Troubled times

From the leafy quiet of a memorial garden, Hugh Wallace points across the street to a blue two-story building. Today, it’s a credit union. Three decades ago, it housed a fishmonger. And it was on Wallace’s way home from school.

On Oct. 23, 1993, at 1:06 p.m., two members of the Irish Republican Army disguised as delivery men carried a bomb inside. It detonated prematurely, sending bricks, mortar, furniture, and bodies into the air and across the street.

“If I hadn’t stopped at my friend’s house on the way, I would have been there just when the bomb went off,” Wallace says. His tone is matter of fact, but Wallace’s face is strained and his eyes wide recalling the violence that ripped apart his community and shaped his entire life.

Ten people died and 57 others suffered injuries in what became known as the Belfast Shankill Road bombing. The victims included the shop owner, his daughter, two children, and one of the bombers. The bomb was meant for Ulster Defence Association leaders, who had their headquarters above the fishmongers, but the IRA allegedly approved the bombing knowing it would involve civilian casualties.

The scene at the 1993 Shankill Road bombing. Press Association via AP

Shankill Road remains one of the best-known attacks in the violence that made up the Troubles of Northern Ireland, a tumultuous period that stretched from 1969 to 1998. The Good Friday Agreement, signed on April 10, 1998, promised a new era of peace and prosperity as paramilitaries disarmed and politicians made “power-sharing” agreements. But what they’ve brought to Northern Ireland over the past 30 years is not so much peace as a state of what Wallace calls “not killing each other.”

Wallace was 15 in 1993. Now he’s a middle-aged man, with gray speckling his short goatee. The sectarian struggle that disfigured his neighborhood furrowed deep division and stagnation that Belfast and the rest of the country have yet to overcome. Now Northern Ireland stands at a crossroads, with an aging generation still struggling to come to terms with its violent past even as the present holds equally seismic challenges: demographic shifts altering the cultural landscape, pressing questions about the possibility of a united Ireland, and doubts about whether political change can happen peacefully.

IRELAND’S TROUBLES BEGAN in the late 1600s, when King James I of England devised a plan to gain control over the rebellious counties of the northern part of the island. He offered land to English nobles who would bring in settlers to cultivate crops and “civilize” the local population. This was the Ulster Plantation, a huge migration for its time: Over 50 years, more than 100,000 colonists arrived from Scotland and northern England. The Protestant immigrant majority quickly outnumbered and out-controlled the Gaelic-speaking Catholic minority. When the Republic of Ireland won independence in 1921, the island was partitioned. Six Ulster counties remained with the United Kingdom to the relief of the ruling Protestants and the dismay of the Catholics.

Those two identities stayed intact over hundreds of years, marking the territory of Northern Ireland into the 21st century. But the last decade has brought renewed upheaval to this part of the U.K.: Brexit took Northern Ireland out of the European Union while the Republic of Ireland stayed in. Migrants now target the region because of its lack of a firm border, first entering the Republic of Ireland and crossing over land into the U.K.

Against that backdrop, the 2021 U.K. census revealed a surprising statistic: More Catholics than Protestants now live in Northern Ireland for the first time since the 1600s. Most analysts advise taking the figures with a grain of salt: More people from traditionally Protestant backgrounds checked “unaffiliated.” Still, some leaders are citing the numbers to bolster calls for a border poll—a referendum on uniting the island into one country.

A mile and a half from the site of the Shankill Road bombing stands another landmark from the Troubles: the Europa Hotel. The towering structure has the ­dubious distinction of being the most-bombed hotel in the world: Between 1970 and 1994 it was bombed 33 times.

The most bombed hotel in the world. Edward Haylan / Getty Images

That’s where I met Hugh Wallace and Geordi Campbell. The two men facilitate Cornerstone Community Fellowship, a study and prayer group that has worked for reconciliation for the past three decades. To show what they’re up against, they take me on a walking tour.

