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CHAPTER 2

Ministers

Presbyterian ministers served in tense border communities dogged by tit-for-tat violence, in estates controlled by loyalist paramilitaries, in urban interface areas, and in predominantly Protestant towns and villages. Their influence was not limited to church members. Their pastoral care extended beyond their own congregations, and people who otherwise never came to church attended the funerals at which they preached. Some ministers became de facto media spokespeople for the wider Protestant community. As we listened to their stories, it became clear that along with police and emergency services workers, ministers were among the first responders to violent events. This was exhausting work that could leave them too emotionally spent for much else. Some ministers felt that peacemaking was their calling, devoting themselves to reconciliation initiatives with Catholics. Others feared that peacemaking would leave them vulnerable to attacks from Rev. Ian Paisley and his Free Presbyterian Church, or from members of the Orange Order in their own congregations. Others recalled the cautionary example of Rev. David Armstrong, whose elders asked him to resign after reaching out to Catholics in his town. To capture the range of experiences, we have organised this chapter thematically: ministers as first responders, preaching, fear of Paisley, David Armstrong and making peace.

Ministers as First Responders

‘I cried in a way I never cried in my life, before or since.’

On Remembrance Sunday morning 1987, David Cupples was in his study putting the finishing touches to his sermon. He had been installed as minister in Enniskillen Presbyterian just two months before. ‘I was beavering away, preparing the service upstairs at quarter to eleven when I heard this bang.’

The Remembrance Day bomb in Enniskillen is one of the most notorious incidents of the Troubles. Eleven were killed and sixty-three injured in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) blast as they waited at the cenotaph for a service to begin. Six of the dead were from David’s congregation.

As the sirens of emergency services began to wail, it became clear that there had been a major incident. David made his way to the church hall in the centre of town. ‘Everyone was sitting around the church hall with their mouths open, and there was this deathly silence. I could feel myself physically beginning to crumble. I could feel the level of trauma in the room and I immediately knew I was going to have to deal with an absolutely overwhelming pastoral situation. But I physically looked up and I said: “Lord, I’m making a decision here not to panic. I’m trying to exercise faith.” And I felt strength coming back into me.’

Rumours began to filter in about who had died. He went to his church. ‘Some people were waiting for the service to begin, believe it or not. I said: “There will be no service this morning.”’ He visited the hospital, had lunch, and went to the house of a couple whose baby was to have been baptised that morning. ‘I went to their home and actually did the baptism, believe it or not.’

There was an evening service scheduled in David’s church. ‘We allowed the media into the church and they filmed the service. There is footage of me standing in the pulpit announcing the names of the dead and injured and breaking down in tears and trying to gather myself to continue to read out this list of names.’

Then there were the funerals. David was assisted by the Moderator and by previous ministers of the congregation. ‘You were working on adrenaline that week. I believe God gave me grace and strength. Anger within me surfaced later. Just on one or two occasions, in the normal course of events, I found myself angry. When I stopped and asked where it was coming from, I realised that it was from that incident.’

After the last funeral, David heard that another member of his congregation, Ronnie Hill, had lapsed into a coma. Ronnie was Enniskillen high school’s head teacher and had been at the cenotaph with his Sunday School class. David visited his clerk of session.

I said to him, ‘John, I honestly fear I am about to go over the edge. If a phone call comes through that Ronnie has died, I don’t think I can cope with it.’ So, John read a psalm and we both knelt down to pray and that’s when the healing took place. He prayed, very, very calmly. But when I started to pray, I cried in a way I never cried in my life, before or since. There was just this absolutely enormous reservoir of pain and sorrow that built up during the course of the week.

Ronnie entered a vegetative state. David visited Ronnie and his wife Noreen twice a week, every week, till the family left the area in 1991. Ronnie never regained consciousness, dying in 2000.

‘I was in over my head.’

Russell Birney, the son of a grocer in Lisnaskea, Co. Fermanagh, felt called to minister around the border. In 1973, he submitted his name for the vacancy in Downshire Road, Newry. He was called, and shortly after added the convenorship of the rural congregations of Newtownhamilton and Creggan to his charge. ‘Newry was afflicted with bombings and killings of neighbours of mine. Creggan is about a mile from Crossmaglen, which was the cockpit of the rural campaign of the IRA. It was one incident after the other. I had to travel up from Newry along roads, day and night, that were potentially booby trapped for the army.’ A rota of men was organised to guard his church in Newry, day and night, ‘because there were incidents of churches being attacked and people being attacked coming out of churches’.

