Editorial
Colour pictures are on offer once again in this issue of SEARCH – this time to illustrate Dr Gesa Thiessen’s reflections on art as theology. The Church’s emphasis on words is too exclusive, she contends. Sometimes the visual image speaks more strongly to our spirit.
Colour pictures are on offer once again in this issue of SEARCH – this time to illustrate Dr Gesa Thiessen’s reflections on art as theology. The Church’s emphasis on words is too exclusive, she contends. Sometimes the visual image speaks more strongly to our spirit.But words are important too, so we are grateful to Prof Paul Ballard for his thoughts on how Christians can together make the Bible truly central to our lives, always seeking a deeper understanding for today.This has bearing on two further items on the menu this season: first, a compendium of thoughts from different constituencies on the “Reality Check” for the churches, urged by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin in relation to the spring’s referendum result in the Republic; and second, the work over 50 years of the Corrymeela Community, explored by its current leader Pádraig Ó Tuama. Both these subjects require ecumenical openness and thoughtful reflection on the central message of scripture in relation to the realities of our 21st century world.Among the challenges facing us today are the now undeniable threat to humankind’s survival of our reluctance to combat the climate change we have ourselves caused; Europe’s migrant crisis; and the question of patronage and enrolment policy in our national or primary schools. These subjects are addressed respectively by Noel Coghlan, former archdeacon Gordon Linney, and Eoin de Bhaldraithe, a Cistercian monk with a lively desire for peace and cooperation between the Roman Catholic and Anglican / reformed churches in Ireland.Finally we offer the fourth in our series in the service of preachers and congregations reflecting on the biblical readings of the upcoming season. We are grateful to Rev Dr Janet Unsworth of Edgehill College for her thoughts on “Preaching from Luke in Advent”.Book reviews are offered by an array of senior clergy: Bishop Kenneth Kearon, Dr Maurice Elliott, Dr Michael Kennedy, Dr Patrick McGlinchey, Ronnie Nesbitt, and Robert Lawson.Readers are kindly requested to renew their subscriptions to SEARCH, using one of the subscription forms at the back of this issue. No one on the SEARCH editorial team is paid for their highly valued work, but we do have to pay our excellent printers! MANY THANKS!
“HAS THEOLOGY become more perfect because theologians have become more prosaic?” Karl Rahner once asked with some urgency. “What has become of the times when the great theologians also wrote hymns?”
AFTER the Equal Marriage Referendum the Irish Republic in May 2015 showed that over 60% of voters were in favour of extending civil marriage to same-sex couples, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin suggested that the Church needed to undertake a “reality check”. He later explained: “A reality check is nothing more than discerning the facts in all their complexity and then facing the facts and evaluating how to address the facts in a culture that is ever changing.”
THE BIBLE lies at the heart of the Christian faith. It is the primary witness to the saving events of Jesus Christ, his life, death and resurrection, rooted in the covenantal history of Israel. Yet it is clear that all is not well, for the Bible has become a closed book and, to so many, an anachronism.
THIS YEAR we in the Corrymeela Community mark our fiftieth anniversary. Corrymeela was established in 1965 as a response to the growing tensions and divisions in Belfast and across Northern Ireland. These were the years before the Troubles broke out, but the tensions were brewing, and the establishment of a centre for faith and dialogue to explore political, national and religious differences was timely, perhaps prophetic.
DURING the Vietnam War in 1972 a South Vietnamese warplane dropped a napalm bomb on a group of fleeing villagers mistaking them for the enemy. A photographer captured some of the action and in particular the horror scene of a young girl, her clothes gone and her skin burning trying in vain to outrun the terror. Her name was Phan Thi Kim Phuc. She would become better known as The Girl in the Picture. New York Times editors were at first hesitant to publish the shocking photo but eventually did so. Its impact was immediate and was an important factor in changing American public opinion against that war. President Nixon anticipated its effect and in a contemporary tape recording is heard saying to one of his aides when he saw the picture: “I’m wondering if that was fixed.” The photograph was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and chosen as World Press Photo for 1972.
APOCALYPSE NOW? That pretty well sums up the view of the leaders of Europe, North America and Japan, gathered as the G-7 in the little Alpine village of Elmau in early June. Moreover, it is a view that the authoritative UN Panel on Climate Change backs wholeheartedly, as indeed do a range of worthies, including figures so disparate as Kofi Annan and Arnold Schwarzenegger, all of whom predict doom and disaster should we persist in our present wilful ways. Unpleasant though it may be, climate change is a reality and its impact on the world in which we live and breathe is likely to be severe and widespread, and not simply for those far distant places, of which little is known and in which one’s interest is at best minimal.
AS IS NOW well known, the Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic primary teacher training facilities in Dublin are being merged into a single institution under the aegis of Dublin City University, students and staff of the C of I College of Education being re-located on the campus of St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra.
AS THE NEW church year begins, the Gospel readings in the Revised Common Lectionary change from Mark to Luke. Given that many of our traditional Christmas readings are found in Luke chapters 1 and 2, discipline is needed during the Sundays of Advent, lest we jump ahead to the Christmas story and neglect the message of the Advent readings themselves. However, focusing on Luke’s story in Advent helps us to bear in mind the key themes of apocalyptic expectation and the need for repentance in as Christmas approaches.
