; it’s at the heart of government, in the way that lying- as well as open contempt for objective truth itself- has become the default communication for the wealthy and the powerful.

It is the duty of the people of God to declare the truth and take action in the light of truth embodied in the person of Jesus- food for the poor, sight to the blind, release to the prisoners, freedom for the captives, life for the lifeless, a voice for the voiceless…

We do this, not because the wealthy and powerful are unaware of the truth, but to bear witness that truth exists and is an intrinsic good.

Anything less is, well, just a lie…

Worshipping a Wall: The Idolatry Underlying Trump’s Border…

As I write, the US government is shut down, locked in a political stalemate for nearly three weeks over the President’s promise to build a solid wall along the 2,000 miles of the southern border with Mexico, an easy promise made endlessly during the campaign, and reiterated in the two years since then, right up to his televised address this week, which painted a grim dystopia of international terrorists, drug dealers, and criminal and diseased immigrants flooding across the Rio Grande.

Supporters embraced it with relish; the wall promise was a linchpin in Trump’s win, with throngs of supporters at rallies- before and after the inauguration- chanting ‘Build the wall!’

The wall was always going to be a hard sell- outside of Trump’s hardcore base- as facts on the ground didn’t point to its critical necessity:

In September 2018, a detailed US State Department report found ‘no credible evidence indicating that international terrorist groups have established bases in Mexico, worked with Mexican drug cartels, or sent operatives via Mexico into the United States.’ As to the drug cartels, the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has repeatedly reported that the most common- and easiest- method for traffickers to smuggle drugs across the border is by hiding them in cars that legally drive through official border checkpoints. Why walk them across the desert when it’s far simpler to drive them in an air-conditioned SUV?

Furthermore, undocumented immigration across the southern border is in fact dropping and has been for years; in 2000, 1.6 million people were caught crossing from Mexico illegally. Last year, the number was 310,531, the lowest figure since 1971.

In fact, there has been a decline in undocumented immigration overall since the economic recession of 2008… and almost none of it comes over the southern border. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrants in the US overstayed a legally-granted tourist, student, or work visa.

What all this points to is that there is no ‘crisis’ of illegal immigration from Mexico, and the solution offered to undocumented immigration by the President and his supporters- longer, higher, and more fortified walls- doesn’t address the immigration and security issues that the US does face.

This begs the question: Why is the President so passionately committed to his wall?

To begin to answer that, we need to look at Trump’s wall theologically.

I believe Trump’s wall is an idol. It is a false god, promising much, delivering little, and demanding a heavy and cruel price.

In modern Christian doctrine, we tend to think that an idol can be anything. We particularly focus on an idol being something that preoccupies our attention away from spiritual pursuits. If we think about football more than our daily devotions, we might conclude that football has become an ‘idol’ in our lives; if we spend more time at work than at church or with family, we begin to wonder if the job or the salary might be an ‘idol’; if we obsess over a new car, a new phone, or expensive clothes, we worry that materialism is becoming an ‘idol’.

However, the ancient Hebrews didn’t think like this; for them, an idol was something very specific.

In the commandment against idols in Exodus 20:4 (‘you shall not make for yourself an idol’), the Hebrew terminology of ‘idol’ or ‘image’ (פֶּ֫סֶל, ‘pesel’, ‘hewn’) specifically denotes making, crafting, or building. An idol was something made, something specifically constructed. The ancient Hebrews of the biblical text weren’t interested in abstract mental images, inward desires, or emotional passions…

An idol was something you built.

From the biblical text we can see that an idol’s purposes were very specific- to give people a sense of control, to be a source of security and to reinforce a community’s identity.

Exodus 32- the account of the Golden Calf- is probably the most well-known and it is here that one of the most important purposes of an idol is seen- a community afflicted with fear and lack of trust seeks a sense of security and identity outside of that provided by God.

In the Hebrew Bible, Yahweh had made it clear to his people that he was invisible, nameless, and unknowable, only discerned through his own self-revelation. This is why the commandments were so adamant that no image of him could be made. To do so implied that Yahweh could be made visible and knowable; that he could be located, placed in one place or another solely on a human’s desire; that he could be made present and available, attributes Yahweh had made clear were absolutely beyond the Hebrews’ control. The constructed image gave the people the ability to worship Yahweh as they desired- it allowed the possibility of naming God, controlling God.

Thus, in Exodus 32:

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, "Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him." 

Moses was gone, disappeared up a mountain covered with fire and cloud (Ex. 24:17-18). The one man on which they have become entirely dependent has disappeared. When was he coming back? Worse, was he dead? No one knew. The unreliable Moses- and Moses’ God- had to be replaced with something tangible and reliable. The people demand ‘gods’ to do what Yahweh and Moses have, for whatever reason, stopped doing. 