On 1 September 1975, Russell got a call ‘about an incident in Tullyvallen’. The IRA had opened fire in an Orange Hall. Four men were killed instantly, and a fifth died later of his wounds. Eighty-year-old John Johnston, a member of Russell’s Creggan congregation, was among the dead.

That night, Russell visited the families.

I wasn’t trained pastorally for an incident like this. When I came down from Tullyvallen that night, having visited those homes – I hadn’t seen any bodies, I was just with the relatives – I sat on the edge of my bed and cried. I saw the children of some of the deceased and seriously injured. I called in hospital and I had seen some of them being treated. It was hard at that time. It was an aspect of ministry that I wasn’t prepared for. I was in over my head, so I had to adapt.

Five months later, two of the guns used in Tullyvallen were turned on the ten Protestant workmen murdered in the Kingsmills massacre, just a few miles away. None of Russell’s congregants were killed in Kingsmills, but he took part in the funerals and provided pastoral support in the community.

Russell also needed support, which he found in other local ministers and his congregations. ‘They were very dark days and they demanded a lot of time. My congregation was very good in allowing me to give that time, because they were sympathetic in every sense to it.’

‘I had to keep it all together for their sake.’

One minister served in both rural and urban areas. He had members murdered or forced out of their homes in every location. He recalled the names and manner of death of many people. ‘The Troubles disappointed me. I felt so sorry that so many lives were lost. Meaningless, meaningless. You are sitting beside a widow who has just been told that her husband has been shot dead or blown to pieces – it’s not easy.’ Like other ministers, he had not been trained for this aspect of his job. ‘You deal with it differently in each home. Sometimes you don’t say anything. There is nothing to say. What can you say? Except that you are deeply sorry. You sit with them, and weep with them.’ He said he ‘prayed constantly’, and leaned on his wife for support.

When you got a phone call, you didn’t know what you were going to see. That can be quite shattering. So, you prayed that God would give you the strength to cope with this situation. You go to the house. However much you are breaking up inside you have to be in control for their sake. Because they’re going to say, ‘What are we going to do now?’ Even the very practical things of arranging a funeral, the very practical things like there’s no wage going to come in at the end of the week. I had to be able to keep it all together for their sake.

‘You never hear our stories.’

William Bingham grew up near the border in Markethill, Co. Armagh. One day a bomb in the town centre damaged his home. A few years later, the IRA left a bomb outside his family’s house when they couldn’t get close enough to detonate it at the police station. William was at school. It destroyed the house, injuring his grandmother, though not seriously.

We lived through many shootings in our town. I’d have known many people who were killed. The Kingsmills massacre was just six miles down the road. We had a shooting at the Tullyvallen Orange Hall where many Protestants were killed. We were at all those funerals. At my grandmother’s funeral, while we were carrying her remains out of the church, the police came to tell us that a bomb had been planted underneath somebody’s car who was a mourner. The whole graveyard had to be evacuated. We did not feel like we were being singled out, but certainly we felt a close affinity with people who were suffering in the Troubles.

From age eight, William felt called to be a minister. After ordination, he received his first call to the congregations of Pomeroy and Sandholes in East Tyrone, another Troubles hot spot. ‘I talked it over with my wife, and she was from a similar background to myself. Both of us felt that if God was calling us there, we had nothing to fear.’ In his first year, three people in his congregations were murdered and the area endured a series of bomb and mortar attacks.

When a member of his congregation was murdered, William was the first person the police contacted. They wanted him to visit the family first to break the news. William would pray with his wife and then make his way to the home of the bereaved family. ‘There is no easy way to break the news that your husband has been blown up, or that your son has been killed or kidnapped.’ From that point on, he was at the family’s disposal. ‘You read and pray with them, and you spend night and day with them. You try not to leave the house at all – 24/7.’ William helped plan the funeral, and then conducted it. If the family wanted him to send out a political message at a funeral, he obliged. ‘I would have been saying what I thought of the IRA. I would have been saying what I thought of government if they were trying to appease the IRA.’

For William, his pastoral duty of comforting the family included this political element. ‘The families were so thankful. There was this real desire to have a voice, to be heard. They would say: you always hear the other side, but you never hear our stories.’

‘I was left there very much on my own.’

