The Second Coming of Paisley: Militant Fundamentalism and Ulster Politics

5. The Crusade Against O’Neill and Ecumenism

130 5 The Crusade Against O’Neill and Ecumenism Until the early 1960s, Paisley’s notoriety was confined to the Northern Irish religious community and to a small group of militant fundamentalists in North America and Great Britain. But during the fiveyear period between 1963, when Terence O’Neill was elected the leader of the UUP and appointed the prime minister of Northern Ireland, and August 1968 when Northern Ireland civil rights activists took their message to the streets of Ulster, Paisley became well known throughout Canada , the United States, and the British Isles. Paisley’s confrontation with O’Neill and the civil rights movements propelled him from a little-known but vocal proponent of militant fundamentalism in Northern Ireland to a respected figure among the international community of militant fundamentalists . Worldwide militant support helped to bolster his belief that O’Neill’s overtures to the Catholic community constituted “political ecumenicalism.” To Paisley, such a policy was tantamount to inviting the Roman Catholic Church into Northern Ireland’s political, cultural, and economic relationships. He believed that coming on the heels of the Anglo-Catholic rapprochement and the Second Vatican Council, O’Neill’s policies added a new and serious threat to the political union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He also believed that the Roman Catholic Church tacitly supported the IRA and together with Irish Republicans organized the Ulster civil rights movement. The combination of these beliefs transformed his religious crusade against Irish Protestant ecumenism and liberalism into a political campaign against the O’Neill administration and Catholic civil rights. Crusade Against O’Neill and Ecumenism † 131 Before March 1963, Paisley’s activism was concerned primarily with spreading the militant fundamentalist gospel and confronting apostasy in the Anglican, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches of the British Isles.1 Although he took part in some political activities (the NPU and the UPA), during the 1950s the Free Presbyterian Church espoused a nonpolitical Calvinism and was interested in preaching the gospel, not in confronting political issues. At this stage, Paisley did not yet understand the political connections to his protests against the Church of England and the British royalty’s flirtations with Rome. The Free Presbyterian Church addressed social issues only when they threatened Calvinist mores. Yet events were under way that galvanized Northern Irish fundamentalists and set the stage for Paisley’s move into politics in the 1960s. The acceptance of the British welfare state in Northern Ireland, the reappearance of Irish Republican terrorist activity in 1956, and the revitalization of the ecumenical movement seemed part of a four-way political conspiracy organized by the Roman Catholic Church, Republicans, Communists, and ecumenical Protestants to destroy Irish Protestantism.2 Although Northern Irish militant fundamentalists did not see an urgency to political action in the 1950s, their viewpoint changed after 1963 when Terence O’Neill, the prime minister of Northern Ireland, began a campaign to modernize the Ulster economy and to find a rapprochement with Catholics throughout the island. The Protestant opposition to O’Neill and the “Catholic conspiracy” was diverse, but a small vocal group dominated the discourse: the “Paisleyites” led by the Reverend Ian Paisley . Paisleyites objected to “O’Neillism,” a program intended to eliminate the economic and political divisions that beset Northern Ireland. O’Neill attempted to reconcile the policies of the Protestant-run Northern Ireland government—designed to maintain Protestant economic and political control—with the aspirations of the province’s Catholic minority.3 The Northern Ireland Statelet, 1922–1963 To comprehend the onset of both O’Neillism and Paisleyism, it is necessary to understand the political and economic history of the Northern Ireland statelet. Created in December 1922 from six of Ulster’s nine counties, the Northern Ireland statelet was a political arrangement designed to prevent 132 † The New Testament a Catholic–Protestant civil war in Ireland. The agreement did not settle Ireland’s sectarian problem, however, or create a harmonious relationship between the British Empire and the new Irish Free State. The partitioning of Ireland and the establishment of the Irish Free State were intended only as short-term solutions; both the British government and the Irish government reasoned that economic necessity and political reality would drive northern Irish Protestants to unify with the South. However, the creation of two parliaments, one in Belfast controlled by Protestants (Stormont) and the other in Dublin dominated by Catholics (the Dail), made reunification unlikely. Both parliaments were given...