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A TIME TO SPEAK OUT: For adults, reconciliation is no less difficult than for children. In 1988, a group of evangelical leaders decided to make a public stand against sectarianism within their ranks.

"For too long, an evangelical constituency that did not agree with Dr. Ian Paisley has been silent, and it was time to say something," says ECONI's Porter. He says historically evangelicals have had two options. "You either became politicized like Paisley and believed that God and Ulster went together, or you were pietistic and orthodox." But Porter says many who chose the option of being pious and keeping silent were in reality sympathetic with sectarianism.

ECONI formed when a group of about 200 evangelical pastors and lay leaders signed a statement, For God and His Glory Alone, in 1988. Their 20-page document says, in part:

—Human sinfulness is the "root cause" of Ulster's problems.

—Evangelicals have been partly to blame for the alienation of Catholics.

—It is idolatrous to "equate God with any one culture or political ideal."

—Celebration of cultural and political tradition has been "triumphalistic" in manner.

—"Working for peace means working for justice."

Although the statement was widely ignored when released, ECONI Sundays were scheduled in local churches, and increasingly the group has gained public credibility as well as criticism.

Evangelical and fundamentalist critics of ECONI say the group is elitist and ecumenical and does not represent the majority of evangelicals.

But Porter defends the group's approach. "ECONI is not trying to get a popular mandate," he says. "We read Scripture and come to our best understanding and declare it.

"We stand foursquare in the center of evangelicalism," Porter says. "For Catholics, [the conflict] is primarily a political issue. The main dynamic of Protestant sectarianism is anti-Catholic."

BEYOND SECTARIANISM: While ECONI has defined itself by working among evangelicals, the Moving Beyond Sectarianism research project, headed by an American Mennonite missionary and a Catholic nun, aims to provide a forum in which Catholics and Protestants openly explore their prejudices in nonviolent encounters.

Joseph Liechty, a religious-history scholar, says most churches in Ireland have had a hand in sectarianism, which he calls "the functional equivalent of racism." He traces it historically to three doctrinal distortions:

—There is but one true church, which, when distorted, leads to "contempt for different Christian traditions."

—God's providential intervention, which, when distorted, results in a "God is on our side" orientation.

—"Error has no right," an idea from the Augustine controversy with the Donatists that the force of the state could be used against Christian heretics.

Liechty says that the Catholic reforms of Vatican II as well as shifts in Protestant thinking have resulted in repudiating these theological distortions, but they have not been fully purged from church leadership.

Liechty says the research project is finding that personal encounters among individuals do little to defeat the stereotyped views they may have of one another. "The only way to alter stereotypes is for people to encounter each other as groups."

The research project has designed encounters between neighboring Protestant and Catholic parishes. They meet for ten weeks, for three hours at a time.

One objective is to overcome mutual denial and responsibility for the conflicts. Liechty says, "The project's intention is to get churches to look at their active responsibility for sectarianism and their passive acquiescence. Catholics like to see it as a Protestant problem and Protestants as a Catholic problem."

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October 6 1997, Vol. 41, No. 11