‘Ats us nai’ – Meet Gary Mason, Peacemaker

Rethinking Conflict

Welcome to another interview of the ‘Ats us nai’ series, informing you on what’s happening ‘now’ throughout Northern Ireland’s communities. We caught up with Gary Mason, Founder of Rethinking Conflict.

The #AtsUsNai project is a series of interviews with folks from Northern Ireland’s community sector about the work they’re doing to bring about positive change. It is funded by the Community Relations Council‘s Media Grant Scheme.

Rev Dr Gary Mason is a Methodist Minister and peace builder based in East Belfast. Gary is one of the founders of the Skainos Centre, East Belfast’s most prominent community hub centred on reconciliation and bettering cultural understanding across the island of Ireland. He now runs Rethinking Conflict, a social enterprise based on conflict transformation which takes Gary to many of the world’s conflicted regions, bringing with him the expertise he has learned battling sectarianism in his native Belfast.

As a self-proclaimed ‘recovering bigot’ (his words, not mine), Gary is well aware of the ‘toxic theology’ that comes out of many religions around the world that has the capacity to compound conflict and further division in divided societies. In his life both as a Methodist Minister and peace builder in the grassroots, he has dedicated himself to battling this toxicity which has plagued his city and he and his colleagues have fostered creative and constructive ways to address these ongoing issues across the globe.

Gary on his work in conflict transformation around the world:

Gary’s work has taken him to places as far away South Africa, Israel/Palestine and all over the United States to help conflicted societies move forward. His work in Belfast has prepared him for this and, while he explains that the Good Friday Agreement is not a panacea for all conflicts, there’s definitely lessons that can be learned from it and implemented into other peace processes. His work in the community in Belfast has provided him with an authenticity, not to tell others how to behave or reconcile, but to discuss proactively with them more positive solutions for their societies moving into the future. The thought behind the Skainos Centre and, indeed, Gary’s own personal philosophy is built on giving ownership to the community to be able to better themselves.

Building on his philosophy, his tenets of a successful peace process hinge on a few specific things:

• Political leadership
• The futility of violence
• Security for all
• Civil Society: Gary and his good friend, Dr John Brewer, call this the ‘social peace process’, involving academics, statutory and civil bodies, clergy and NGO’s working together towards a common good
• Trust:  This is the most important tenet and, as Gary puts it, can only evolve out of meaningful, ‘human’ relationships.

These principles are particularly relevant to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, but apply generally in peace processes, as well

On the topic of faith and peace building, Gary doesn’t speak like your ordinary member of the clergy. He stated that, while pastorally, churches have done a fine job in Northern Ireland in terms of providing baptisms, weddings, funerals and those types of services, over the span of ‘The Troubles’, they have been dreadful in their social outreach. He said that many of the churches during ‘The Troubles’ were led by clergy who served as ‘chaplains to their own tribes’, who were more concerned with maintaining their institutions and traditions than positively serving the community in transformative ways – and also that churches are some of the most dishonest places on the planet.

He said that the thought behind the Skainos Centre was for it to be a building that has as many windows as possible so that it could keep an eye on the community outside its walls – something churches did not do enough of over the years. He explained that the holiness churches aspire to was not reaching people at a social level and that, while he often sees church members speaking out about injustices, they fail to realise they’re speaking from and within institutions often exacerbating injustice. Gary echoed Cecil Kerr’s comment that Northern Ireland was plagued by a kind of ‘toxic theology’ that further fuelled the sectarian divide:

“While many congregations didn’t have guns in their hands, they surely had them in their hearts.”

As a man of the cloth, Reverend Mason firmly believes that religion should never dominate society. This, again, was the philosophy behind Skainos. While some may see the centre as an institution dedicated to God, and that is part of the narrative, its work should also balance personal holiness with social holiness – the building’s purpose is to serve people, not just church members.

Rethinking Conflict tackles real, up-to-date issues on the ground. Gary has been undertaking cross-border engagements with participants from both major communities in Belfast to meet Republicans/Nationalists from Dublin in the wake of ‘Brexit’, helping to foster more understanding, dialogue and bettering relations on both sides of the Irish border. He has also been working with African Americans and white Americans in the southern US.

“Where we have one ‘S’ word– sectarianism – the US still needs to heal from the legacy of its own ‘S’ word, slavery. A lot can be learned from each other in how we’ve attempted to address these two evils.”

You can tell that Gary is quite passionate about the work Rethinking Conflict and he are undertaking in Israel-Palestine. His approach there is to listen rather than speak and try to take in the greater picture. He’s brought a thousand Israelis and Palestinians over to visit Dublin, Belfast and Derry/Londonderry. While they’re here, they’re able to foster relationships they simply could not back home. This work has been transformative, but more needs to be done.

Whether he’s addressing issues in Jerusalem, Cape Town, Atlanta or Belfast, Gary sums up his approach to peace processes quite simply:

“Most of our projects are centred on addressing this one question: ‘How do we foster civil dialogue in uncivil times.’ There is no issue with having disagreements – it is how we disagree that matters. The same choice exists abroad as it did here – we can continue to kill one another for another 50-100 years, but eventually people need to sit down, negotiate and painfully work out a way forward.”

No doubt there is a ton that we can learn from Gary and may his work continue to positively influence the world for the better. No doubt Northern Ireland, despite its ongoing issues, is a beacon of hope for many societies struggling and Gary is just one of many vessels used to export ‘what has worked here’ abroad. As they say, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’, but I’d say Belfast is blessed to have Gary Mason.

The Ats us nai project is a series of interviews with community leaders and organisations across Northern Ireland’s ‘third sector’ centred on reconciliation. Articles are available on AvilaMedia and Northern Slant and produced in partnership with Ani Kanakaki. The project is funded by the Community Relations Council and available on social media at #AtsUsNai.