Adams to present TV programme about Jesus

The President of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams, is to be one of the guest presenters on the Channel 4 series The Bible: A History.  The west Belfast MP will present a programme in the series about Jesus early next month.

Mr Adams said last week that he would set out to discover the real Jesus in the programme.

In making the programme, he spoke to experts and scholars in Ireland and elsewhere and discussed Jesus's ethical teachings with victims of the Northern Ireland conflict, including victims of the IRA and police collusion.  He also interviewed both Christian and Jewish Jesus scholars in the Holy Land.

Mr Adams said that he describes himself as an "Irish Catholic" and that “despite all the let-downs and scandals that the Church, or at least a section of the Church, has been embroiled in, I remain a member."

He said being an Irish Catholic shaped him and the community he came from and he added that he saw the teachings of the Church leadership for generations as being conservative and “more about control than liberation.”

“When I was a teenager in the 60s there was no Archbishop Tutu or Bishop Romero to publicly campaign for people's rights and in a changing Ireland the relationship between the faithful and the Church changed," he said.  "Strictures and denunciations from Church leaders were challenged, particularly by younger people.”

Mr Adams criticised the attitude of the Church establishment to unrest among Northern Ireland Catholics in the 1960s as “elitist and judgmental.”

He said that in the documentary, he sought to explore “how the Jesus message of love and forgiveness and his extraordinary sacrifice have affected me throughout my life during the conflict and the peace-making processes in Ireland".

Mr Adams said that if Jesus had been Irish he wondered what He would have done.

“He too lived in an occupied country, there were a number of uprisings before, during and after his life and the desire of the Jewish people to be free of imperial rule was very strong,” he remarked.  “Indeed, many of them were waiting for a Messiah to liberate them and to bring back the Kingdom of David.

He said that he was surprised to discover “how Jewish Jesus was" when he went researching his life and times.  "That may seem a ludicrous thing to say but nowhere in Catholic teaching is that obvious fact clear.”

“Jesus was not about establishing a new religion.  He was about modernising a very old one.

Each film in the Channel 4 series is written and presented by a personality.  Other contributors include the former BBC correspondent Rageh Omaar and the Conservative MP and convert to Catholicism Anne Widdecombe.

by Fintan Deere