Opinion/David Adams: If there is such a thing in this satellite age as surfing the radio, then that's what I was doing on Sunday afternoon when I happened on a round-table discussion on BBC Radio Ulster.
It being Easter, I briefly assumed it to be a group of Christians arguing the toss over some obscure theological difference. Interesting enough, if only in light of the blood-soaked history of disputes around religious absurdities.
It quickly became clear, however, that the subject wasn't religion, not in the accepted sense anyway. It concerned another creed, one with a bloodily schismatic narrative all of its own, Irish republicanism. Easter, of course, is a special time for republicans. The sacrifice made by sons (and daughters) of Ireland in the Easter Rising of 1916 is, for many republicans, every bit as sacrosanct as that made by the Son of God.
Still, our radio panel didn't dwell on 1916 but quickly moved on to subsequent events.
Who, they pondered, in Ireland today can justifiably claim to be the legitimate bearers of the sacred flame of republicanism?
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, of Republican Sinn Féin (RSF), still clinging tenaciously to his comfort blanket of ideological alienation from former colleagues, castigated Sinn Féin for signing up to the partitionist Belfast Agreement. He claimed its acceptance of ministerial positions in a Northern Ireland executive amounted to administering crown rule in Ireland.
In fairness, Ó Brádaigh can point to RSF's Eire Nua ideas on Irish confederation as the only real effort to date by any republican grouping to spell out how they imagine an inclusive, unitary state might actually work.
Any kudos earned on that front, however, is more than offset by Ó Brádaigh's belief that "physical force" (a euphemism for murder and mayhem) remains for republicans more imperative than optional. Presumably, the farther you live from the seat of a conflict the easier it is to hold fast to such a view.
Representatives of the two "partitionist" parties, Cllr Eoin O Broin of Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil's Conor Lenihan, spent their time trying to convince us that some vestige of ideological difference remains between them. Their verbal sparring, therefore, revolved almost exclusively around moral and legal issues such as punishment attacks, organised crime, political corruption and the unacceptability of private armies.
John Kelly, a former Sinn Féin MLA, bemoaned the authoritarian tendencies of Sinn Féin and a lack of tolerance for dissenting voices within its midst. Republicans oppressing the dissenter is, strictly speaking I suppose, something of a contradiction in terms.
Bored? By this time so was I. But just as I was reaching for the remote control, Tommy McKearney, a republican ex-prisoner from mid-Ulster, began to make his voice heard. "Republicanism," he asserted, "is the exclusive property of no single person or grouping but belongs to all of the people of Ireland."
I continued to listen.
He further stated that Irish republicanism should not allow itself to be polluted by nationalism, amounting as it does to much more than any simple notion of nationhood. Then, for my money anyway, McKearney made his most telling point.
Citing Wolfe Tone's famous declaration regarding the uniting of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, he said that the primary task facing republicans today was to convince "our Protestant brothers and sisters" of the efficacy of the republican position.
Here was someone referring back to the very origins of Irish republicanism. Quite a novelty, considering people like Henry Joy McCracken, William Orr, and even Tone himself rarely get mentioned by republicans nowadays.
For most, their inspiration, guidance and political reference point invariably goes no further back than the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising. And yet it's hard to imagine a more ideologically diverse group of people than Pearse, Connolly, Casement, Collins, de Valera and their colleagues. Which of them could legitimately claim ownership of the sacred flame of true republicanism? They certainly all couldn't. Their differences were at least as pronounced as - and probably helped give rise to - any that exist today.
You could take your choice of position from right-wing religious zealotry to extreme socialism and still fit neatly in line with the worldview of at least one of the 1916 martyrs.
Optimistic dreamer though he was, Tone and his colleagues in the United Irishmen were not only far more ideologically at one than any who followed them, but arguably more successful as well. They did after all, for a short time at least, manage to unite Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter in the common name of Irishman.
Perhaps Christianity and Irish republicanism have something more in common than just a commemoration of sacrifice at Easter. The more each has sought to add garnish to a simple founding philosophy, the more distant it has become from what it professes to be.
What Christian needs to seek guidance from anything more than the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer? And what republican need look further than Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen for inspiration?