Regular readers of my ramblings on this blog will know that, to keep me out of mischief when I’m not in the Titanic Quarter, I also have responsibility for St Clements, a friendly little church on Templemore Ave in East Belfast.  A quiet part of town most of the time… but suddenly at the epicentre of the storm over these past few weeks.

I’ve been spending some time with the brilliant, resilient people of the area – parishioners who’ve been trapped in their houses as trouble has passed literally right in front of their doors in a storm of bricks, broken bottles and burning cars.  These have been heartbreaking days for those of us who love Belfast city, and who were beginning to believe that peace had taken root – that we had left our Bad News days behind us.

Recently I started to read a history of St Clements, expecting a heart-warming tale of a plucky little parish through the years – Mothers Union tea parties, bats in the belfry, that sort of thing.  Instead to my amazement the first chapter was called ‘The St Clements Riots’:  over 100 years ago, in 1898, similar riots were taking place on the very same streets that are being torn apart in 2013.

My illustrious(?!) predecessor Rev Peoples – the very first Rector of St Clements – had caused great offence with his ‘High Church practices’  (“assuming the eastwards posture” was apparently one of his crimes, the cad).  Eager to be affronted, angry mobs of 4000-5000 travelled from all around to picket the church, week after week, at every service; bricks were thrown, windows (and bones) were broken, squads of police surrounded the building and struggled to restore order.

Rev Peoples knelt down, but as soon as he did so there was great booing and hooting…At the close of the service a scene of almost indescribable confusion took place.  The rowdies who formed the major part of the congregation cheered and yelled, and hundreds clambered pell-mell over the pews in expectancy of seeing a fight.  The crowd outside pelted the church with missiles of all kinds resulting in windows being broken.  A missile aimed at the Rector missed and struck the churchwarden, breaking his nose!  Eventually a large force of police arrived in an effort to contain the situation…

What can we make of this? I guess you could look at the glass half-empty and say that nothing changes – that the history book on the shelf is always repeating itself. I wonder if the St Clements parishioners of those turbulent days felt a lot of the same emotions that we have experienced in recent weeks.

Or we could look at what happened next. Undaunted by this most unpromising beginning, the early parishioners of St Clements persevered – and built a church that brought faith, hope, welcome and grace to countless people down through the generations. As Belfast boomed and the shipyard grew in the early 1900s and through the 1930s and 40s, as East Belfast expanded and became ever more densely populated, the church which had begun under such a cloud of darkness became a beacon of light to many. Right through to the present day, when people still find the light of life between its old brick walls. Looking back over the century, how many prayers would have remained unprayed, how many lives unchanged, how many needs unmet, how many souls unnourished, if those early St Clementsians had just given up?

If we could send a message back through time to those early days, we could say “Keep hope alive! Keep praying… trouble will pass. Blessing will come. Don’t give in to the despair of this present darkness. God has great things in store for this church and this city.”

Can we believe the same for today?