Steve Bruce

Ethnicity and Evangelicalism: Ian Paisley and Protestant Politics in Ulster

The question of the conditions that must prevail before fundamentalist religion can play a significant part in politics has loomed large in recent years with the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East. Protestant fundamentalism has drawn somewhat less attention, except for the case of the new Christian right in America. Nowhere in the contemporary world are the politics of conservative Protestantism more clearly visible than in Northern Ireland. Therefore, in this essay we seek to explain why Protestant fundamentalism has achieved such prominence and success in Ulster in recent years. First, we present a comparative analysis of conservative Protestant politics in the English-speaking world. Second, we offer an historically informed analysis of the rise of Ulsters most successful fundamentalist politician, the Reverend Ian Paisley.

A sociological account of liberal protestantism

Any list of important changes in Western religion in the last hundred years would mention the rise ofliberal Protestantism (and the associated ecumenical movement), and the decline in size and influence of the Protestant churches. What has been less obvious is the partial operation of secularization; in Britain and America liberal Protestant churches have declined more than their conservative rivals. In summary one could speak of the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries as an era in which liberal Protestantism rose and then declined. This essay will attempt to synthesize, from a variety of sociological ideas, a suggested outline for a comprehensive explanation of that rise and fall. Such an ambitious and necessarily speculative project will require the argument to be conducted at a high level of abstraction but at various junctures details from the biographies of individuals and the careers of organizations will be introduced to illustrate and exemplify the points being made.

Status and Cultural Defense: The Case of the New Christian Right

Abstract Miller (1985) has claimed that a properly designed research project shows no support for the cultural defense or “politics of lifestyles concern” explanation for the rise of the New Christian Right. This short article argues that Millers data have little or no bearing on the issues he claims to explore.

Ulster Loyalism and Religiosity

It seems to be the social science orthodoxy that, whatever the Northern Ireland conflict is about, it is not about religion. Despite the frequently repeated assertion by unionists that their main reason for not wanting to become part of a united Ireland is the power of the Catholic Church, the majority of commentators and most British people refuse to believe them.’ It is perhaps not surprising that members of a largely secular culture should find it difficult to believe that some people take religion seriously enough to let it affect their lives. But it is worth considering the implication of the apparent willingness of many loyalists to prefer the economic disaster of an independent Ulster to a future in a united Ireland. The enormous question of whether, to what extent, and in what ways the Northern Ireland conflict is religious will not be discussed here: that has been done elsewhere.2 In this short note information about the religious affiliations of active members of Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) will be presented which defies explanation unless one recognizes the central part played in loyalist politics by religious beliefs and attitudes. Since its foundation in 1971, the DUP has come to rival the ‘official’ Ulster Unionist Party in electoral support. Paisley himself is easily the most popular single Unionist leader. In the 1984 elections to the Parliament of the EEC, nearly a quarter of a million people voted for him. Although the Official Unionist Party has 11 Westminster seats to the three of the DUP, the overall performance of the two parties in recent local government and Assembly elections has shown them to enjoy comparable public support. It is well known that, in its early days, the DUP drew heavily on the membership of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster (which Paisley helped found in 1951) for its activists. When Paisley launched his first major foray into electoral politics in 1969, of six candidates, three were Free Presbyterian (FP) ministers and one was an elder of an FP congregation. The denominational affiliations of DUP activists at various points since then are shown in Table 1.