Unfortunately, a perception is being fuelled that while Christian Churches are quite happy to fulfil their pastoral requirements when it comes to events marking the traditional Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day each November, but when it comes to making a very public stand for security force veterans who are facing potential legal action, those same churches appear to be unusually quiet.
If the March for Jesus movement can mobilise thousands of people in Belfast on a Saturday, surely the Christian Churches can mobilise their flocks to publicly appear outside courts in support of veterans facing allegations.
Perhaps the various Christian denominations and places of worship need to take a long, hard look beyond the memorial plaques in their churches and ask the question - how many veterans are in their congregations and fellowships, and do they not also deserve pastoral support in a crisis?
Our Troubles veterans must not be allowed to become either the forgotten community, or indeed, the scapegoat community in the legacy debate.
There is a growing perception, especially among the pro-Union community, that Troubles veterans are being ‘thrown under the bus’ politically simply to placate the pan nationalist front.
This perception fuels the notion that the establishment would rather ‘hang out to dry’ politically our Troubles veterans from the security forces rather than go after suspected terrorists who committed some of the most heinous crimes of the 20th century on this geographical island.
Put bluntly, the Christian Churches need to set aside their theological differences on how to get to heaven, women wearing hats to Sunday worship, or what type of musical instruments should be used in praise, and form a united front to put pressure on the British and Irish governments to leave the Troubles veterans alone, and start publicly naming the terrorist suspects - dead or alive - for unsolved atrocities during the conflict.
For example, look at the number of serving and former security forces personnel who were murdered by the republican terror gangs. Given the degree to which the British intelligence community infiltrated the republican gangs, surely there must be a file of suspects somewhere who were known to have participated in terrorist attacks.
Republicans seem very quick to demand inquiries into attacks by the loyalist gangs, or incidents involving the security forces, even when republican terrorists have been caught red-handed in the act of terror and been shot dead by special forces.
Recently, there was a commemoration to mark the 50th anniversary of the Tullyvallen Orange Hall massacre on 1st September 1975 when IRA gunmen attacked a meeting of the Tullyvallen lodge near the border with the Irish republic. Five Orangemen died as a result of that attack.
In November 1977, a 22-year-old man was convicted in connection with the Tullyvallen killings. The court heard he had driven the killers to and from the scene. The same man was convicted in connection with the killing of two UDR members. He received seven life sentences and was also jailed for being a member of the IRA and having guns and explosives.
The Tullyvallen massacre is especially poignant for me as it happened on my 16th birthday. In later years, I accompanied my dad, Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE, a senior Orangeman, when he conducted the annual memorial service for the victims of that episode of ethnic cleansing.
It was very surreal for me personally to sit at the lodge table in the hall and see the bullet marks on the table, knowing that Orange brethren had been wounded or killed whilst sitting there.
So here’s the challenge to all the Christian Churches. Let’s hear a united voice demanding that the British and Irish governments publicly identify the names of the gunmen and those in the command structures of the IRA who sanctioned that attack on Tullyvallen.
There has been much written about the border campaign during the Troubles to ethnically cleanse localities of the pro-Union community by the IRA and INLA. The prominent book, Lost Lives, bears testament to many who died during those years of slaughter.
Many more folk still bear the mental and physical scars of either being wounded or losing loved ones and friends during that border county genocide.
Let’s hear a letter from the leaderships of at least the main Christian Churches on this island calling for the intelligence files on these atrocities to be made public being read out from pulpits across the counties. Families of the victims demand answers; they need to know who is suspected of murdering, maiming, wounding or attacking their loved ones.
Maybe the Churches see this as a pointless exercise as the British and Irish governments will not allow their respective intelligence communities to release such information for fear of revealing just who was working for the security forces, and more importantly, which murders or attacks could have been prevented.
Again put bluntly, how many people needlessly died or were allowed to be killed to protect the identity of alleged spies, agents and informers within the ranks of terror gangs?
But at least the churches need to try; at least the churches need to put down a marker publicly that they care, especially about the Troubles veterans.
Is the silence from churches concerning Troubles veterans because many modern day places of worship have become too ‘woke’ and just want the quiet life, or because they are scared of a vicious backlash on social media?
In the Biblical New Testament, Christ talks about the parable of the Good Samaritan who took action to help the wounded man who had been attacked.
So here’s the challenge for every Christian place of worship on the island of Ireland. Are you going to be like the Good Samaritan and help the Troubles veterans, or be like the religious people in the parable who passed by on the other side and conveniently ignore the pleas of those veterans in need?
Publicly supporting the Troubles veterans is one way the Christian Churches can show they have real meaning in today’s increasingly secular society.
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| Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter John is a Director for Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. |
I agree John let's have a proper truth commision and an end to prosecutions. Let the people see all the ugly manipulations, reveal all the agents, and all the underhand deals.
ReplyDeleteAnd watch as people in the public eye disappear overnight!
