The Second Coming of Paisley: Militant Fundamentalism and Ulster Politics

10. The Second Coming Paisley and the “Civil” Religion of Democratic Unionism

232 10 The Second Coming Paisley and the “Civil” Religion of Democratic Unionism Throughout the first six months of the British army’s deployment in Northern Ireland beginning in August 1969, Paisleyites remained fairly complacent. During that fall and winter, however, a previously dormant foe reemerged that impelled Paisley into action: the IRA.1 The ineffectiveness of British government policy and the escalation of Republican violence accelerated Paisley’s move into politics. His second jailing, the opening of the Martyrs Memorial Free Presbyterian Church, and his increased stature within the international fellowship of militant fundamentalists furthered his prestige among both church-going and secular Ulster Protestants and eased his transition into politics. From the 1970s on, Paisley’s crusade slowly but steadily transformed from one against ecumenicalism and the civil rights movement into a political campaign. In early February 1970, the Protestant Union Party (PUP) fought two byelections for Belfast City Council seats, winning both against UUP candidates .2 Paisley’s personal foray into politics came during the Stormont by-election in April 1970, when he won the Bannside seat that Terence O’Neill had vacated; the former prime minister had become a British peer. Although Paisley won only 43 percent of the vote, he outpolled Dr. Bolton Minford, the UUP candidate, and Pat McHugh of the NILP.3 The voters ignored Minford’s plea: “A Protestant Unionist government has nothing to offer the people, but fist shaking and words of hate. By voting for that party a Unionist is abandoning reason for a future of fear and uncertainty, and is turning his or her back on fifty years of solid achievement by the Unionist The Second Coming † 233 Party.”4 Instead, many Protestant voters accepted Paisley’s plea that Ulster needed deliverance. The April 1970 Stormont election gave the PUP two victories (Reverend William Beattie also won in South Antrim) and confirmed Paisley’s new vocation as a politician.5 Paisley’s victory accelerated the process that turned him from a premillennial crusader against Irish Protestant apostasy and Catholic civil rights into an amillennial politician. Militant fundamentalists in the premillennial tradition regarded the conflict in Northern Ireland as quite possibly the skirmish that would lead to the upcoming Battle of Armageddon . But how and when Jesus would return to rule God’s Kingdom on Earth became less important to Paisley than defending the union between Northern Ireland and Great Britain—and hence Ulster Protestantism —through the political process. Instead of campaigning against apostasy in expectation of the Second Coming—a premillennial proposition that demanded the salvation of souls rather than political action— Paisley began working for political solutions, a tactic more in line with the amillennialist emphasis on temporal reforms. He never publicly articulated this view, but his conversion was exposed by his actions. Moreover, the Articles of Faith of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, published in The Revivalist in November 1969, took an ambiguous stance on the Second Coming, calling it “the visible and personal return of our Lord Jesus Christ,” a position that both pre- and amillennialists could take.6 The Free Presbyterian Church mimicked the eschatological policy that Bob Jones University had adopted in the 1960s: any view of the millennium was acceptable, although the church discouraged postmillennialism and its liberal-modernist connotations. Thus, the theological relationship between Paisley and the Joneses strengthened, and Bob Jones University could support Paisley’s political activity.7 No longer did Paisleyism constitute a crusade against apostasy and ecumenicalism; it became a political movement working to prevent a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland, to thwart Catholic political gains and the unification of Ireland, and to defeat Republican violence. It is one thing to protest against government actions as a concerned citizen, but another to be an elected participant within the political process. Although Paisley the MP continued in opposition to the Ulster Unionist Party, as a 234 † The Second Coming sitting MP he was required to offer workable solutions. His election to the British House of Commons in June 1970 made him part of the national government, enhancing his political dilemma.8 Paisley’s victory splintered the UUP into Paisleyites, official Unionists , and the Alliance Party, a new coalition of moderate Unionists and Catholics. This fragmentation became official in September 1971, when Paisley and Desmond Boal turned the PUP into the new Ulster Democratic Unionist Party—the DUP. The new party was set up to articulate the...