07715
November 2, 2007
‘Love neighbor, love self’
PC(USA) Northern Ireland missionary sees signs of lasting peace
PC(USA) missionary to Northern Ireland Doug Baker (right), his wife Elaine (left) and their three children. The Bakers have served in Northern Ireland for 28 years. LOUISVILLE — The very long peace process in Northern Ireland after decades of “The Troubles” seems to be taking root, but much remains to be done, says Doug Baker, who has served as a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission worker there for 28 years.
“I sense a significant turning of the corner in Northern Ireland,” Baker told the Presbyterian News Service in early October while he was here preparing for Mission Challenge ’07 — a month-long effort to reconnect PC(USA) missionaries with presbyteries and congregations for spiritual, communication and financial support. Some 48 missionaries have itinerated in 144 of the denominations 173 presbyteries.
“Trust has built up,” Baker said of the often-violent conflict between majority Protestants (mostly Presbyterians) and minority Catholics in the troubled British province. “Previous power-sharing involved only the moderates, leaving the extremes on both sides to bring it down.
“Now the extremes are in so lasting peace seems real. The new government seems to be working.”
But that is only the beginning, Baker said. Reconciliation of the two communities is still a distant dream, leaving most neighborhoods and schools strictly segregated. “A vast majority of the murders from ‘the Troubles’ are unsolved and there’s no consensus about reconciling the past,” he said.
“There’s a danger that people will be content with separate Protestant and Catholic areas and schools which will still leave Northern Ireland divided in so many ways,” he said. “That falls far short of biblical shalom and long-term stability.”
And so the church has its work and ministry cut out for it. “The church needs to take on the role of pushing for something more,” Baker said. “There’s still lots of apathy and its hard to motivate people when things are going well and the violence is way down.”
Young people are the key to Northern Ireland’s peaceful future, he said. “We need creative approaches such as youth sports programs where kids learn the sports of the culture and thereby learn each other’s traditions.”
Economic development is another key factor in building a new culture of peace in Northern Ireland, Baker added. “We have gone from 20 percent unemployment 15 years ago to less than 4 percent today,” he said. “If people have work and a livelihood, they tend to feel more positive about everything and peacemaking becomes more possible.”
Peacemaking is central to the Gospel, Baker insisted, “so we need a ministry thrust of building peacemaking issues and activities into the mainstream of church life.” The Irish church has developed a program called “Hard Gospel.”
Through a variety of means, it seeks to deliver the simple but much-needed Christian message in this long-troubled land, Baker said, “Love neighbor, love self.”
During Mission Challenge ’07, Baker is itinerating in the presbyteries of Baltimore, Blackhawk, Detroit and Lake Huron. |
