Call for Christian role in peace effort

The director of ECONI (Evangelical Contribution on Northern Ireland), Dr David Porter, has called for "robustly Christian engagement" within and between the communities in the North. "Jesus, who reached out and touched the leper, that Jesus has profound implications for Northern Ireland," he said.

He was speaking at ECONI's 10th annual conference in Belfast at the weekend. The organisation began in 1987 when a group of evangelical Protestant leaders came together out of concern that the words of Christ were being used in the North for political purposes and that Christianity itself had come to be seen as part of the problem rather than of its solution. The group's first five years were preoccupied with establishing a Christian identity in the context. Since then ECONI had been about engagement, or putting that identity into practice, Dr Porter said.

"I talk to Sinn Fein, not because it is politically correct, but because Jesus asked me to," he told the conference. He recalled how ECONI had welcomed the Hume-Adams talks when others condemned them, because the group was committed to "an up close and personal engagement with Catholics."