SIOBHAN GARRIGAN - HOME IN A TIME OF HOMELESSNESS - 4 Corners festival 2025

Siobhan Garrigan’s name has come up in 4 Corners Festival planning meetings for years. So, how delighted are we that she is coming to speak at the 2025 Festival.

Why have we been so keen to have her. Well, Siobhan is a Professor at Trinity College in the School Of Religion. Her academic interest is dealing with social issues and theologising them.  For example, she writes about the Irish Peace process and brings worship to bear on it in her book The Real Peace Process: Worship, Politics and the End of Sectarianism.

Let me give you an insight into how the planning group works. We had already come up with this year’s theme as HOME? Someone then suggested Siobhan yet again. Quickly someone googled Siobhan’s name and says to the group, “You’ll never believe this but her new book is called A Theology of Home in a Time of Homelessness.”

We asked her to pick her day. Whatever day Siobhan was free we were having her. 

There are very few things that are more important to theologise in 2025 than home in a homeless world. We have large masses of the world leaving homes destroyed by war and famine for new homes very far away. There is also a local homeless crisis across Ireland and the UK. 

Siobhan has said that “Theology needs to offer a clearer account of the idea of ‘home’ if Christians are to be effective in combating homelessness in today’s world” and that “we need to look more carefully at how ‘home’ is used in wider societal debates such as nationalism, sectarianism and Islamaphobia.”

She speaks of the Christmas tradition of lighting a candle in the window when Mary and Joseph are looking for a home for the baby Jesus to be born, “It is an affirmation of our place in this world and of God’s desire to make God’s home right here, right now among us; but, it is home for the Other. For the one yet to come. What I have then, in terms of material effects, or familial love, or societal bonds I have only with a light in their window, in readiness to give away, in openness to the Other.”

As our entire Festival in 2025 looks at what home might feel like, every artist and speaker will give us glimpses of that from many different perspectives. Without doubt though the theology for our week will be laid out by Prof Siobhan Garrigan on Tuesday February 4th at 7.30pm in St Comgall’s on Divis Street, Belfast BT12 4AQ.

FREE - BOOK HERE