These new gods would ‘go before’; ‘go ahead’ (‘asher’; ראֲשֶׁ), as into battle. A nameless, invisible god was indeed an interesting novelty, but was it wise to persist in this notion, alone, surrounded by enemies, and with a military campaign to occupy Canaan drawing ever nearer? The people want to meet their adversaries on an equal footing; they wanted something that they could see and that could be seen; something that would announce who they were. In the face of physical threat, something more tangible than what Moses or Yahweh offered was required.

Another example of this idea is the account of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. Though this passage is not normally associated with idolatry, in light of what we see in the Exodus passage, particularly the emotions and situations that might lead people to build ‘idols',  this text again speaks to humanity’s propensity toward idolatry, the constant struggle with the desire to build ‘gods’.

And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."

In this text, we again have the building of a structure out of fear, to provide security and identity, but once again outside of the relationship with God.

The people desire to ‘make a name for themselves’. Once again, the desire to ‘make’ usurps the role of God as well. It is God who creates and names humankind; now humankind declares that they will name themselves; just as the Israelites seek the name of God (Ex. 3:13) in order to possess God’s name- God’s identity- and therefore have a measure of control over him. Once the people ‘name’ themselves, they believe their destiny will be their own. The builders’ city and tower are their creation, their power base from which they will make their name; their identity and their works will endure. 

This then reveals their fear: ‘...otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth (11:4).’ Without their self-made identity, they would be dispersed, and their identity- their self-made identity- destroyed.

In light of this reflection, we’re left with a grim picture. Since Trump’s wall has no practical application, we need to start dealing with what it represents- and that is where its idolatry truly lies.

Given that Trump’s wall solves none of the complex and admittedly serious immigration issues that America faces;

No member of congress from border districts supports it (including members of Trump’s party);

No one with any knowledge or expertise in immigration or national security agrees with him;

All we’re left with is fear, a false sense of security, and an ever-more desperate need for Trump to make a name for himself… all the reasons for the construction of an idol.

This would all be bad enough if not for the most disturbing aspect of idolatry in the biblical text- that idols always demand sacrifices.

The practice of idolatry in the ancient Near East was closely related to the idea of human sacrifice, specifically that of children. It would appear that this was at least common enough that the Hebrew prophets saw the need to continually stress Yahweh’s abhorrence of it. Jeremiah 19:5 is a perfect example; the prophet has Yahweh describe child sacrifice as ‘a thing I never ordered, never mentioned, that had never entered my thoughts’. For the prophets, it was not simply the practice that was abhorrent, but the intimation that Yahweh ever actually desired it. It was false gods who demanded sacrifice, not the God of life and liberation.

Two children have already died in US border patrol custody, sacrificed as part of a useless and cruel policy based on fear, lack of trust, and misplaced nationalism, designed to deter thousands of men, women, and children fleeing the poverty and violence of Central America- a region that has seen the blunt end of US foreign policy for over a century- from seeking asylum in the US…

These people have had their humanity and dignity sacrificed. They have been relentlessly demonized as lazy, scrounging, diseased criminals by the President, his administration, and his supporters, despite the fact that under US and international law they are perfectly within their rights to seek asylum in the US or any other country.

If Trump embodies anyone in the biblical text, it is the litany of kings who led God’s people into idolatry.

If Christ is who he said he was- a stranger, either invited in or not-

He is languishing, right now, in Tijuana.

American Christians have a choice; the same choice that every age has had to make: to serve Christ or an idol…

To bow down to one or the other...

But make no mistake, it can never- ever- be both. 

Facing the Wall: Looking for Liberation and Reconciliation Around Belfast’s Separation Barriers

One memory that sticks in my mind from my doctoral studies was driving down from Belfast to Dublin with my academic adviser to attend a seminar. He had the audio book of Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Eat Pray Love’ in the car, and we listened on the way.

At one point, Gilbert mentioned in her narration that she had received a five-figure advance from her publisher which, considering her book was about experiences in Italy, India, and Bali, was how she was able to write the book.

‘Just to be clear’, my adviser said, ‘no one is going to give you that kind of advance to write a book on theology…’

It was sound advice. Publishers don’t splash that kind of cash at theologians.

But we write books anyway. We write because it’s what we do. We use our skills and expertise to theologically reflect on the biblical text in the light of our experiences and convictions.

In light of that, I’m delighted to announce that my book, ‘Facing the Wall: Looking for Liberation and Reconciliation Around Belfast’s Separation Barriers’, is now available on Amazon.

For the moment, it’s available as an e-Book, but a paperback edition will be available in the next few months. You can purchase it here:

https://www.amazon.com/Facing-Wall-Liberation-Reconciliation-Separation-ebook/dp/B07HYJ7RT4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546862782&sr=8-1&keywords=Facing+the+Wall+Jon+Hatch

The book had its impetus in two places:

First and foremost, it is a product of my years as a reconciliation worker in North and West Belfast, working with numerous projects and groups- Corrymeela, Community Relations in Schools, and various other groups and local projects- many different people, places, and experiences, but always with the end goal of helping people rebuild and live together well after Northern Ireland’s 30 years of civil conflict.

