Considering Grace. Gladys Ganiel
making a series of reconciliatory gestures towards Catholics. The most widely known were on Christmas Day in 1983 and 1984, when David walked across the street from his church to Christ the King Catholic Church to shake hands with Fr Kevin Mullan. Armstrong and his family received death threats from loyalist paramilitaries, and eventually the elders of his church asked him to resign. He resigned in May 1985 to train for ministry in the Church of England. He later became a Church of Ireland minister in Cork before retiring to Northern Ireland.
First Limavady was David’s first post after serving an assistantship in Carrickfergus. He was an evangelical, and he threw himself into his duties. He also became a chaplain in nearby Magilligan prison.
I found there was absolutely no difference in the UVF and IRA prisoners. I couldn’t say one was worse than the other. I was in the cells with Catholic prisoners and I was not ever wanting to make them into Prods [Protestants]. There were people writing to me and saying, ‘David, it’s lovely the way the Catholic prisoners listen to you. I hope you’re saving them into the Protestant church.’ I was saying, ‘No, even though I’m an evangelical Christian, my duty is to love people and not make them into me.’ So people felt like you’ve fallen down in your job for not ‘saving’ Catholics.
Christ the King Catholic Church was still under construction when David arrived. In October 1981, as it neared completion, it was damaged in a loyalist bomb attack. ‘When the roof was restored and the church was opened, the clergy all got invitations. I said I would go. But the replies the priest got: “Dear Mr Priest, regarding the opening of your premises, I will not be going to your Papish house of Satan.” That was one of the nicest replies.’ David received threatening phone calls and his children were harassed at school. ‘They came home with spittle on their faces being told: “Your daddy better not go to the mass house.”’ David told his congregation he was attending because it was the right thing to do. Some people left his congregation after that. No other Protestant clergy accepted the invitation, but the governor of Magilligan, a former Presbyterian minister, accompanied David.
On Christmas Day 1983, Kevin met David at the door of his church and asked, ‘Would you object if I shook hands with your people on Christmas morning coming in to church?’ David invited him to greet his people from the front of the church, and Kevin did. When David’s service ended, he walked across the road and stood at the back of Kevin’s church. The service was about to conclude. Kevin saw him, and asked him to speak from the front. ‘When I finished, they burst into applause. They stood and cheered. Old ladies of ninety said, “This is the happiest Christmas we’ve ever had. We never thought a Protestant minister from across the road would ever be seen in our church.”’
On Christmas Day 1984, David and Kevin were set to repeat the goodwill gestures. About forty Free Presbyterians protested outside David’s church. Three were inside among the Presbyterian worshippers. When Kevin went to the front to speak, a Free Presbyterian stood up and accused David of ‘treason before God’. There were scuffles in the church. David sighed as he recalled these incidents. ‘Saying Happy Christmas – the Free Presbyterians and the Orange Order went absolutely berserk.’
The pressure on David intensified. On a trip to Belfast, he was abducted by loyalist paramilitaries.
I went through to a back room of an illegal bar and I said something stupid: ‘Men, I think you’re more frightened of me than I am of you.’ But they came to the conclusion that if the fundamentalists want to kill me, let them do it. They didn’t accept my outlook but they admired my guts. One of them said they were going to give me twenty minutes to get away.
David finally accepted an invitation from sympathetic clerics in the Church of England to retrain for Anglican ministry. As he was leaving for England, Rev. David Bailie from Bangor West Presbyterian invited him to come as an assistant.
The police said, ‘David, the people who want to kill you will find it easy to get you in Bangor.’ I feared that some of my colleagues would say, ‘He never really intended to go. It was all a bit of drama.’ I didn’t want my children to suffer anymore. Now they’re pretty proud to say, ‘Yes, the Rev David Armstrong is my dad. We can hold our heads high.’
Making Peace
‘Maybe another word for faith is risk.’
Ruth Patterson took a deep breath. Along with her elders, she had travelled for a weekend away in an enclosed convent in Dublin. It was the early 1990s, and Ruth’s congregation was in Seymour Hill, Dunmurry, in a loyalist estate with a heavy paramilitary presence. One of her elders was an Orangeman. She had not been sure if he would come. As is customary in an enclosed convent, the Sisters sat behind a grille. The Presbyterians sat on the other side. They had just shared their experiences: what it was like to be a Presbyterian elder; what it was like to live in an enclosed Catholic community. They had shared an act of worship, singing together, ‘Jesus is Lord, creation’s voice proclaims it’. Ruth said, ‘Some of my big men were in tears.’ They had been served tea, and were talking informally through the grille. Ruth had spotted her Orangeman, conversing animatedly with a nun: ‘Their noses were right up against the grille, and both of them were chatting away. It turned out both of them had been born in Derry, and in the discovery of the one beloved birthplace all difference had gone out the window. I just stood there and thought: I am witnessing a little miracle of reconciliation.’
Ruth was the first woman ordained in PCI, in 1976.13 By the time of this encounter, she had been in her congregation for nearly fourteen years. This little miracle could not have happened on day one.
I do not think any of the denominations were as prophetic or courageous as they could have been during the Troubles. I can understand on one level, especially for clergy who were married and had families. To step out would have been horrendously difficult. But if we couldn’t do it, what right have we to ask anybody else to do it? We are meant to be in leadership, you know.
As a young woman, Ruth had been inspired by Rev. Ray Davey, a Presbyterian chaplain at Queen’s who founded the ecumenical Corrymeela community in 1965. She believed passionately that Christians of all denominations should work together. But she knew this wouldn’t happen overnight. In her first post as an assistant minister in Larne, a predominantly Protestant town, she attended an inter-church clergy meeting. ‘Where are all the priests?’ she asked the other ministers, all Protestant. ‘There was a silence, and they then resumed their conversation as if I hadn’t asked anything.’
When Ruth was called to her own congregation, she helped start a praise group among the Protestant churches on the estate. The praise group used songs and prayers inspired by the charismatic movement, which had also made in-roads in Catholicism. She was delighted when some Catholics began to attend. She talked, listened, prayed with people, slowly building relationships. Protestant and Catholic women from the praise group set up a prayer group. Then they set up a clergy group. Then the clergy wanted to exchange pulpits. Ruth asked her elders to vote on whether a priest could preach in their pulpit. Fifteen of the twenty agreed. She didn’t go ahead with it, because she wanted everyone on board. A few months later all twenty said yes. ‘These steps were big for them.’
Ruth knew that not everyone in the estate was happy with her approach. But she earned the respect of the paramilitaries. Although not churchgoers, some of the paramilitaries asked for her support in times of distress. Ruth did not turn them away. ‘Obviously not everybody would have been happy with what the majority of the committed people in our congregation were doing. But nobody left us to join the Free Presbyterians. They all stayed with it.’
It would have been easier to focus only on her own flock, tending just to their needs. For Ruth, that would not have been what it meant to live out her faith. ‘In times of adversity and threat people look to external rules and regulations and batten down the hatches rather than stepping out. Maybe another word for faith is risk.’
‘After that I got very unhappy phone calls.’
Barry was minister in a border town. The windows of his church were blown out repeatedly in bomb blasts. He buried members of his congregation. Some members belonged to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). They told him that IRA men taunted them in the