Crossing the motorway, we enter the heart of Belfast’s working-class Protestant Shankill neighborhood. Small brick row houses cluster tightly together, Union Jacks fluttering in backyards. Residents have painted the sidewalk cobblestones blue, white, and red. Parallel to Shankill and a mile south runs the Falls Road. In this traditionally Catholic area, the cobblestones are green, white, and orange, and the Irish tricolor flies outside the brick houses.

These neighborhoods—where Wallace and Campbell grew up—sowed the injustice and violence of the Troubles. Now these communities bear the bitter fruit of those years: addiction, poverty, mental health problems. The paramilitary groups that recruited here never really went away. Instead they morphed into drug-related crime. Passing open doors of crowded pubs, Wallace and Campbell drop their voices and pause their storytelling.

Both men narrowly escaped recruitment to the paramilitaries. Wallace credits youth sports programs for keeping him busy and saving him from pressure to join. But those who couldn’t easily leave the neighborhood often did join. That’s still the case.

Through Wallace’s old street we reach the peace wall on Cupar Way. The 45-foot steel structure runs along the road, the bottom third covered in graffiti espousing both peace and sectarianism. Originally built of barbed wire to seal off neighborhoods from attacking rioters, more than 20 miles of “peace walls” now run like scars through Belfast, separating nationalist and loyalist working-class neighborhoods. The heavy gates between them are still locked at night.

But while most Northern Irish think it’s time to take the walls down, ironically, those living next to them fear what could happen without the barriers. David Smyth, head of Northern Ireland Evangelical Alliance, says the real problem is that the areas on either side of the walls never got the “peace dividend”—growth and prosperity—from the Good Friday Agreement. As a result, they never really moved on from the divisions of that era. “You won’t find peace walls in affluent areas,” he notes.

Smyth encourages Christians to speak creatively into the public square on issues like development and reconciliation. Studying the results of the 2021 census, the Northern Ireland Evangelical Alliance wanted to know how much impact religious faith and practice still has on daily life in Northern Ireland, so it commissioned its own study.

A woman lays a wreath at the site of the Shankill Road bombing to mark its 30th anniversary. Press Association via AP

Released in 2024, Good News People asked 1,000 people across the country about their beliefs and practices. It found that half of Northern Irish residents described themselves as practicing Christians, meaning they participated weekly in prayer, church attendance, and Bible study. Of those, 40% of practicing Protestants and 38% of practicing Catholics considered themselves “evangelical.”

The study found that across the religious divide and despite historical differences, evangelical Catholics and evangelical Protestants have increasingly more common ground on social issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, and religious freedom.

Religious identification had historically been high in Northern Ireland, and the 30 years of the Troubles froze things and delayed the slide into secularism endemic to the rest of Europe. Now as secularism in Northern Ireland catches up, the common ground among evangelicals in both communities could create space for much-needed bridges to the other side.

That also creates an opportunity for mission: Northern Ireland has likely the highest proportion of evangelicals per capita in Europe, while the south of Ireland has one of the very lowest. “It’s interesting having that in the one island where the border is featureless and you can drive across and back and not even know it’s there,” Smyth says.

Stores on Shankill Road. Aluxum / Getty Images

FOR AN OUTSIDER, it’s hard to believe the neighborhoods we’re walking past could have stoked such violence. The houses are simple but tidy, moms push babies in prams, and children ride bikes in the streets. But the sense of normalcy and calm hides a community absolutely committed to keeping the status quo and keeping the “other” out.

Housing discrimination was one of the core issues that sparked the Troubles. That’s a thing of the past, according to real estate agent Matthew Jackson. “But certain neighborhoods will still galvanize to discourage residents from the ‘outside,’” he admits. Jackson says that puts pressure on a sector already struggling from lack of availability: Roughly 20% of residents use subsidized housing. It’s also problematic for arriving immigrants: In some accessible lower-income neighborhoods, anonymous actors have destroyed property and threatened immigrants and “anyone who helps them” to integrate. Jackson steers clients to neighborhoods where they will be most welcome.