Roy Neill was minister of First Castlederg, Co. Tyrone, for four decades; and of Killeter, Co. Tyrone, for two decades. A native of Co. Leitrim in the Republic, he felt at home among the farmers on the other side of the border. He had been in Castlederg for fifteen years before the first member of his congregation was murdered, in 1972. There would be eight more. ‘Then there were many more murders of other people who weren’t members of my church at all. I think there were thirty-one deaths in that area and seventy bombings. The town itself would have been absolutely wrecked on a number of occasions.’ Roy kept a scrapbook of the newspaper clippings describing their deaths. ‘A lot of them were young families. They were people who served in the security forces; that’s why they were targeted. They were hard-working people. They joined up to try and help the country get back to normality again.’

Roy called on the families in the immediate aftermath and continued for years with follow-up visits. It was important for the families that their relatives were not forgotten. Families often paid for plaques or memorials to be placed in the church building, bearing their loved ones’ names.

The Moderator assisted Roy with every funeral. Local clergy from the other denominations, Protestant and Catholic, also supported him. It was still difficult. ‘I always felt that I was left there very much on my own, dealing with people. You were back and forth to their homes frequently after these things happened, to see how they were and if there was anything you could help them with.’ Roy’s health suffered under the strain and he applied twice for early retirement. ‘Somehow I endured and fulfilled my full term.’ It has been two decades since he retired, but he visits Castlederg occasionally. He is glad the memorials in the church keep people’s memories alive. ‘When you visit, you might see people who you watched shedding tears at the time of their troubles. You’d meet them again, and the tears would come back to their eyes. We came through a lot together. I would hope that whatever I did, my ministry among them would have helped them.’

Preaching

‘The statement prevented retaliation.’

Russell Birney looked out over those gathered in Clarkesbridge Presbyterian. The small church was overflowing with mourners. It was a united service, organised after the murders in Tullyvallen Orange Hall. He read out a statement pledging that there would be no retaliation. It was an agreed statement, which Rev. John Hawthorne of the Reformed Presbyterian Church had helped him write. ‘I read out a statement, pleading for peace and that there be no retaliation for this event.’ Russell invited those who agreed with the statement to stand. Not everyone stood immediately, so he waited. And waited. And waited – until everyone in the church was on their feet.

During a time marked by tit-for-tat killings, it was a remarkable occasion. ‘I’ve been told subsequently that the statement prevented retaliation because there were people at the service who were determined they were going to avenge. We were speaking for the victims, for those who were wounded, because they were fine people who would not have wanted revenge. There was no tit-for-tat following Tullyvallen Orange Hall.’

‘No road is worth a life.’

During his time in Pomeroy and Sandholes, William Bingham was Deputy Grand Chaplain of the Orange Order and County Grand Chaplain of Armagh. He negotiated on behalf of the Orange Order during the most volatile years of Drumcree (1996–8). The Orange Order sought to parade to the Church of Ireland in Drumcree using the Garvaghy Road, which traversed a nationalist area. The run-up to the parade in 1996 and 1997 had been marred by violence and rioting. In the early hours of Sunday 12 July 1998, just hours before Orangemen from throughout Northern Ireland were due to gather at Drumcree, three young boys were murdered in an Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) firebomb attack at their home in Ballymoney, Co. Antrim. Richard, Mark and Jason Quinn were from a mixed religious background – their mother was Catholic. The murders were understood as sectarian and driven by the tensions around Drumcree.

William was due to preach that morning in an Orange service at his church in Pomeroy. Given his high profile in the negotiations, the media descended en masse. William was as convinced as ever that the Orange Order had a right to parade, but not at any cost.

I spoke without notes because I thought, this has to come from my heart. The text I took was from the book of Micah: ‘What does the Lord require of you but to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.’ I talked about the justice of the cause and the right that we had. Then I said: ‘No road is worth a life. Not the life of three little boys. Not the life of anybody. What’s happened in Ballymoney is wrong and is to be condemned. And if you’re intent on going to Drumcree tonight to cause violence, then go home. Don’t come.’

William’s words echoed beyond the walls of his rural church. First and Deputy First Ministers David Trimble and Seamus Mallon issued a statement: ‘Nothing can be gained from continuing this stand-off. As the Rev. William Bingham said, no road is worth a life and we echo that statement.’ Further violence was averted. But William acknowledged that, ‘Some felt I had betrayed the cause at Drumcree. Others were glad that it had been said and were very supportive.’

