Remembering together: Commemoration in Northern Ireland

Abstract

This chapter addresses the challenge of remembering conflict together in the context of a society still divided by “legacy issues”. Its focus is on the particular challenges presented by efforts to commemorate the conflict in the author’s native Northern Ireland. In light of this series’ theme of ‘living together after empire’, the task of commemoration is re-imagined as ‘co-memoration’; a public remembering which has the potential at least to include all elements within society. The author explores the possibilities and challenges posed by re-imagining commemoration as co-memoration, drawing on the insights of public theology and his own experience of Christian ministry in the context to do so. Objections and motivations which have hitherto represented barriers to co-memoration are reconsidered in light of historian Michael Ignatieff’s concept of ‘keeping faith with dead’. In doing so the author suggests that these deep-seated commitments, which have long been viewed in terms of assumed allegiances to national identities, must be understood as primarily personal loyalties owed to family, friends and community. The chapter then moves to assess the possibilities for co-memoration within Protestant places of worship in Northern Ireland, by considering issues which arise from the interaction of the personal and communal loyalties with physical symbols and liturgical practices. The conclusion considers the possibilities and challenges ahead and suggests the shape of the further research which is required in this area.