It is timely, I believe, in the climate of the new-found hope deriving from the Belfast Agreement, that the Church of Ireland General Synod should this week be considering an interim report on sectarianism.

The report's origins are to be found mainly in the events of Drumcree 1996 and 1997, when television pictures of ugly scenes of confrontation were transmitted across the world, with the Church of Ireland parish church in Drumcree in the background.

Despite the fact Archbishop Eames and many others made superhuman efforts to conciliate between the various factions, the painful image remains for Church of Ireland people of something of themselves, one of their churches, being identified with attitudes and behaviour they would like to think, and would want others to think, were alien to them.

This experience is not exclusive to the Church of Ireland; other institutions and groupings, religious and secular, have found themselves in the same boat. But is there such a clear dividing line between those who are perceived to be sectarian and those who are not?

It has been suggested sectarianism can be depicted as a pyramid, with the ugliest and active expressions at the sharp pointed top, but resting firmly on a wide but passive base. The definition of sectarianism used in this church report is consistent with that view.

The report examines sectarian attitudes in the light of the theological understanding that God is love. "Where God is open, sectarianism rejects; where God forgives, sectarianism stores up revenge; where God would unite, sectarianism divides.

"Sectarianism gains its identity precisely through its lack of openness: my rightness is diametrically opposed to, and defined by, your wrongness; and therefore, indeed my rightness is diminished if it can ever be shown that you may not be entirely wrong. This translates into an individual's identity being bound up with that of a community/church/ party/nationality whose rightness is thus identified."

The report goes on to suggest sectarianism depends upon either a refusal or an inability to recognise the provisionality of all of our human thinking and concepts. It speaks of "a church/community/party/nationality being put in the place of God and which the real God, now dethroned, is made apparently to serve and reinforce and defend. Sectarianism may therefore be defined . . . as a form of idolatry."

It is relatively easy to identify the more extreme acts or manifestations of sectarianism: the killing of young people simply because they were Roman Catholics; the ethnic cleansing (what an abuse of the word "cleansing") of Protestant families in isolated Border areas: abusive and confrontational marches and countermarches.

BUT these do not occur in isolation. There is no such thing as a totally lone gunman. The painful truth is that there is a much broader-based support group for such activities than we care to admit. Indeed we are all children, to some extent or another, of a very troubled and dysfunctional island home.

An element of this is what I call the selective memory syndrome, which is concerned only with those aspects of history or personal experience which serve to justify a particular sense of grievance or advance a political cause.

There has been and is enormous political exploitation of people's fears, and although it is possible to identify certain political figures with this, the reality is that politicians are often only telling people what they want to hear.

Sectarian instincts in Ireland run very deep. But one of the hopeful signs in the current political climate, North and South, is the number of politicians who are courageously providing real and imaginative leadership and making people think.

But what of religion's role? It is often said the churches should not be involved in politics. True - if we mean party politics. It is not true and cannot be true of politics in general. The prayer, "thy kingdom come" is a very political statement in general. But church involvement in politics in the past has been less than honourable throughout Ireland and has been a major factor in the cultivation of sectarianism.

I say that from the bitter and shameful experience of my own church, a minority church, which was imposed on the people of this island as an Established Church for too long, to the detriment of Christians of all other churches.

Until recently in the North, the main Protestant churches had close association with the political establishment, and organisations like the Orange Order. They opted for the comfort of the status quo and suppressed the prophetic concern for justice which lies at the Gospel's heart. This affected not only Catholic nationalists but the Protestant poor as well.

On the Roman Catholic side the Ne Temere era represented an utter disregard for the values and concerns of other Christians, but at least that policy, however unsavoury, was openly and publicly acknowledged. What is frightening is the recent revelation of the late Archbishop McQuaid's apparent control of the political system and the elected government.

It is too easy to write this off in terms of the personal role of one man. The fact is that he was well supported by those around him and there were too many politicians and others willing to bend the knee and play what was in fact a sectarian hand.

North and South, there was a culture or religious discrimination which the churches took advantage of and to a greater or lesser extent controlled. The name of the game was power and influence.

There is a real and urgent need for the churches to respond to the new climate of hope in this island. I believe that this can only be done by their abandonment of tribal loyalties, and by ecumenically committing themselves to the work of reconciliation and peacemaking and the pursuit of justice for all.

There are some courageous examples of this but there is still a serious lack of urgency at an institutional and leadership level in making real progress.

To advocate an ecumenical approach is not to diminish in any way the special gifts or richness of any church. Rather it initiates a new quality of dialogue and common action which cultivates mutual respect and tolerance, the opposites of sectarianism and bigotry.

Sometimes one feels there is a reluctance to pursue an energetic ecumenism for fear that some will resent it and fall away. But there is another side to this: how many have been disillusioned in the past and how many more will be lost for the future, especially young people, because the churches are perceived to be sustainers of division and even sources of sectarian bitterness?

The time has come to surrender the love of power and accept the role of servant; to exchange the many flawed certainties for an authentic and credible Christian life. Nothing less will do.

The Venerable Gordon Linney is Church of Ireland Archdeacon of Dublin. He is also honorary secretary of the general synod and a member of the sub-committee which prepared the interim report on sectarianism.