‘We must offer forgiveness unconditionally.’

On the day of the Enniskillen bomb, Gordon Wilson, a Methodist whose daughter Marie had been killed, gave an interview in which he said he bore no ill will towards her killers. His words lingered with David Cupples. ‘Gordon Wilson’s interview created a different atmosphere but polarised opinions over what is forgiveness. Did he have the right to forgive them? What does forgiveness mean? I knew that sooner or later the issue of forgiveness would have to be addressed.’ Five weeks after the bomb, David preached on forgiveness. He said then: ‘The debate rages in the Christian church about whether you can forgive people before they repent. I believe if we are to follow the example of Jesus, we must offer forgiveness unconditionally. But the person who has committed the injury cannot actually have an experience of forgiveness unless they admit they have done something wrong.’12

Fear of Paisley

We did not ask anyone we interviewed about Paisley, but most of the ministers brought him up. They said that the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI) – from its local ministers to the leaders of the denomination – feared Paisley would attract Presbyterians into his Free Presbyterian Church. The result was that PCI became more conservative and less open to peacemaking than it might have been. One put it this way:

We were under pressure from the Paisleyite faction who would be very quick to say ‘Traitor!’ Paisley was a great problem for our ministers. A lot of our members were influenced by Paisley. A lot of ministers would have loved to have said and done more but that Paisley threat inhibited them from saying too much, too plainly, too publicly.

Another minister recalled how when Paisley emerged as a public figure in the 1960s, people at first treated him as ‘a figure of fun, a relic of another century’. He was only a teenager at the time, but he recalled one ‘very decent Presbyterian elder, saying late one night: “I don’t agree with his methods, but there is a lot in what he says.” And I should maybe have paid more attention to that at the time.’ After he became a minister, he was dismayed at the impact Paisley had on PCI. ‘If you were a Presbyterian minister in a small community and you did something that displeased some of your people, then the Paisleyites were in like a shot. You’re in a small congregation. The Free Presbyterians are starting up the road. You’re not going to do something that’s going to see forty families disappear.’ In 1980, PCI voted to leave the ecumenical World Council of Churches (WCC). There were concerns that WCC humanitarian aid was being diverted to terrorist groups in Africa. But it is likely that Paisley’s anti-ecumenical activism was another factor. This minister continued: ‘I think a lot of people within Irish Presbyterianism shared Paisley’s basic theology. Did he bring us out of the World Council of Churches? I doubt it. But did he have an influence in that? I think he did.’

Many Presbyterian congregations were bitterly divided in their opinions about Paisley. We spoke to one minister who served in a rural congregation with many members of the Orange Order. ‘There were a succession of special services: for the local Orange Lodge, the District Orange Lodge, the Black, etc.’ On one occasion, ‘one of these firebrands wanted Paisley to conduct the service in my church’. The minister – taking a considerable risk – refused. A man standing nearby said, ‘Then we’ll just let him speak in the field.’ He was met with this pithy retort from another man: ‘It’s the right place for him!’

David Armstrong

Some ministers said that what had happened to David Armstrong in First Limavady, Co. Londonderry, served as a cautionary tale: anyone who tried to reach out to Catholics would not be welcome in PCI. Just as we did not ask people about Paisley, we did not ask people about Armstrong either – but they wanted to talk about him. We also interviewed him.

David served in Limavady from 1981 to 1985, making a series of reconciliatory gestures towards Catholics. The most widely known were on Christmas Day in 1983 and 1984, when David walked across the street from his church to Christ the King Catholic Church to shake hands with Fr Kevin Mullan. Armstrong and his family received death threats from loyalist paramilitaries, and eventually the elders of his church asked him to resign. He resigned in May 1985 to train for ministry in the Church of England. He later became a Church of Ireland minister in Cork before retiring to Northern Ireland.

First Limavady was David’s first post after serving an assistantship in Carrickfergus. He was an evangelical, and he threw himself into his duties. He also became a chaplain in nearby Magilligan prison.

I found there was absolutely no difference in the UVF and IRA prisoners. I couldn’t say one was worse than the other. I was in the cells with Catholic prisoners and I was not ever wanting to make them into Prods [Protestants]. There were people writing to me and saying, ‘David, it’s lovely the way the Catholic prisoners listen to you. I hope you’re saving them into the Protestant church.’ I was saying, ‘No, even though I’m an evangelical Christian, my duty is to love people and not make them into me.’ So people felt like you’ve fallen down in your job for not ‘saving’ Catholics.

