In April 1998, every home in Northern Ireland found in their daily mail a copy of a document. This document, The Good Friday Agreement, had recently been signed in the city of Belfast and would prove to be a major step forward in resolving a long and complicated conflict. Outbreaks of violence between British Protestants and Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland have occurred for centuries, but in the late-1960s a three-decade-long era of riots, paramilitary battles, bombings, and military occupation in the province commenced. By the time the agreement of April 10, 1998 was signed, over 3,500 people had been killed in the Troubles.

Yet by no means did this agreement mark an end to the conflict; rather, it signaled the beginning of a process. The Good Friday Agreement created a political and constitutional framework that would allow the underlying issues to be addressed slowly, through sharing of power, negotiation, and compromise. Today, violence is rare, but it has not entirely stopped. As recently as May 29, 2014, a bomb was detonated in a Londonderry hotel (Reuters, “Bomb explodes in Northern Ireland hotel…” May 30, 2014). Belfast remains scarred by over twenty miles of peace lines, high walls built to separate Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods. According to a 2012 survey, 69 percent of residents who live near these walls do not want them torn down.1

On the northern coast of Ireland in County Antrim, a small center is dedicated to furthering the peace process. Corrymeela is an ecumenical Christian community that provides a refuge of tolerance and respect, a place where honest, public dialogue can lead to healing and reconciliation. In July 2012, a group of scholars, supported by the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts and by Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, gathered at Corrymeela to attend a three-week seminar. These scholars studied and travelled together throughout Northern Ireland to learn about both the history of the Troubles and the ongoing work of reconciliation.

In this issue of The Cresset, we are pleased to present four essays that had their genesis in this seminar. In “W. H. Auden, Michael Longley, and Poetry as Citizenship in Northern Ireland,” Baylor University’s Richard Rankin Russell explores how poetry can help us imagine and create communities where peace and justice might flourish. In “Conflicted Visions,” Whitworth University’s Charles Andrews considers how the myth of martyrdom has been depicted in film, particularly in the 2008 film Hunger. In “Northern Ireland’s Memories of 1916 and The Trouble with The Past,” Utah State University’s Tammy M. Proctor demonstrates how public memorials of the Troubles and earlier conflicts reflect a gendered model of heroism. And in “Empathy and Horror,” Valparaiso University’s David S. Western reflects on the tension that the reconciliation process creates between two biblical injunctions: to demand justice for those who take the life of another human being, but also to offer forgiveness even to the worst of sinners.

Much remains to be done in the work of reconciliation, in Northern Ireland and elsewhere around the world. There is likely much work of reconciliation to be done right in the communities where we all live. It is an ongoing work, a process that might never be fully completed. Yet we have hope that someday all our wounds and divisions will be healed and that the broken world in which we live will someday be transformed, and the horizon of our hope is expanded by the work of the people of Corrymeela.

—JPO

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1. John Byrne, Cathy Gormley Heenan, and Gillian Robinson. Attitudes to Peace Walls: Research Report to Office of First Minister and Deputy First Ministers. Belfast: University of Ulster, June 2012. http://www.ark.ac.uk/peacewalls2012/peacewalls2012.pdf.