But that perpetuates division in an already-divided society. From the time of Ireland’s partition in 1921, Northern Irish primary and secondary schools remain either state-run (i.e., Protestant) or Catholic. Only 8% of children attend integrated schools. That requires busing kids long distances since areas are usually 80% Protestant or 80% Catholic. Most people grow up in a single-identity community and don’t personally know people from “the other side” until they attend university. That was true for Jackson and his wife Courtney.

The Jacksons are both “peace babies,” born in 1998, the same year as the Good Friday Agreement. They grew up in a post-Troubles Northern Ireland where middle-class families were anxious to let the past lie, move ahead with life, and reap the “peace dividend.” They are part of the generation that is ready to move forward, even if that means leaving the United Kingdom someday. They say some of their peers definitely identify as British, but a growing majority just don’t really care.

The Good Friday Agreement gave the Northern Irish the possibility of dual citizenship: Any citizen of Northern Ireland can also apply for a Republic of Ireland passport. While some of his Protestant friends would never take such a “nationalist” step, Jackson has gotten his Irish passport to make travel easier through Dublin airport. When asked if he sees himself as Irish, British, European, or all of the above, he pauses thoughtfully before answering: “First and foremost, I’m a citizen of heaven. That puts the rest in perspective.”

I encountered that view of identity several times during my visit, enough that it indicates an intentional effort to look beyond traditional labels. For the Northern Irish, that’s a difficult step. For those who grew up in middle-class backgrounds, the prosperity and freedom that the post-Troubles era brought helped expand their view of themselves and the world, no matter what is written on their passport. But in these critical neighborhoods, identity often remains attached to the hyper-local and hyper-personal: which street people grew up on, which family member died in the Troubles.

“These communities are often stuck in the past,” Smyth says. “They hold on to what has happened because they don’t want to betray their forefathers who died for ‘the cause.’ Peace looks like a sellout rather than an opportunity for growth and prosperity.”

A peace wall in Belfast. Charles McQuillan / Getty Images

FOR SOME, simply knowing each other is a start. An East Belfast native, Presbyterian Minister David Moore served in the Republic for decades before moving to West Belfast in 2022. The last Presbyterian church there closed in 1971 because of the conflict. Moore and his wife were surprised by the warm welcome, particularly from those who recalled the days when Presbyterians mingled with Catholic worshippers on the streets after Sunday services.

The site of Albert Street Church is now an Irish language and cultural center, and the Moores are themselves learning Irish, a tongue long associated with nationalism and Catholic culture. The Moores’ ministry is called An Tionólann, which means “gathering” in Irish.

Despite the Good News People study findings and the historical importance of religious identity, Moore says his country suffers from massive Biblical illiteracy.

“There are many people in this part of the city—as elsewhere—who have given up on religious faith without fully understanding what is at its heart: Jesus Christ,” Moore says. He invites anyone interested to study the Bible with him, but he makes clear that he doesn’t want to further division: “We’re not here to debate religion, we’re not here to debate practice. But if we can agree the Bible is the foundation, then we can look at it together and meet the person of Jesus Christ.”

Moore is wistful as he reflects on finding a way out of divisions that have encompassed his entire lifetime. Last summer brought an unexpected wave of unity—opposition to immigration that sparked massive protests. The event grieved Moore: “The Union Jack and the tricolor were marching together. But it was tragic. A unity of hate.”

Those marches stemmed from fear of the “other,” Moore notes, and different communities need to learn to trust each other. “At the heart of that is the gospel,” he says. “If people can see a neighbor as their brother or sister, they will no longer see them as an enemy. With the gospel, you’ve always got hope. The gospel changes people.”