It also is a product of my doctoral work in Theology. Being involved in reconciliation work, I was familiar with much of the theology of reconciliation that was being produced out of the Irish peace process and beyond. I also have had an abiding fascination with liberation theology. I wondered what it would look like to apply the basic ideas of liberation theology to a context like post-conflict Northern Ireland, with its ongoing structural sectarianism and deep social divisions- a situation quite different from that experienced by its original proponents in Central and South America.

Simply put, I thought our process of reconciliation would benefit from a dose of liberation… and the liberation theological project would benefit from engaging with the context of human relationships healing after violent conflict.

Peacemaking is never easy or straightforward, and ‘Facing the Wall’ is about facing unpleasant facts. An overarching unpleasant fact is that while the 1998 Good Friday Agreement brought the armed conflict to a close, Northern Ireland remains a deeply divided place, but since far fewer people are dying, those divisions are seen in the corridors of power as basically acceptable …

And some divisions are not lessening, but getting worse.

This book is about one of them.

If you come to Belfast, it won’t be long before you encounter the separation barriers, sometimes referred to as ‘peace walls’ or ‘the peace line’, a vast network of walls, fences, gates, and unused tracts of land acting as ‘buffer zones’ located around or between areas of Belfast where the two majority communities- Catholic and Protestant, Nationalist and Unionist- live in close proximity.

The first one went up in 1969 as the conflict began to spiral out of control, when the British Army erected a fence between the riot-plagued Falls and Shankill neighborhoods in West Belfast.

British Army GOC Sir Ian Freeland declared at the time, ‘The peace line will be a very, very temporary affair. We will not have a Berlin Wall or anything like that in this city’.

49 years later, there are over 100, most of them having been built, or made longer or higher, after the peace agreement.

Why? What’s going on?

It wasn’t easy to find out. The separation barriers might not be the most critical issue facing Northern Ireland, but it is certainly one of the most enduring and overlooked.

In the dozens of books, papers, and articles I read about the conflict, photos of the barriers often featured prominently on many of the covers but- oddly- were rarely mentioned in the content;

In my years of working with churches and other faith-based communities on reconciliation projects, even though there was endless discussion of ‘divisions’ and ‘the barriers between communities’,  the actual physical barriers were more or less ignored;

 In the hours of discussions with colleagues and in all the lectures and talks I’d been to about building peace in Northern Ireland, the subject of the barriers rarely came up.  

When it did come up, it was indirectly, as a metaphor for something else;

‘Just as there are concrete barriers running through the streets of Belfast’, people would earnestly say, ‘so there are barriers in peoples’ hearts and minds’.

Over the years, I heard that phrase repeated to me dozens of times, and every time it was uttered as if the person had just thought it up.  

That was always the focus- the ‘barriers in peoples’ hearts and minds’.

I knew what they were trying to say. If you work in post-conflict social reconciliation, you’re well acquainted with the trauma, prejudice, resentment, and bigotry so many people in Northern Ireland carry in their hearts and minds. They had lived through political violence, through terror, through loss… Helping people live with or hopefully move beyond those deep mental and social wounds represents the bulk of what we do.

And yet (and this is what no one seemed willing to acknowledge) there were real, actual barriers, walls, fences, and gates of concrete and steel, some 6 to 9 meters high, running for miles through the city of Belfast… and they raised disturbing questions:

If the barriers were built to reduce violence, why had the majority been built after the ceasefires, the negotiations of the peace agreement, the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, and the pull-out of the British Army?

If the barriers were built to make people feel safer, why had the vast majority of deaths occurred within sight of them?

Since the barriers were constructed and maintained at enormous cost from public funds, why did they run through the most economically-deprived areas of the city?

Why did the churches of Belfast, who had so much to say about the ‘barriers’ in peoples’ hearts and minds’, never mention the separation barriers, even when their church butted right up against one?

Most crucially, what were the physical barriers doing to us? What were they doing to peoples’ hearts and minds?

How could we do reconciliation work with any integrity in Belfast without grappling with the reality of publicly-funded, physically-reinforced segregation?

How could we do theology with any integrity in Belfast in the shadow of the separation barriers?

This book is an attempt to pick those questions apart. It explores what the barriers are, where they come from, why they matter, and what churches and people of faith can positively do to engage with them;

It seeks to transform the way the barriers are seen and understood by people of faith, how we do theological reflection in Ireland and Northern Ireland, and hopefully broadens our lens of what we feel we can reflect on;

Finally, it seeks to contribute to Irish theology by drawing on both liberation theology and theologies of reconciliation- but combining them in new, practical ways- helping us to better theologically engage with our post-conflict context- less violent, less deadly, but still divided, and still being divided.

If you’re interested in Irish history and politics, as well as in new forms of contextual and public theology, give ‘Facing the Wall’ a read and, if you feel it deserves it, please leave it a favourable review. Please also feel free to pass information about the book to those who might benefit from it or are interested in similar topics.

Hopefully you’ll find it interesting, thought-provoking, and beneficial…

Even if it never reaches ‘Eat Pray Love’ numbers…