Croppies lie down (no more)

February 23, 2012 By

An iron constitution, a phlegmatic personality and a clean conscience means that it is rather hard to wind me up over a news story.  When I start on my morning newspapers my strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.

Yet some stories do set me going.  An Associated Press story from Northern Ireland today elicited a sharp laugh, which brought on tears, a coughing fit and and produced a purplish hue in my normally rose colored countenance. I am now quite recovered, thank you, but I ask if you see what I see in this story about the Rev. Ian Paisley (or the Lord Bannside as he is now called.)

DUBLIN (AP) — Northern Ireland politician Ian Paisley is recovering from his recent near-death experience and remains a “hearty and strong man,” one of his sons said Tuesday in the family’s first comment on the Protestant evangelist’s 16-day hospitalization.

Is Ian Paisley an “evangelist”? He is an “evangelical.” Calling him an evangelist would be a pointed political statement. Or again, it might be a confusion of language. I’m not quite sure what the author intended.

An example of an evangelist would be Dr. Billy Graham, Luis Pilau, Charles Stanley — an apologist for the Christian faith — who seeks to win souls for Christ. The word is also used in a secular sense to describe someone keen to convert or present their cause. Joseph Stalin and W.H. Auden have been described as Marxist evangelists, the Los Angeles Times ran a profile recently on a climate change evangelist, while Matthew Arnold is described as an evangelist of culture.

My colleague tmatt has covered this confusion of words in GetReligion before, but I found this error particularly interesting given Paisley’s history.

An ordained minister, Paisley founded and served as moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. While he may have been an active minister throughout his adult life, he is better known for his political work — founder and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), member of Parliament from 1970 to 2010, member of the European Parliament from 1979 to 2004, member of the Northern Ireland Assembly from 1998 to 2011, and First Minister of Northern Ireland from  2007-2008.

For 40 years he was the public political face of Protestantism and Unionism in Northern Ireland. And has also been a trenchant critic of Irish Nationalists and the Roman Catholic Church. One notable moment (among many in his colorful career) occurred in 1988.  Pope John Paul II was addressing the European Parliament when Dr. Paisley rose from his seat and shouted “I renounce you as the Antichrist” and held up a placard stating “Pope John Paul II ANTICHRIST.”

Paisley continued to heckle the pope throughout the speech, until he was removed from the chamber by a number of irate MEPs including Otto von Habsburg.

As the long time leader of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, which identifies itself as being …

Fundamental in Doctrine
Evangelical in Outreach
Sanctified in Behaviour
Presbyterian in Government
Protestant in Conviction
Separatist in Practice

… it is fair to call Paisley an evangelical. To describe him as a Protestant evangelist, however, is a mistake — unless the intent was to make a point about the Ulsterman’s mixing of religion and politics.

The AP article noted:

Paisley spent four decades blocking political compromise in Northern Ireland as founder of the hard-line Democratic Unionist Party and his stridently anti-Catholic denomination, the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. He refused any contact with Sinn Fein, the public face of the outlawed Irish Republican Army.

But after the IRA disarmed and renounced violence, Paisley stunned the world by forming a power-sharing government alongside Sinn Fein in 2007, a surprise triumph for peacemaking in the British territory.

Perhaps the use of the word was deliberate. Was Paisley’s volte face a result of his Protestant Christian faith, or was it a political calculation? As an aside, I believe the image many Americans have of Northern Ireland misses the changes that have taken place over the past twenty years. While you can still buy bumper stickers in South Boston that read 26+6=1, you will find only a few takers in Belfast.

The News Letter, a Belfast newspaper, ran a fascinating interview with a young Roman Catholic priest entitled “Border debate is irrelevant — Priest” on the same day as the AP story.

No Roman Catholic priests under the age of 45 are interested in removing the border and many Catholics are re-thinking their nationalism, a Catholic priest has said.

Fr Eugene O’Neill said that many Catholics were questioning whether as Catholics they necessarily had to be nationalist and look to Dublin when the United Kingdom was more respectful of Christian churches.

Fr O’Neill was speaking to the News Letter following a broadcast on BBC Radio Ulster’s Thought For The Day earlier yesterday morning.

In comments backing up polls which suggest that many Catholics would now vote to retain the border, Fr O’Neill said that as an Irish passport-holder he saw the Queen and senior British government figures as defenders of faith in the UK.

And, in a blistering attack on the Dublin government which shows how far the church and the state have moved apart in the Republic, Fr O’Neill claimed that there were similarities between how the Irish government is making life difficult for churches and how repressive communist regimes have persecuted Christians.

The Republic is now “a cold house for Catholicism”, he told the News Letter, singling out the atheistic Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore for particular rebuke.

By contrast, he said that the UK Government had demonstrated a respect and appreciation for the role of Christian churches which Catholics could support.

Time (and a secular Irish government) may have healed the wounds of Ulster. But Paisley may have done his part as well. Perhaps I responded too quickly to the AP story.  It could be that the writer intended to say that Ulster’s “Dr. No”‘s change from rejection to accommodation with Sinn Fein was the act of an evangelist.