Christ the King Catholic Church was still under construction when David arrived. In October 1981, as it neared completion, it was damaged in a loyalist bomb attack. ‘When the roof was restored and the church was opened, the clergy all got invitations. I said I would go. But the replies the priest got: “Dear Mr Priest, regarding the opening of your premises, I will not be going to your Papish house of Satan.” That was one of the nicest replies.’ David received threatening phone calls and his children were harassed at school. ‘They came home with spittle on their faces being told: “Your daddy better not go to the mass house.”’ David told his congregation he was attending because it was the right thing to do. Some people left his congregation after that. No other Protestant clergy accepted the invitation, but the governor of Magilligan, a former Presbyterian minister, accompanied David.

On Christmas Day 1983, Kevin met David at the door of his church and asked, ‘Would you object if I shook hands with your people on Christmas morning coming in to church?’ David invited him to greet his people from the front of the church, and Kevin did. When David’s service ended, he walked across the road and stood at the back of Kevin’s church. The service was about to conclude. Kevin saw him, and asked him to speak from the front. ‘When I finished, they burst into applause. They stood and cheered. Old ladies of ninety said, “This is the happiest Christmas we’ve ever had. We never thought a Protestant minister from across the road would ever be seen in our church.”’

On Christmas Day 1984, David and Kevin were set to repeat the goodwill gestures. About forty Free Presbyterians protested outside David’s church. Three were inside among the Presbyterian worshippers. When Kevin went to the front to speak, a Free Presbyterian stood up and accused David of ‘treason before God’. There were scuffles in the church. David sighed as he recalled these incidents. ‘Saying Happy Christmas – the Free Presbyterians and the Orange Order went absolutely berserk.’

The pressure on David intensified. On a trip to Belfast, he was abducted by loyalist paramilitaries.

I went through to a back room of an illegal bar and I said something stupid: ‘Men, I think you’re more frightened of me than I am of you.’ But they came to the conclusion that if the fundamentalists want to kill me, let them do it. They didn’t accept my outlook but they admired my guts. One of them said they were going to give me twenty minutes to get away.

David finally accepted an invitation from sympathetic clerics in the Church of England to retrain for Anglican ministry. As he was leaving for England, Rev. David Bailie from Bangor West Presbyterian invited him to come as an assistant.

The police said, ‘David, the people who want to kill you will find it easy to get you in Bangor.’ I feared that some of my colleagues would say, ‘He never really intended to go. It was all a bit of drama.’ I didn’t want my children to suffer anymore. Now they’re pretty proud to say, ‘Yes, the Rev David Armstrong is my dad. We can hold our heads high.’

Making Peace

‘Maybe another word for faith is risk.’

Ruth Patterson took a deep breath. Along with her elders, she had travelled for a weekend away in an enclosed convent in Dublin. It was the early 1990s, and Ruth’s congregation was in Seymour Hill, Dunmurry, in a loyalist estate with a heavy paramilitary presence. One of her elders was an Orangeman. She had not been sure if he would come. As is customary in an enclosed convent, the Sisters sat behind a grille. The Presbyterians sat on the other side. They had just shared their experiences: what it was like to be a Presbyterian elder; what it was like to live in an enclosed Catholic community. They had shared an act of worship, singing together, ‘Jesus is Lord, creation’s voice proclaims it’. Ruth said, ‘Some of my big men were in tears.’ They had been served tea, and were talking informally through the grille. Ruth had spotted her Orangeman, conversing animatedly with a nun: ‘Their noses were right up against the grille, and both of them were chatting away. It turned out both of them had been born in Derry, and in the discovery of the one beloved birthplace all difference had gone out the window. I just stood there and thought: I am witnessing a little miracle of reconciliation.’

Ruth was the first woman ordained in PCI, in 1976.13 By the time of this encounter, she had been in her congregation for nearly fourteen years. This little miracle could not have happened on day one.

I do not think any of the denominations were as prophetic or courageous as they could have been during the Troubles. I can understand on one level, especially for clergy who were married and had families. To step out would have been horrendously difficult. But if we couldn’t do it, what right have we to ask anybody else to do it? We are meant to be in leadership, you know.