DeleteA grossly sectarian hate post --"Families of the victims demand answers; they need to know who is suspected of murdering, maiming, wounding or attacking their loved ones." Unless they are dirty fenians --then fuck them they got what they deserved. "Go on 1 Para, go and get them and good luck"
ReplyDeleteI hear your hurt Christy I understand your ombrage. I stand with you in your passion for justice. Alas justice, as you know better than most, must be proceeded by truth & honesty. Only then can forgiveness & reconciliation through understanding emerge.
DeleteUnfortunately the prize of true peace only becomes felt through cutting Orangies like John some slack.
The truth will free us all, even John! Stay well, my friend.
Christy how did you get that? I disagree with John on just about everything but don't think that's what he's saying?
DeleteGrossly sectarian is spot on summary of the Article. The entire article is a call for the sectarian mobilisation of the "pro-Union community” and churches. Coulter feels aggrieved that his side are being “thrown under the bus” to placate the “pan nationalist front”. 'Our Killers' should enjoy impunity but their killers should not; Our dead are victims but their dead were legitimate targets.
DeleteThe article is not framed as a neutral call for equal treatment of all victims or for justice to be done. Its a religious or sectarian call for British murderers to be supported and protected for killing pesky nationalists. The Article is a partisan sectarian pulpit-blessing of impunity for Soldier F and other murderers.
And I've just read that Michelle O'Neil states that ".. you "don't sell your soul" to sip champagne with Donald Trump amid the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
ReplyDeleteSomeone should show her a photo of McGuiness and The Queen!
I'm with Steve on this - I disagree with John on probably everything but he is anything but a sectarian hatemonger.
ReplyDeleteI don't think he is opposed to nationalists getting justice but thinks British veterans are targeted by people who themselves are guilty of just as much and who he thinks have been covered for.
An anomaly in the piece is that when it is exposed about all those who died to protect agents, what can be done about it if the people doing the covering up are not to be pursued.
I think former republican volunteers should be protected and should not face prosecution but that hardly makes me a sectarian hatemonger. There is simply no way I am going to advocate prosecuting state forces if it means former volunteers are to be caught in the same net: one of my objections to the position argued by Martin Galvin.
AM --Coulter does not agree with you --he thinks his guys should get away with the harm they have done and your guys should face prosecutions.
ReplyDeleteHis whole article asserts a partisan sectarian view about a united "pro-Union community” against the “pan nationalist front” and nationalist victims of security force violence do not deserve justice.
There is nowhere in the piece that I can find him saying republicans should be prosecuted. While I think his position on so much of it is wrong, the point he appears to be making by invoking the SF term from the 1990s of the Pan Nationalist Front is that there is a nationalist demand for prosecutions of soldiers for killings when some of the politicians making the demands have themselves been responsible or killings. He is not calling for nationalists to be discriminated against.
DeleteThe standout line - something Henry Joy appears to have picked up on - is this:
Let’s hear a letter from the leaderships of at least the main Christian Churches on this island calling for the intelligence files on these atrocities to be made public being read out from pulpits across the counties. Families of the victims demand answers; they need to know who is suspected of murdering, maiming, wounding or attacking their loved ones.
Despite there being an inherent flaw in that, what it leads to is not just an exposure of the agents nu also the agent handlers.
That is a position I can identify with much more readily than I can with the positions of
(a) cover up for Scap
(b) have republicans tried in non jury British courts and jailed within the British penal system.
In the piece hatred is advocated against no one, nor is sectarian discrimination against nationalists endorsed.
In fairness to Christy it'd be good if John could clarify his position. My own personal opinion from a PUL viewpoint is that it's either a blanket amnesty as part of a truth telling commission or nothing. As a lack of communication fosters suspicion and negative outworkings i want the former.
ReplyDeleteJohn never engages in discussion on TPQ. He sets up his stall and lets us think of it what we will. His call.
DeleteAt the heart of his position is a basic assumption: if the war is over why the insistence on still taking prisoners other than to fight the war by other means?
Prosecutions are a farce designed in my view to thwart truth being recovered.
John of all people ought to be able to get his head around the phrase "In the beginning there was the word!" and come to understand that words create worlds.
DeleteWhat was in John's world, 'terror gangs' were 'resistance fighters' in the eyes of others. Given that Christy got stitched up and found himself incarcerated amongst these terror gangs, it's hardly surprising he took umbrage.
The problem for people like ourselves is that we seem to have difficulty accepting that the world where John lives hears us calling the people they hold in high esteem war criminals, state terrorists, torturers and so on. I think it is legitimate for us to see them in that way. We seem not to want John to use terms like terror gangs but it is okay for us to use terms like state terrorists.
DeleteThe gander has to sup its own sauce.
Christy has a right to feel aggrieved but John lays claim to a sense of grievance also which he referred to in the piece regarding Tullyvallen.
TPQ writers should be able to robustly debate each other while maintaining civility. I think it has been one of the successes of the blog in so far as we have successes.
I'm all in favour of equal sauce or equality in the lack of it.
ReplyDeleteAs you say, prosecutions will continue more to prevent truth emerging rather than facilitating it.