gang. When she went to church the next Sunday, the murders weren’t mentioned at all. ‘There was no acknowledgement that it happened. No apology, no nothing, which seemed to me just brutal. Plus, we couldn’t go to the chapel for the service because those were the days when Protestants didn’t go to mass. You didn’t step your foot over a chapel door – you’d have been in big trouble.’ Abigail later discovered that members of her congregation were in the Glenanne gang. ‘That was shocking. The fact that the church would condemn [loyalist murderers], yet they were sitting among us, they were part of us.’
Abigail’s first post was in an urban interface area. ‘The Troubles were unavoidable. You would have a baptism and people would turn up at church with their UDA [Ulster Defence Association] or UVF badges on.’ In some ways, the urban interface was more open than her border upbringing. There was already an inter-church clergy group. She received invitations from local Catholic priests to speak in their churches, and to become involved in grassroots peacemaking with paramilitaries.
I’d just arrived from the country, and there was a Catholic priest phoning me. It was scary. Did I consider republicans my enemies? Absolutely. Did I think of those Catholic priests as my enemies? I wouldn’t say that. But I wouldn’t say I was too sure of them either, at that point. But I believed it to be a Gospel call and a Gospel obligation. That’s why I did it.
As a woman, Abigail was perceived as non-threatening. This allowed her to say things and make contacts with people which might not have been possible if she were a man. She remained convinced that Christians in a violent, divided society should be peacemakers. ‘For me, faith is spelt “r-i-s-k”. If I hadn’t been prepared to do those things, and if my congregation hadn’t been prepared to do them with me, I don’t think we would have been faithful people.’
‘I had no fear of the UDA and the UVF.’
Bill Moore grew up on the Shankill Road, the son of a lorry driver and a stitcher. His parents worked hard to send him to the Royal Belfast Academical Institution (Inst). Inst was, he said, a ‘snobby’ school for a lad from the Shankill. In 1981, he accepted the post in Taughmonagh Presbyterian in South Belfast. It was a place most ministers didn’t want to go: a socially disadvantaged estate with a strong UDA and UVF influence. ‘I told them I would stay five years – I was there twenty.’ Bill loved the people and identified with them due to his own background.
Bill methodically built relationships with people in Taughmonagh. ‘I had no fear of the UDA and the UVF on the estate, because I’d visited their parents in hospital and visited them in gaol. I visited their houses, married some of their connections. A generation grew up and had known me.’
These relationships stood Bill in good stead when he felt he should challenge the paramilitaries. In 1991, Catholic taxi driver Harry Conlon was abducted by the UDA and murdered in Taughmonagh.
I put a little cross where he was shot and it disappeared. So, I put a bigger cross in the spot and it disappeared. Then the big cross appeared back and there was written on it: ‘Bill Moore, Rot in Hell. Death to all Taigs.’ A taxi driver in the estate told me it was women who actually done that. I said, ‘It’s good to know that it wasn’t the real hierarchy of the UDA!’
On another occasion, the UDA ‘disciplined’ men on the estate who did not have ‘approved girlfriends’. In other words, they were dating Catholics. Bill’s church committee circulated a flyer that read:
During the week three young men from Taughmonagh have been shot in the leg by Taughmonagh UDA and it is rumoured that they plan to do the same to certain others. Our lives and the lives of our children are now under threat. The church is organising a peaceful protest against these shootings. The protest is not against the UDA, but against illegal punishments.
The letter encouraged people on the estate to give information to the police. The UDA wrote a letter back that said: ‘If you think the police are friends of Taughmonagh, you’re living on a different planet.’
After that, Bill’s church was daubed with graffiti and an arson attempt destroyed the church kitchen. It was rumoured he would leave the estate, but Bill believed God wanted him there – and that there were people on the estate who wanted him there, too.
In one public meeting, a UDA man attacked me and one wee woman stood up and she says, ‘Now, keep Bill around because when I got my house burgled he came round and he gave me money and you lot didn’t do that!’ The UDA man said, ‘I actually like Bill Moore, it’s just the things he says I don’t like!’
‘He’s still alive.’
Bangor West was established as a new congregation in 1961. David Bailie was there from the beginning. A predominantly Protestant town, Bangor did not experience the Troubles in the same way as mixed border areas or inner-city interfaces. Members of the security forces often moved there for its relative safety.
David experienced ‘a baptism of the Holy Spirit’ in the late 1960s. This is a personal encounter with God, often involving physical or emotional healing. Bangor West started a healing service, which met after its Sunday evening service. Those who attended began praying for the safety of people in the security forces. ‘People would give the names of policemen, and at the end of each session, the final thing we would do, would be to name those policemen. Many of them we would not know. The name would be given by somebody who would have cared for them.’
David shared two experiences which he believes demonstrated God’s answers to their prayers.
A policeman was coming home one night, parking his car in his garage. As he walked to his front door he heard a voice saying, ‘Run for it!’ Which he did. The door was normally locked. This night it wasn’t locked. He rushed through it and a hail of bullets came in after him. He’s still alive. The other was a young man just starting off as a policeman. There was a bomb scare. He was on the beat with a senior policeman. The older policeman said to the young man, ‘You and I will go down and warn people.’ As he was walking, he heard a voice say, ‘Fall flat!’ Which he did. And the bomb went off. He was covered with shrapnel and when he was pulled out, he said, ‘Who called for me to fall flat?’ Nobody had.
‘If they think you are on a personal crusade, they won’t go with you.’
Husband and wife Stanley and Valerie Stewart ministered in Clones, Co. Monaghan at the time of writing. Stanley was ordained in 1997, after a career in teaching. He also served as a part-time RUC reservist. He attended the special General Assembly in 1990 which produced the Coleraine Declaration on peace. The Coleraine Declaration reflected the Stewarts’ perspective even before Stanley’s ordination. He said, ‘I can remember thinking, “God is speaking.”’ Valerie was also a teacher. Both were involved with faith-based cross-community initiatives where they taught in Dungiven, Co. Londonderry, a town with a strong republican movement. Because of the security risk, Stanley wore concealed body armour and ‘carried a side arm as I taught in a secondary school’.
Stanley’s first congregation was in Donagheady, Co. Tyrone. They secured European Union peace funding to renovate a derelict cottage in the grounds of the church into a cross-community centre. They felt supported by the congregation, but some people in the community – from both nationalist and unionist persuasions – resisted their work. They had been at university in Coleraine during the David Armstrong controversy and the lesson they learned was that if you wanted to bring people along, it was important to move slowly and build trust. Stanley said, ‘If only David Armstrong had a support network. If you run too far ahead it can be counter-productive. Yet I have great admiration for his willingness to tackle the issues that weren’t being tackled.’ Valerie added, ‘It’s so important not to go out on your own. You must have others that you can trust, those people you can call who you know