As a young woman, Ruth had been inspired by Rev. Ray Davey, a Presbyterian chaplain at Queen’s who founded the ecumenical Corrymeela community in 1965. She believed passionately that Christians of all denominations should work together. But she knew this wouldn’t happen overnight. In her first post as an assistant minister in Larne, a predominantly Protestant town, she attended an inter-church clergy meeting. ‘Where are all the priests?’ she asked the other ministers, all Protestant. ‘There was a silence, and they then resumed their conversation as if I hadn’t asked anything.’

When Ruth was called to her own congregation, she helped start a praise group among the Protestant churches on the estate. The praise group used songs and prayers inspired by the charismatic movement, which had also made in-roads in Catholicism. She was delighted when some Catholics began to attend. She talked, listened, prayed with people, slowly building relationships. Protestant and Catholic women from the praise group set up a prayer group. Then they set up a clergy group. Then the clergy wanted to exchange pulpits. Ruth asked her elders to vote on whether a priest could preach in their pulpit. Fifteen of the twenty agreed. She didn’t go ahead with it, because she wanted everyone on board. A few months later all twenty said yes. ‘These steps were big for them.’

Ruth knew that not everyone in the estate was happy with her approach. But she earned the respect of the paramilitaries. Although not churchgoers, some of the paramilitaries asked for her support in times of distress. Ruth did not turn them away. ‘Obviously not everybody would have been happy with what the majority of the committed people in our congregation were doing. But nobody left us to join the Free Presbyterians. They all stayed with it.’

It would have been easier to focus only on her own flock, tending just to their needs. For Ruth, that would not have been what it meant to live out her faith. ‘In times of adversity and threat people look to external rules and regulations and batten down the hatches rather than stepping out. Maybe another word for faith is risk.’

‘After that I got very unhappy phone calls.’

Barry was minister in a border town. The windows of his church were blown out repeatedly in bomb blasts. He buried members of his congregation. Some members belonged to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). They told him that IRA men taunted them in the town, letting them know that they knew who had killed their families and colleagues. On one occasion, he was asked to take the funeral of a loyalist paramilitary who was nominally associated with his congregation.

I said, ‘Certainly, I’ll do the funeral gladly, but not if there is paramilitary presence.’ A half hour later there was another call to say that I had not been invited to take the service, and on no account was I to take the service. So, another clergyman with known political associations came and took the service. There were about fifteen buses parked at the roadside which had transported paramilitaries from Belfast and elsewhere. During the funeral it was said from the pulpit that it was a disgrace that the man’s own minister refused to take the service. After that I got very unhappy phone calls, threatening phone calls.

While Barry’s wife Sandra remembered the tensions in the town, she also remembered those who quietly built relationships with each other. Women started prayer groups. One evening, a Catholic woman walked into a meeting. There was an Orangeman present, who regarded her suspiciously. Barry recalled,

By the time the Catholic woman had finished praying, the Orangeman had no doubt whatsoever that she was a Christian. You couldn’t have prayed the prayer she did if you hadn’t been. It was quite the transformation to see his face when he saw she came into enemy territory and prayed as she did. It did him a world of good!

‘There were often gun battles on the road, riots outside the church.’

Husband and wife Patton and Marlene Taylor both served as Presbyterian ministers during the Troubles. In 1985, Marlene was the first mother ordained in PCI. Patton, from Scotland, had been ministering since 1977 in Duncairn Presbyterian in North Belfast. The local Protestant population had largely fled. The church looked directly over the republican New Lodge area. There was an army barracks across the street. Most members of the congregation commuted from the suburbs. The manse was adjacent to the church and Patton and Marlene lived there with their five children. Patton said,

I consciously chose to go there because it was a Presbyterian church in the middle of what was now a republican area. There were all kinds of issues around that but I went – perhaps with a certain naiveté but also with some conviction. I felt that a church in that situation ought to have some witness in the immediate local community.

Duncairn Presbyterian worked with the nearby Antrim Road Baptist Church to set up summer schemes for children and teenagers. Many Catholic children attended. These activities grew into the 174 Trust, which employed youth workers and hosted short-term volunteers from Northern Ireland and around the world. Tony Macauley’s memoir, Little House on the Peace Line, tells the story of that ministry from a youth worker’s perspective.14 Patton said, ‘There were often gun battles on the road, riots outside the church, petrol bombs flying. We had a period where the congregation had a contract with a local glazier to come in Mondays and fix the windows that had been broken in the manse that week.’

