Church matters
And this brings me to what I consider to be the main subject of this talk - Paisley's religious orientation and in particular the character of his Free Presbyterian Church.
I mentioned earlier that I had published a general history of Ulster Presbyterianism. I had wanted to call it 'Peculiarities of Ulster Presbyterianism' because my main intention was to outline what was distinctive about the development in Ulster, that is, to put it into the context of developments in the rest of the British Isles, chiefly Scotland, England and the rather different development that occurred in the South of Ireland. You will notice that I haven't mentioned Wales. I did read about the history of Calvinistic Methodism in Wales but whereas there were clear links between Ulster and, most obviously Scotland but also England, there seemed to be no direct connection with Wales. An obvious explanation for this was the difference in language.
Had I had my way I would also have finished the book with the great religious 'revival' that took place in 1859. What I wanted to do was to write about a period in which the Presbyterians in the North of Ireland constituted what could almost be described as a distinct political society in its own right. The Presbyterian tradition in general aspired to be an 'established' church, that is to say, the Church of the whole nation recognised as such by the civil government and in some respects - matters of faith and morals - sovereign over the civil government. The Church of Scotland was, indeed still is, like the Church of England, an established church. The Presbyterian 'Synod of Ulster' could not claim that status but they nonetheless behaved like a national church in relation to their own members. The principle duty of a Presbyterian was discipline - membership of the church, regular attendance, participation in the sacraments. Until the early nineteenth century the church exercised a juridicial oversight (not recognised by the civil government) in matters of morality. It was this participation in a collective discipline that gave the believer an assurance that he or she was one of God's people and therefore liable to be saved. In this respect the Church resembled - it could be said to have continued the tradition of - the Roman Catholic Church.
Like the Scottish Presbyterian Church, the Ulster Presbyterians were prone to splits and schisms but in general that emphasis on the discipline of a worshipping society with a theoretical right to sovereignty over the whole society was maintained by the dissidents.
My argument was that this began to break up in the early nineteenth century and that although what happened in 1859 looked like and called itself a 'revival' of religion it was actually a sign that the old order was definitively broken. It was no longer membership of the Church that assured a safe passage through life to Eternity but a subjective experience of having been 'saved'. And the old church and its sacraments was not necessary to that subjective experience. 1859 was followed by the rapid spread of the 'Gospel Hall', either organised through, for example, the 'brethren' ('Plymouth Brethren') or on a more spontaneous, one might say private enterprise, basis. As one example among many hundreds, Ian Paisley's father, James Kyle Paisley seems to have started preaching informally almost as soon as he was converted at a YMCA meeting perhaps as a teenager. It was on the basis of an already established extra-denominational preaching career that he was called to become Baptist pastor in Armagh. But soon after moving to another Baptist church in Ballymena he left it and, to quote Bruce:
'With a few of his flock, Kyle Paisley started services in a disused carpet warehouse. He then `trusted in the Lord to provide' and acquired a building site by the railway lines. A plain single-storey building-the Waveney Road Tabernacle-was erected, and the small congregation set out in its Covenant its firm opposition to `the anti-super-naturalism of modernism, and the deceptions of fanaticism, and the formality of a dead and defunct orthodoxy'. In a 'day of apostasy, declension and compromise, the remnant would maintain a faithful witness to the belief that the Bible was `the whole Word of God ... verbally inspired by God the Holy Ghost ... the final authority on all matters of Doctrine, Faith, Practice.'
My publisher did not want me to stop in 1859. He wanted me to bring the story up to the present day and in particular to make mention of Ian Paisley which, of course, would help to sell the book. I'm afraid that the last chapter of my book is weak as regards a distinctly theological or church-organisational history. I simply used it as a vehicle to advance the political argument I have outlined at the beginning of the present talk.
If I had engaged in a proper religious history covering this more 'revivalist' period I might well have had to pay more attention to the Welsh experience. One could very - very - broadly outline two strands in the tradition that identifies with the name of John Calvin. In the one, which we might broadly call the 'reformed' tradition, the emphasis is still on the Church and on its disciplines (the Church of Scotland was reformed on the basis of John Knox's First Book of Discipline and then of Andrew Melville's Second Book of Discipline). The second strand lays the emphasis on the subjective experience of the individual believer. A classical expression of this might be John Bunyan's book, Grace Abounding, which tells autobiographically something like the story that is told allegorically in the Pilgrim's Progress.
The emphasis on subjective experience, and particularly on the experience of being 'born again' - a moment in which one knows one is saved, that Jesus has taken one's sins on Himself - is a particularly Anglo-American development. But in the context of the British Isles it was particularly strong in Wales.
