Gerry Adams: ‘Sometimes I was in tune with Jesus’

The father of a 12-year-old boy who lost his life in the Omagh bombing has attacked Channel 4 for inviting Gerry Adams to tell the story of Jesus in a documentary series about the Bible. In it Adams defends his part in the turbulent history of Northern Ireland and says: "Sometimes I was in tune with the Jesus message and sometimes not."

The 61-year-old president of Sinn Fein - who while proud of his role in the Catholic struggle has always denied being a member of the Provisional IRA - says people should heed what he calls "the Jesus message" and praises those families who have forgiven the IRA for killing their relatives.

"I am not a pacifist and I don't believe that non-violent protest would have got justice in Ireland," he says, "but I do know that after decades of war, we all have plenty to forgive and to be forgiven for."

Adams goes on: "The one thing I have always liked about Jesus is his lack of condemnation and his lack of denunciation: the way he mixed with all the wrong people. And the way that, although he sets out rules for life, he knows we are imperfect and we are not going to do it. So he gives us another chance, and another chance and another chance."

One man not in the mood to forgive Adams is Victor Barker, whose son James was one of 29 people to die when the so-called Real IRA attacked Omagh with a car bomb in August 1998.

Barker, quoted in the Observer, said of C4's decision: "It's a big mistake and completely misguided. It is offering Adams a platform for doing what he does so well, of coming across on camera as a genuine, peaceful person who wants to promote peace and love."
 
Ralph Lee, head of specialist factual programmes at C4, said he was not surprised by the criticism. "It is a natural reaction to the potency of getting Adams to tell this story."

He said the seven prominent figures taking part in the series - including the novelist Howard Jacobson and the Tory politician Ann Widdecombe - were each expected to take a contemporary and personal view. "It was a challenge Gerry was willing to take," he said.

Lee added that he hoped the on-screen encounter between Adams and Alan McBride, who lost his wife and father-in-law in the Shankill Road bombing of 1993, would persuade sceptical viewers to see the value of having Adams in the series.

Adams and McBride discuss forgiveness in the aftermath of the long IRA campaign. Adams says that those like McBride who find it in themselves to be conciliatory "are probably more true to what is the Jesus message than others, including myself".

Filming took Adams to Jordan, Palestine and Israel. In Jerusalem he is shown a tomb of the sort Jesus's body would been placed in after the Crucifixion. Warned it will be cramped and dark inside, Adams responds: "Well, Sinn Fein used to be an underground movement".

'The Bible: A History - Jesus', C4, Sunday, February 21. ·