Blood and fire - or unity in diversity? November 2006
8 February 2008 - 9:03pm — Sarah Hall
At this time of year, loud bangs come out of nowhere, A&E departments become more crowded than usual, and pets try in vain to hide under the bed. Yes, it's that time again to celebrate terrorism, judicial murder and a total lack of inter-religious dialogue - Bonfire Night, the night when we remember Guy Fawkes' unsuccessful plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament, and its grim conclusion.
As a child I used to love Bonfire Night. The sight of fireworks shooting across the sky made me gasp in wonder. But when I became old enough to realise we were actually celebrating a battle to the death between Catholics and Protestants, somehow the sparkle went away. For in the centuries after Luther's church-door defiance of the Pope and Henry VIII's marital difficulties, Catholic and Protestant monarchs, and their good Christian subjects, worked out their differences, all over Europe, in blood and fire. And that sectarian blood and fire was still having its way in Northern Ireland and in Scotland, fewer years ago than I would wish to think possible.
But things have changed, you may be reflecting. Now - thank God! - Protestants and Catholics are no longer bitter enemies on sight. Now we who have a Protestant heritage work together with Christians who worship God in very different ways from our own, and even (shock, horror!) borrow from their traditions of faith, to our own enrichment. How did this miracle come about? Through prayer, through patience, through dialogue, through time - and through realising that, as people of faith, we had more interests and values in common than what separated us. The story of the United Reformed Church is a miniature example of that move towards unity.
Of course, that doesn't mean that Catholics and Protestants, or each congregation in the United Reformed Church, come to that, somehow became exactly the same as the others. And a good thing too! Each human being is different from the next: why should we expect everyone in one faith tradition to be the same, let alone hope for any tradition to turn its back on its past and try to behave like everyone else? Indeed, I believe our differences are God-given, for the good of us all, if we can get to know one another well enough to understand them as gifts, not obstacles. And as we are discovering through our work with Churches Together in Broomhill and Broomhall, along that road there will be pain, but also delight.
So after centuries of struggle, unity between Christians, Catholic and Protestant, is emerging. But religion is still used to motivate blood and fire; and its combatants are often among the ‘Peoples of the Book' - Jews and Christians and Muslims, who all have the Hebrew Bible in common, as once Catholics and Protestants each claimed the Bible as their own. What, then, can we do to work against that hatred arising from ignorance which once plagued our own faith? The same answers hold good: prayer, patience, dialogue, time may lead us to greater trust and an increased ability to see in our differences as well as in our common values the gifts of God.
Big words: but what can we actually do? you may be wondering. Well, one thing you can do is to come to four sessions of Muslim-Christian dialogue, to be held at the Broomhall Centre on Broomspring Lane 2.30-4pm on the four Sundays of November. And if we come not to win the argument of faith, but to listen and learn, we too will become part of God's remaking of the world, after we poor fools have tried to blow it apart.
As a child I used to love Bonfire Night. The sight of fireworks shooting across the sky made me gasp in wonder. But when I became old enough to realise we were actually celebrating a battle to the death between Catholics and Protestants, somehow the sparkle went away. For in the centuries after Luther's church-door defiance of the Pope and Henry VIII's marital difficulties, Catholic and Protestant monarchs, and their good Christian subjects, worked out their differences, all over Europe, in blood and fire. And that sectarian blood and fire was still having its way in Northern Ireland and in Scotland, fewer years ago than I would wish to think possible.
But things have changed, you may be reflecting. Now - thank God! - Protestants and Catholics are no longer bitter enemies on sight. Now we who have a Protestant heritage work together with Christians who worship God in very different ways from our own, and even (shock, horror!) borrow from their traditions of faith, to our own enrichment. How did this miracle come about? Through prayer, through patience, through dialogue, through time - and through realising that, as people of faith, we had more interests and values in common than what separated us. The story of the United Reformed Church is a miniature example of that move towards unity.
Of course, that doesn't mean that Catholics and Protestants, or each congregation in the United Reformed Church, come to that, somehow became exactly the same as the others. And a good thing too! Each human being is different from the next: why should we expect everyone in one faith tradition to be the same, let alone hope for any tradition to turn its back on its past and try to behave like everyone else? Indeed, I believe our differences are God-given, for the good of us all, if we can get to know one another well enough to understand them as gifts, not obstacles. And as we are discovering through our work with Churches Together in Broomhill and Broomhall, along that road there will be pain, but also delight.
So after centuries of struggle, unity between Christians, Catholic and Protestant, is emerging. But religion is still used to motivate blood and fire; and its combatants are often among the ‘Peoples of the Book' - Jews and Christians and Muslims, who all have the Hebrew Bible in common, as once Catholics and Protestants each claimed the Bible as their own. What, then, can we do to work against that hatred arising from ignorance which once plagued our own faith? The same answers hold good: prayer, patience, dialogue, time may lead us to greater trust and an increased ability to see in our differences as well as in our common values the gifts of God.
Big words: but what can we actually do? you may be wondering. Well, one thing you can do is to come to four sessions of Muslim-Christian dialogue, to be held at the Broomhall Centre on Broomspring Lane 2.30-4pm on the four Sundays of November. And if we come not to win the argument of faith, but to listen and learn, we too will become part of God's remaking of the world, after we poor fools have tried to blow it apart.