Then again, it may have been sloppy writing.

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Filed Under: Catholicism, Evangelicals, Journalism, Politics, World
  • Matt

    I’ve always considered Paisley more of a fundamentalist than an evangelical. He is too much the hardliner (I mean that in the theological sense, for the most part) for the latter term to fit, methinks.

  • Martha

    This is one of those cases where I think the Reverend Paisley would indeed be happy to describe himself as an evangelical (or maybe even Evangelical) but, if we’re talking about “evangelist” in the sense of “evangelisation”, I think he may have felt he did that, too.

    Anyway, I can’t believe I’m going soft on the old man after all these years, but yes – the change to political accommodation was a shrewd (and completely unexpected) move on his part, but also seemed to have a little bit of genuine personal conviction to change as well. So, best of health, Dr. Paisley!
    :-)

  • John M.

    Ah, 26+6=1. Memories of growing up around Boston in the 80s.

    And Paisley’s actions in the European Parliament make Michele Bachmann’s “pope = antichrist” affiliations look pretty tame, I’d say.

    -John

  • northcoast

    I think this is just lazy thinking, and in a decade, maybe it will be common usage. The word, military, is used as a noun, and ‘amount’ is commonly used when ‘number’ would be better.

  • Dave Roberts

    Paisley is said to have had a major ‘spiritual moment’ during a previous illness that led to a softening of his public stance. Tony Blair is also said to have argued with him about specific bible passages – not something he had encountered in an English politician before.

  • John Penta

    Dave Roberts: Sources for that? The “arguing over specific Bible passages” bit sounds unlikely. Because, let’s be honest, Tony Blair (at least to me) doesn’t come off as quite *that* curious about religion, or (alternatively) that well-briefed.

  • Matt

    One more comment on whether Paisley is evangelical or fundamentalist: Note that the six identifying characteristics of his denomination, quoted above by George, includes both “fundamental” and “evangelical,” but it also includes “separatist.” His church’s website expands briefly on each of these points, and says this about being “Separatist”:

    [T]he Free Presbyterian Church has no association with the modern Ecumenical or Charismatic movements, nor will it fellowship with any church which has departed from the fundamental doctrines of the Word of God.

    It’s just that kind of separatism that, it seems to me, pushes them over the line to true fundamentalism.

  • http://Www.ulster-scots.co.uk Alan Day

    I recall a converted Garda officer from Dublin giving his testimony at Paisley church. Of course he is an evangelist, he preaches open air at Belfast City Hall every week and his preaching is very similar to the Baptists, Brethren, Independent Methodists…. Just take a listen to the SermonAudio.com website

  • http://lxoa.wordpress.com Shane

    The man is very much in a minority. I have never met any NI Catholics that could be considered ‘culturally’ unionist (as opposed to being willing to vote to reaffirm partition in a border poll) at all.

    Furthermore it ignores the fact that secularization has impacted much more acutely on the NI Catholic community (only about 35% attend Church weekly, very few among the youth) than the Protestant community. The reality is that very few Irish Catholics, north or south of the border, could care less about what priests think. Indeed the fact that a united Ireland would be more secular would probably prove an attractive proposition.

    The NI government is currently commissioning an inquiry into Catholic Church abuse. Expect the findings to be damning. It will incite yet more anti-Catholic feeling.

    Damian Thompson wrote this in his Daily Telegraph column last September:

    “BBC’s Question Time on Thursday came from Londonderry. As you’d expect in such a religiously fractious community, there were voices raised against the Church of Rome. But times have changed. As far as I could work out, every one of them belonged to a Catholic, or what is known these days as a “recovering Catholic”.

    The question was: did the panel agree with the former Bishop of Derry, Edward Daly, that “priests should have the freedom to marry”? The guests answered warily. (Curiously, the most theologically literate answer came from Diane Abbott.) It was the Catholic members of the audience who spelled out the implicit connection with sex abuse by Irish clergy. One mother said she didn’t feel comfortable allowing her child anywhere near a priest; she was applauded.

    In other words, Ulster Catholics are now so ashamed of their priests that they are leaving the tribe. What a sad and unexpected way for ancient loyalties to melt away.”

  • John Pack Lambert

    Well the quoted person was a young Catholic priest. He may not represent the trend among Northern Ireland’s “Catholics”, but if the Church itself supports Union, than the issue is more complexed than it was in the past.

  • http://lxoa.wordpress.com Shane

    “but if the Church itself supports Union”

    The Church doesn’t.

  • Louis Count von Wetzlar Mohrenheim

    As a Roman Catholic and knight of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, I cannot admire such a total extemist as Mr. Paisley. He had insulted His Holiness in front of dozens of Catholics, including the last Prince Imperial of Austria and Apostolic King of Hungary, the late Archduke Otto von Habsburg Lothringen. In Ireland not only the IRA were in many ways criminals, but the extremist protestants as well. Paisley is an extremist and has his hands full of blood.