Marlene ministered in Cooke Centenary Presbyterian on the Ormeau Road in South Belfast. ‘For me, that was a release to get out of the manse and to go to a community that was more mixed.’ There were still Troubles-related deaths in the area. The local clergy fellowship took it in turns to visit the bereaved, going together in Catholic–Protestant pairs. Marlene said, ‘We felt it was important to keep a visible presence on the road for a kind of stability. We wouldn’t meet behind closed doors. We would meet in a café, or a community centre, and be seen walking down the road and being together.’ Marlene journeyed back and forth across the city through army checkpoints. ‘It was particularly difficult to get back into the manse again in the evenings to feed my baby. I had to literally go and face the army to negotiate to get in. If they didn’t let me in, I would get in by some way. That was how strong the feeling was that I had to get back in to feed that child.’

The Duncairn ministers and youth workers met every morning to pray. The Taylors hosted evening prayers in their home for their family and the volunteers who lived with them. People in their congregations offered varying degrees of support. Marlene said, ‘I think if we hadn’t had that group of committed people in the church whom we could have contacted day or night, we wouldn’t have made it. We didn’t feel supported by the Presbyterian Church as such. No one centrally contacted us during tense periods, and that was hard.’

‘The call to ministry was very much about peacemaking.’

Abigail became a minister because she wanted to contribute to peace. ‘For me the call to ministry was very much about peacemaking. If the church wasn’t going to be doing something about that, then who was going to be doing it?’ She grew up in a tense border town where the curtains were drawn in her school’s windows during bomb scares. ‘Like that was going to save us!’ When she was a teen, a Catholic couple she respected was murdered by the notorious Glenanne gang. When she went to church the next Sunday, the murders weren’t mentioned at all. ‘There was no acknowledgement that it happened. No apology, no nothing, which seemed to me just brutal. Plus, we couldn’t go to the chapel for the service because those were the days when Protestants didn’t go to mass. You didn’t step your foot over a chapel door – you’d have been in big trouble.’ Abigail later discovered that members of her congregation were in the Glenanne gang. ‘That was shocking. The fact that the church would condemn [loyalist murderers], yet they were sitting among us, they were part of us.’

Abigail’s first post was in an urban interface area. ‘The Troubles were unavoidable. You would have a baptism and people would turn up at church with their UDA [Ulster Defence Association] or UVF badges on.’ In some ways, the urban interface was more open than her border upbringing. There was already an inter-church clergy group. She received invitations from local Catholic priests to speak in their churches, and to become involved in grassroots peacemaking with paramilitaries.

I’d just arrived from the country, and there was a Catholic priest phoning me. It was scary. Did I consider republicans my enemies? Absolutely. Did I think of those Catholic priests as my enemies? I wouldn’t say that. But I wouldn’t say I was too sure of them either, at that point. But I believed it to be a Gospel call and a Gospel obligation. That’s why I did it.

As a woman, Abigail was perceived as non-threatening. This allowed her to say things and make contacts with people which might not have been possible if she were a man. She remained convinced that Christians in a violent, divided society should be peacemakers. ‘For me, faith is spelt “r-i-s-k”. If I hadn’t been prepared to do those things, and if my congregation hadn’t been prepared to do them with me, I don’t think we would have been faithful people.’

‘I had no fear of the UDA and the UVF.’

Bill Moore grew up on the Shankill Road, the son of a lorry driver and a stitcher. His parents worked hard to send him to the Royal Belfast Academical Institution (Inst). Inst was, he said, a ‘snobby’ school for a lad from the Shankill. In 1981, he accepted the post in Taughmonagh Presbyterian in South Belfast. It was a place most ministers didn’t want to go: a socially disadvantaged estate with a strong UDA and UVF influence. ‘I told them I would stay five years – I was there twenty.’ Bill loved the people and identified with them due to his own background.

Bill methodically built relationships with people in Taughmonagh. ‘I had no fear of the UDA and the UVF on the estate, because I’d visited their parents in hospital and visited them in gaol. I visited their houses, married some of their connections. A generation grew up and had known me.’

These relationships stood Bill in good stead when he felt he should challenge the paramilitaries. In 1991, Catholic taxi driver Harry Conlon was abducted by the UDA and murdered in Taughmonagh.