A mural painted on a peace wall gate separating Catholic and Protestant communities. Charles McQuillan / Getty Images

AT THE TOP OF CUPAR WAY, Wallace and Campbell lead me through a heavy metal gate in the road. Like murals elsewhere in the city, the gate is painted with jubilant silhouettes against a bright background. Just under a line of steel spikes jutting from the gate’s top runs the optimistic slogan “25 years of building peace.”

On Springfield Road, we reach the house where Cornerstone Community Fellowship meets. In a way, this is where the road to peace began: One of Cornerstone’s founders was Gerry Reynolds, a priest instrumental in getting Protestant John Hume and Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams, leaders of the opposing sides, to secretly meet in person. That was the beginning of the Good Friday Agreement, and the beginning of this house as a safe meeting place for people across denominations to pray and seek common ground.

“We don’t argue about theological differences, we pray and listen to each other,” Wallace says of the meetings at Cornerstone. But detractors have criticized the group for being “ecumenical.” The men say it’s not surprising Northern Ireland struggles for reconciliation with attitudes like that. But they continue to invite Christian speakers from both communities. Former Ulster Volunteer Force member and convicted terrorist David Hamilton recently shared his story with the group.

Hamilton served 10 years in prison for terrorist acts. He brought me to Crumlin Road Gaol—now a museum—to show me where Jesus saved him.

We order lattes in the museum gift shop, and Hamilton tells me it was once the bathhouse where inmates were stripped-searched on arrival. The shop clerk, a woman in her mid-20s, overhears and nonchalantly asks how long Hamilton served time. “We get a lot of former inmates returning nowadays,” she says.

After his release in 1983, Hamilton worked for reconciliation in his community, holding evangelistic meetings with his former enemies, men who once belonged to the IRA. But critics on both sides saw his work as “too ecumenical,” and threats on his life forced him to leave the country. When he retired from his pastoral post in England and moved back to Northern Ireland a few years ago, he saw even fewer “crossing over” meetings than 30 years ago.

And to his dismay, he discovered the mixing of gospel and politics hadn’t changed. “I ask people in the church, ‘What if it’s the will of God to have a united Ireland?’ to which many reply, ‘Ah, but that wouldn’t be His will!’ because they believe God is a Protestant! For them it’s ‘God and Ulster!’” he says.

Still, he sees glimmers of hope. Hamilton’s son is a rapper who goes by the name Jun Tzu. He mixes the poetry of hip-hop with the lilt of traditional music to tell the story of his family and Belfast. In 2023, he played alongside Irish-language rappers to a crowd of 10,000 on the Falls Road. “It’s a Catholic area, and they’re all wearing green and white jumpers,” Hamilton says. “He sang my story about my life being converted. They all applauded. Twenty-five years ago that would be unthinkable!”

The ­grand­daughter of a man killed by the IRA in 1973 visits his grave on the outskirts of Belfast. Liam McBurney / PA Images via Getty

AS WE RETRACE OUR STEPS back along the Peace Wall, Wallace and Campbell wonder aloud about the future.

A recent poll found that only half of Northern Irish between 18 and 25 thought the counties should stay in the U.K. That’s a drop from the overall average, which shows 58% favor remaining. Over time, a majority will likely be ready to forge a new future within the Republic.

“I think if the U.K. could figure out how to give up Northern Ireland tomorrow, they’d do it in a heartbeat, so they would,” Campbell says.

Moore is cautious, but agrees that the likelihood of unity is high, stressing the need for the “victors” to embrace the other side if a border poll eventually happens. “But it’s always more complex in Ireland than you think,” he adds.

And the 20 miles of peace walls? David Smyth has an idea that combines a Belfast tree-planting initiative with the need to fill the space where the walls now stand. He envisions a memorial garden crisscrossing the city, planted with trees and gardens that surrounding neighborhoods could care for. His eyes light up talking about Biblical references to trees, particularly Revelation 22:2 where the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations.

“It wouldn’t be forgetting the past,” Smyth says, “but it wouldn’t be just pulling down the walls and ­creating a vacuum. It could be something good and beautiful that the community can own and invest in and grow.”