Religious women and the peace process in Northern Ireland
Research has consistently shown that where women’s participation has been maintained, conflict resolution outcomes have been more successful and sustained. A 2011 United States Institute of Peace report drew attention to the roles of religion and of women in promoting peace in conflicts around the world and the need to assess their significance. Notably, it observed that the contributions of religious women lacked documentation of their deeds or achievements. An oral history project initiated in 2014 established that during the Northern Ireland conflict (1968-1998), religious women, reflecting gospel imperatives to help, indeed love, society’s most marginalised, became party to personal, societal and political reconciliation, effective peacebuilders at all levels. Though the substance of the conflict was thoroughly political, religion was a cultural reality. Religion was wrapped up in people’s identity and sense of belonging. The ‘Troubles’ was a complex, destructive ethno-nationalist struggle that pitted neighbours and communities against one another. It witnessed society descend into a multi-factional and seemingly endless war in which the majority of victims were civilians. Working at the margins of society, religious women were rooted within the working-class areas that bore the brunt of the violence, subjected to terror, disappearance, murder, fear, mistrust, all exacerbated by layers of historical grief, anger and suffering.
A quiet spiritual presence, reinforced by institutional resources and a degree of authority, religious women resisted and rebuked brutality, supporting the non-violent majority’s struggle to survive, raise families, educate the young, tend to the old and retain a value system that transcended hatred and sectarianism. Religious women rejected the notion that Northern Ireland was from top to bottom infected by a deeply rooted, ubiquitous sectarian disease, ingrained over generations, requiring generations more to erase. They instead attributed the divisions as being “structured into the psyche” owing to political machinations rather than pathology. Hence their goal was to subvert centuries of social conditioning and dismantle what they saw as “artificial divides”. They believed friendship, humour and humanity to be liberating components that would help people sabotage the barricades and boundaries keeping them apart.
Sharing the suffering and showing solidarity with victims, religious women of different persuasions and denominations built and were part of networks of community activists determined to secure peace. At crucial points in the peace process, religious women’s interventions helped accelerate and promote peace-building. Their approaches and contributions to peace and reconciliation were various, illustrated by the different, innovative ventures they established, including WAVE, (Widows Against Violence Empowered); the Currach Community, Cornerstone, Women of Faith and ‘Dance Beyond Hate.’ Critical agents for change, working at the grass-roots level shaped their perspectives and approaches, differentiating them from the male hierarchies that determined church policies that were often inadequate and sometimes counter-productive.
The Troubles began as religious women in the late 1960s were proving receptive to progressive leanings within mainstream churches. These included human and civil rights, second wave feminism and liberation theology: the option for the poor, for personal encounters, listening, respecting and above all recognising that peacebuilding starts from below. While ending the violence, “negative peace”, was a major goal, religious women were most notable for their commitment to promoting a “positive peace”, incorporating wider principles of justice, equality, fairness and social re-distribution, factors that directly contribute to social healing. Committed to improving cross-community relations, they also supported prisoners and their families and helped forge relationships between combatants from opposing sides. The 1981 Troubles’ hunger strike became the catalyst for far‐reaching changes in the policy of both the British and Irish governments, creating an environment conducive to peacebuilding.
John Hume and Gerry Adams pictured at the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation in Dublin Castle, 1994. Photo: Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews.ie
Religious women sought inclusion at all levels. Some, aware of the back-channel and unofficial communications taking place, strongly felt women’s voices should be heard. Securing a place at the table in the 1990s through the secret Clonard Monastery peace talks between Gerry Adams and John Hume (and facilitated through Fr Alec Reid), religious women contributed a hitherto unknown “raw emotion” and “strategic empathy” that helped cut through decades of male posturing and stalemate. They brought to the negotiations with an “armed” patriarchy centuries of experience negotiating with a “sacred” patriarchy. Confronted daily by human pain, ruined and lost lives, religious women entirely rejected combatant rationale that inflicting maximum pain was a necessary cost, a key pre-requisite for securing a strong negotiating position. Equally important, their stand alongside conflict victims was a constant challenge to combatant claims to be defenders of their respective communities. Their presence daily rebutted and subverted combatant legitimation strategies informed by religio-political myths and sacrificial discourses.
Through both presence and activism, religious women became a factor in creating the climate on the ground and the depth of communications between the warring parties that facilitated reconciliation. Following their direct engagement via Clonard, a more overt commitment to peace emerged, reflected in the Republican transition from physical force to constitutionalism. Largely missing from Troubles’ history, religious women deserve recognition for being party to the difficult and dangerous work within working class communities that noted international peacebuilders credit with preventing the Troubles from degenerating into civil war.
The Dance of Co-Existence Project
In 1998, The Dance of Co-Existence project, co-ordinated by Sr Deirdre Mullan of the Sisters of Mercy, brought together teenagers from ‘both sides of the divide’ (Protestant and Catholic) to look at each other’s history and culture and express their differences and understandings through dance. This group of young people was invited to perform in Dublin for the President of Ireland and representatives from all second-level schools in Ireland.
To listen to a powerful Witness seminar (part of the Women Religious Oral History Project) see here.
Research by Dianne Kirby, and Drs Maria Power and Briege Rafferty.Thank you very much to Dianne for contributing this piece of herstory to our website.
Thanks also to Sr Deirdre Mullan for her photos and information on the Dance of Co-Existence Project.
Bibliography
“Religious Voices on Conflict Resolution, War and Peace”: https://sites.google.com/site/coldwarkirby/
Maria Power, From Ecumenism to Community Relations: Inter-Church Relationships in Northern Ireland 1980-2005, (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007); Building Peace in Northern Ireland, (contributing editor), (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011).
K. Marshall, S. Hayward, with C. Zambra, E. Breger, S. Jackson, United States Institute of Peace, “Women in religious peacebuilding”, Peaceworks, 71 (2011): 1-30.
Briege Rafferty & Dianne Kirby, “Sisters in the Troubles: Introduction to women in religious orders during the conflict in and about Northern Ireland,” Doctrine and Life, 75, 1, (2017): 2-12.
Anne Bennett, Dining with Diplomats, Praying with Gunmen, Experiences of International Conciliation for a New Generation of Peace-makers (London: Quaker Books, 2020), 110
Kirby, “Religious Women and the Northern Ireland Troubles,” Journal of Religious History, Vol 45, Issue 3, September 2021, pp 412-434.
Kirby, “Religious Women and peacebuilding during the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’,” Journal of Social Encounters: https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/social_encounters/vol5/iss2/4/‘
Kirby, “Women of Faith and the Northern Ireland Peace Process: Breaking the Silence,” Open Democracy, 10 April 2018: https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/dianne-kirby/women-of-faith-and-northern-ireland-peace-process-breaking-silence
Briege Rafferty, Caught in the Crossfire: Catholic Religious Sisters and the Northern Ireland Troubles (1968-2008),” Belfast: QUB, Ph.D. 2022.