I put a little cross where he was shot and it disappeared. So, I put a bigger cross in the spot and it disappeared. Then the big cross appeared back and there was written on it: ‘Bill Moore, Rot in Hell. Death to all Taigs.’ A taxi driver in the estate told me it was women who actually done that. I said, ‘It’s good to know that it wasn’t the real hierarchy of the UDA!’

On another occasion, the UDA ‘disciplined’ men on the estate who did not have ‘approved girlfriends’. In other words, they were dating Catholics. Bill’s church committee circulated a flyer that read:

During the week three young men from Taughmonagh have been shot in the leg by Taughmonagh UDA and it is rumoured that they plan to do the same to certain others. Our lives and the lives of our children are now under threat. The church is organising a peaceful protest against these shootings. The protest is not against the UDA, but against illegal punishments.

The letter encouraged people on the estate to give information to the police. The UDA wrote a letter back that said: ‘If you think the police are friends of Taughmonagh, you’re living on a different planet.’

After that, Bill’s church was daubed with graffiti and an arson attempt destroyed the church kitchen. It was rumoured he would leave the estate, but Bill believed God wanted him there – and that there were people on the estate who wanted him there, too.

In one public meeting, a UDA man attacked me and one wee woman stood up and she says, ‘Now, keep Bill around because when I got my house burgled he came round and he gave me money and you lot didn’t do that!’ The UDA man said, ‘I actually like Bill Moore, it’s just the things he says I don’t like!’

‘He’s still alive.’

Bangor West was established as a new congregation in 1961. David Bailie was there from the beginning. A predominantly Protestant town, Bangor did not experience the Troubles in the same way as mixed border areas or inner-city interfaces. Members of the security forces often moved there for its relative safety.

David experienced ‘a baptism of the Holy Spirit’ in the late 1960s. This is a personal encounter with God, often involving physical or emotional healing. Bangor West started a healing service, which met after its Sunday evening service. Those who attended began praying for the safety of people in the security forces. ‘People would give the names of policemen, and at the end of each session, the final thing we would do, would be to name those policemen. Many of them we would not know. The name would be given by somebody who would have cared for them.’

David shared two experiences which he believes demonstrated God’s answers to their prayers.

A policeman was coming home one night, parking his car in his garage. As he walked to his front door he heard a voice saying, ‘Run for it!’ Which he did. The door was normally locked. This night it wasn’t locked. He rushed through it and a hail of bullets came in after him. He’s still alive. The other was a young man just starting off as a policeman. There was a bomb scare. He was on the beat with a senior policeman. The older policeman said to the young man, ‘You and I will go down and warn people.’ As he was walking, he heard a voice say, ‘Fall flat!’ Which he did. And the bomb went off. He was covered with shrapnel and when he was pulled out, he said, ‘Who called for me to fall flat?’ Nobody had.

‘If they think you are on a personal crusade, they won’t go with you.’

Husband and wife Stanley and Valerie Stewart ministered in Clones, Co. Monaghan at the time of writing. Stanley was ordained in 1997, after a career in teaching. He also served as a part-time RUC reservist. He attended the special General Assembly in 1990 which produced the Coleraine Declaration on peace. The Coleraine Declaration reflected the Stewarts’ perspective even before Stanley’s ordination. He said, ‘I can remember thinking, “God is speaking.”’ Valerie was also a teacher. Both were involved with faith-based cross-community initiatives where they taught in Dungiven, Co. Londonderry, a town with a strong republican movement. Because of the security risk, Stanley wore concealed body armour and ‘carried a side arm as I taught in a secondary school’.

Stanley’s first congregation was in Donagheady, Co. Tyrone. They secured European Union peace funding to renovate a derelict cottage in the grounds of the church into a cross-community centre. They felt supported by the congregation, but some people in the community – from both nationalist and unionist persuasions – resisted their work. They had been at university in Coleraine during the David Armstrong controversy and the lesson they learned was that if you wanted to bring people along, it was important to move slowly and build trust. Stanley said, ‘If only David Armstrong had a support network. If you run too far ahead it can be counter-productive. Yet I have great admiration for his willingness to tackle the issues that weren’t being tackled.’ Valerie added, ‘It’s so important not to go out on your own. You must have others that you can trust, those people you can call who you know will pray for you. You have to gain people’s confidence. If they think you are on a personal crusade, they won’t go with you.’