Kelly talks to Rev John Dunlop, minister of Rosemary Presbyterian Church in north Belfast:
“‘There is a community worker I know well,’ he says, ‘who says that cross-community work for her is to get young people from the two loyalist paramilitary factions together in the same room. It’s a big move from that to then engage with the republican community further up the street, who tend to be a lot more articulate and ideologically aware.'”
He describes how he sees the ‘small-p’ political character of his community:
“Dunlop is preoccupied by the solitary and ungovernable aspect of the Protestant temperament, one that seems to inspire in him a mingled pride and regret. ‘The Protestant community is diverse, fractured, individualistic,’ he says, ‘which is one element of what Protestantism is about, that you make up your own mind about things. And if you don’t like what your church is doing, then you go and join another church.’ By contrast, Dunlop sees Catholicism as forming a kind of homogeneous social unit that folds together parish, church, school and family-a useful united front when it comes to applying for community development monies.”
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