You may (or may not) have seen that Gerry Adams is currently undergoing a civil court case. It is being brought by three victims of IRA bombing attacks on the British mainland who are seeking a ruling that Adams is personally liable for decisions to plant car bombs in London and Manchester in 1973 and 1996. Gerry Adams maintains his longstanding claim that he was never in the IRA nor sat on its ruling Army Council. It seems the jury remains out on whether the Pope is, indeed, Catholic.

The court case seems incredible in many ways. Not least, I am not aware of a single credible, independent journalist or academic that believes Gerry Adams was not very much in the IRA and a member of the ruling IRA Council. Adams has been named repeatedly by respected journalists, consistently named by academic historians and sociologists and directly named by numerous known and self-professed IRA members – including members of the ruling council – as being an IRA member on the ruling army council. It is amazing that this is even a case really.

We, of course, await the outcome with bated breath. It is impossible to imagine, particularly on the civil court balance of probabilities, that it will not find exactly what we all know to be true already. The biggest problem for Adams will be the damage to Sinn Fein. Amazingly, despite the world knowing the nature of his involvement in the IRA, he has nevertheless managed to create a reputation of being a peacemaker. A reputation that will be on the line formally, though it is a wonder how it ever quite came to be.

It is interesting that, despite reputation and almost universal agreement on the fact of the matter, Adams can nevertheless persist in his claim that he was never a member of the IRA nor on the ruling council. What this court case will do will remove any ability for him to live in a world where it has not been formally proven, despite being universally acknowledged. We are about to see formalised what is already known.

I wonder if there is a parallel here for us in the church. Whatever our formal positions, whatever our overt claims about ourselves, reputation has a habit of overtaking. There are no end of churches that assert they are ‘welcoming’ whilst visitors who show up struggle to find it to be so. Churches frequently talk about ‘community’ whilst seeming to have little more than a midweek meeting and a Sunday service. There are lots of other potential examples. But I wonder whether, a little like Gerry Adams, many of our churches make claims about themselves that are not reflected in their reputation or, dare I say, reality.