Sectarianism is still eating away at the heart of Northern Ireland society, the former Presbyterian moderator, Dr John Dunlop, said in his Christmas Eve service at Long Tower Church in Derry.
"We can pull the blankets of community solidarity around us. We may energise our part of the country and enthuse our political and church activists, but underneath the comfort blankets there is the festering virus of sectarianism - a one-eyed conviction which corrodes and infects, which either erupts into killing and bombing or slowly eats away at faith and the possibility of contemplating a future which can be different from the past," he said.
The president of the Methodist Church, the Rev Ken Todd, has said that given the current impasse in the Northern Ireland peace process, it was more important than ever to send out a message of peace and goodwill.
"Jesus was born in poverty and he was a refugee. There was the slaughter of the innocents. And yet into that context came the message of peace on Earth and goodwill to all.
"That is the message that we need to hear at this time of the year at Christmas, with the peace process and the reaction against it, and the history that we have had of pain," Mr Todd added.