When I was studying the Ulster Presbyterian tradition I was struck by the fact that in the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century there was very little in the way of devotional literature, religious poetry or hymn writing. Indeed I can't offhand think of anything. The same could not be said of Wales, yet both traditions claim to be 'Calvinist'. Also, Wales saw a whole series of revivals - no need to put the word in inverted commas here - moments of religious enthusiasm spreading like a contagion from one person to another and then from one community to another. If I had the time I could read you accounts which I find very moving. But there is very little of this in Ulster prior to 1859.
It happens that Paisley had his first training for the ministry in Wales - in what was then the Barry Bible College. It's now the Wales Evangelical School of Theology. He spent a year there, but his main training was the three years he spent in the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Hall in Belfast. This is of great interest to me. I knew he had studied there but I didn't know he had been with them for three years. I spent quite a lot of time in their library working through the literature of certain nineteenth century disputes when I was writing my University thesis. They are the continuation of what in Scotland are known as the Covenanters, the Cameronians or the 'hill folk' - the Presbyterians who refused to accept the settlement that followed the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1689-90. This was when the Roman Catholic King James II was replaced with the Dutch Protestant William III, William of Orange. It is the victory celebrated by the 'Orangemen' and it established the Church of Scotland as a Presbyterian Church - that is to say a Church without Bishops, or 'prelates'.
Why did the Covenanters reject it? They maintained that in the 1640s the peoples of Scotland and England had entered into a 'Solemn League and Covenant' binding before God which required them, among other things, to 'endeavour the extirpation of Popery, Prelacy (that is, church government by Archbishops, Bishops, their Chancellors, and Commissionaries, Deans, Deans and Chapters, Archdeacons, and all other ecclesiastical officers depending on that hierarchy) ... that the Lord may be one, and his name one, in the three kingdoms' (the three kingdoms of course including Ireland which however is not mentioned among the elements that had subscribed to it). Although from the time of the Williamite settlement Popery was indeed being suppressed and persecuted, a prelatic church - the Anglican Church - had been established in England, Wales and Ireland. The Revolution was, then, in their eyes, 'a turning aside like a deceitful bow' (Psalm 78, v.57 - the Covenanters' skill with Biblical phrases is exploited with great aplomb by Walter Scott, in particular in his novel Old Mortality). They would not recognise the government as legitimate. I think I am right in saying that when the pseudo-parliament at Stormont was imposed on the people of Northern Ireland, civil servants were required to sign an oath of allegiance to the Queen, but a special exemption was given to the Reformed Presbyterians.
In the light of the very crude distinction I have drawn between an emphasis on correct church discipline on the one hand and an emphasis on subjective experience on the other, the Reformed Presbyterians were very much on the side of discipline. They don't sing humanly contrived hymns, only the inspired words of scripture, especially of course the Psalms, unaccompanied by any musical instrument. The emphasis is on the sermon, a lengthy, sober exposition of scripture. As myself an Orthodox Christian under the discipline of the Moscow patriarchate, even though this is very much a 'prelatic' church, I find them the most attractive of non-Orthodox Christian denominations.
The appeal of Paisley's Free Presbyterian Church was that it provided a refuge from the mainstream Presbyterian Church which, many people thought, was no longer preaching the doctrines of traditional Calvinism (a tension between 'liberal' and 'conservative' tendencies that is a continuous part of the history of all the Calvinist churches). That, however, does not explain very much since there already were other bodies offering apparently the same service. There were the Reformed Presbyterians for a start but perhaps their refusal to recognise the government and opposition to the Glorious Revolution was a little off putting. Certainly no Orangeman could be a Reformed Presbyterian. Despite the time he spent with them there is no suggestion that Paisley was ever tempted to join their ministry.
Then there is the Irish Evangelical Church, now the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (Ireland). They had separated from the main body in the 1920s after a long period of protesting against deviations in doctrine. They have a very impressive bookshop in the centre of Belfast, very useful to me when I was doing my research. Although as a denomination they only exist in Ireland they are well connected with the Free Church of Scotland (the 'Wee Frees') and with the evangelical Calvinist tendency in England and Wales associated with the great name of Martin Lloyd Jones, who was a friend and colleague of W.J.Grier one of the leading figures in the Irish church, who was present, as it happens, at Ian Paisley's ordination. They may have more of a 'born again' character than the Reformed Presbyterians but there is still a strong emphasis on correct doctrine and sober discipline.
Both these connections were well established by the 1950s when Paisley began his independent career. What did he have to offer that was different?
