My dear friends,
One of things we may surely assume about the year now entering into its second month, is that it will be eventful! Whatever form of Brexit emerges (or fails to emerge), there will be widespread recrimination and division throughout these islands. We also face, it would seem, into a further and prolonged period where there is no stable government in Northern Ireland and, with this, there is the inevitability that social services, education needs and medical care will continue to face insecurity on a serious scale. On a wider canvas, there is uncertainty and instability in abundance for the world as a whole. Will the economic edifices that we take for granted just crumble or will they stagger on? With political unpredictability and volatility totally untethered on both sides of the Atlantic, where might 2019 bring us all? We do not know.
One thing that is certain is that we must not - whether as individuals or communities - seek to disengage from the realities around us, saying it is all too awful to think about or so beyond our comprehension that we must simply “let things happen”. That is the road that leads to communal evil. We each need to think carefully about the reality of what is happening around us and be prepared to voice our considered opinions, rather than being content to mouth second-hand mantras that have been provided for us by the forces of populist prejudice. Whether or not Edmund Burke said that for evil to prevail it is only sufficient for good men to do nothing is open to dispute. What is more certain is the derivation of a fuller and perhaps even more apposite comment by the philosopher John Stuart Mill in the mid-nineteenth century, “Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing”.
In 2019, we dare not “look on and do nothing” in the community of which we are part. This year marks one hundred and fifty years since the Church of Ireland was disestablished, separated (almost entirely against its will) from the Church of England to become an independent Anglican province. I will no doubt have plenty more to say on this “sesquicentenary” throughout the year but of one thing we can be certain – that if our ancestors in 1869 had not taken courage in both hands, applied true Christian courage, commitment and faith, and decided that they could build a future for the Church in this country, and had they not also been massively generous, both financially and spiritually, we would have nothing to celebrate in this year of the sesquicentenary of disestablishment. We are called to be worthy successors of the men and women of 1869.
In Christ
+Richard Armagh