If I were to try to sum up Paisley in one word, that word would be 'jollity'. If we look at formal photographs of evangelical and Calvinist preachers from whatever period they usually have very serious, even sometimes quite grim, expressions on their faces, with at best, sometimes, the barest shadow of a smile. In this company the jovial expression usually found on Paisley's face, even in the formal photograph that adorns his website ('The European Institute of Protestant Studies') is almost shocking as if in a series of Orthodox icons we might suddenly encounter a broadly grinning Saint. Paisley has been given the nickname 'Dr No'. I have noted a particular - in my view lamentable - example of his saying 'Yes' (to Humphrey Atkins' 'constitutional convention' then to James Prior's 'rolling devolution'). If I were to give him a nickname I would call him 'Dr Feelgood'. His particular talent - and this is what brought his religious vocation and his political vocation together - was to enable his people to feel good about themselves.
Who were these people? Paisley's main following, especially in the early days, was rural. Steve Bruce, drawing from the 1981 census returns, describes his support as follows:
'Compared to Irish Presbyterians, Free Presbyterians were relatively scarce at the top of the occupational scale. Fewer of them were professionals such as doctors and teacher (1.5 per cent compared with 4.5 per cent for Irish Presbyterians) and they were under-represented among professionally qualified engineers (2.0 per cent as compared with 4.4 per cent for Irish Presbyterians). Among those described as managers, Irish Presbyterians were much more likely to run big operations than were Free Presbyterians. Although similar proportions worked in manufacturing or assembling, Free Presbyterians were concentrated in more types of processing work connected with agriculture than with urban hi-tech engineering. Free Presbyterians were more likely than Irish Presbyterians to be self-employed but the self-employed Irish Presbyterians were more likely to employ other people. This suggests that more Free Presbyterians were businessmen in what the Victorians called `a small way'. The differences in social class and occupation are mirrored in differences in educational qualifications. According to the 1981 census 90.8 per cent of Irish Presbyterians had no post-school qualifications; the figure for Free Presbyterians was 97.5.'
He never had much support from the industrial working class. As I have already remarked, the working class elements that went into the paramilitary organisations, the UDA and the UVF, tended to despise him politically as someone who made a lot of noise but was not willing to do anything. His role in the UWC strike of 1974 was marginal. Nor did the urban working class and the paramilitaries show any great interest in the religious side of his activities. Whatever one might think of Paisley's political antics or of the DUP as a political party, however, the work of building a Church proceeded apace and, so far as I can see from the outside, was a success, quickly outstripping its Reformed Presbyterian and Evangelical Presbyterian rivals. Like the Reformed Presbyterians and Evangelical Presbyterians, it successfully appealed to what was left of the old sense of the Church as a principle of social organisation, a discipline, an ark of safety. Like them, but especially perhaps like the Evangelical Presbyterians, it evoked the need for a subjective feeling of having been saved, an 'assurance of salvation', of having been 'born again'. But to a greater extent than the Reformed Presbyterians or Evangelical Presbyterians, it brought in elements of a 'revivalist' enthusiasm, an atmosphere suitable for stimulating feelings of having been born again, something the more sober Evangelicals of the school of Martyn Lloyd Jones would tend to regard with suspicion. It had many rivals in that field too, notably the American-style mega-church of Pastor James McConnell, various Pentecostalist groups and a 'modernising' trend within the Brethren. But they lacked the sense of continuity with the Presbyterian Calvinist tradition.
What exactly is the appeal of Calvinism? To an outsider the idea that the whole of humanity is damned apart from a remnant predestined by God to salvation does not look very attractive. But the people who turned to Ian Paisley were not receiving this as a new idea. It was their tradition, it was what defined them as a people. And it turns life, even an externally uninteresting life, into a great adventure. Life is conducted in the context of Eternity, an Eternity of suffering or an Eternity of joy. In such a view of the world everything, even the most frivolous of thoughts or acts, matters. If you've had a taste of that then going to Church and hearing nothing but the ministers' personal opinions on this and that becomes immensely frustrating. You want to hear sound doctrine. And if you have had the experience of being 'born again' you want to have that certainty - the assurance that you are on the right side, that you are saved for all Eternity - constantly confirmed.
Judging from the success of the Free Presbyterian Church one has the impression that Paisley and his ministers fulfilled this function well. A people who were quite marginal in the scheme of things, who were being pushed aside by 'progress' but who nonetheless had a sense of the worth of their own tradition, went to the Free Presbyterian Church and were enabled to feel that they counted for something in the world. I would suggest that Paisley's role in politics was similar. Calvinism is a substantial religious idea. I can't judge if Paisley or his ministers expressed it well. The only political idea he seems to have had in his head for the most successful period of his political career was restoration of a majority rule devolved government in Northern Ireland - an idea I consider to have been malevolent and impractical. But people went to his rallies to hear him speak and they felt good. In circumstances in which everything was conspiring to demoralise them, that may not have been a useless thing to do.