A career associated with snow.
Many years ago Ian Paisley stood outside Stormont ready to throw snowballs at the then Irish Taoiseach Séan Lamass. On Friday of last week the snow again intervened when the Free Presbyterian Church were due to elect a new moderator.
Although there have been requests for Paisley to stay on and he will not comment; it seems likely that there will be a new Free Presbyterian moderator who is not also heavily involved in politics.There is a common misunderstanding amongst those outside the fundamentalist evangelical community that the Free Presbyterian Church preaches a great deal of politics. Whilst it is true that Rev. Ivan Foster seems to be so inclined; (though I have never attended the Kilskeery church and, as such, am loathe to comment) many Free Presbyterians are interested in the preaching of the gospel and have little time for politics. Indeed though the Free Presbyterian Church may once have been seen as the DUP at prayer that can hardly be entirely the case now with DUP members such as Peter Weir being Presbyterian, Arlene Foster being Church of Ireland and Nelson McCausland being Independent Methodist (and a good preacher and theologian in his own right). Also of course one of the DUP’s nemeses Jim Allister is a member of Ballymena Free Presbyterian Church.
An additional surprise for many outside the fundamentalist evangelical community in Northern Ireland is that the Free Presbyterians are by not the most doctrinally conservative or hard line. Free Presbyterians generally take a relatively relaxed view of women wearing trousers (at least outside church) and indeed women have been known not to wear hats in church. By comparison the Brethren and Independent Methodists would be stricter, though in fairness the Brethren deny being a denomination and of course the Independent Methodists (or Indies for short) are not Calvinist.
Many within the Free Presbyterian Church may well welcome the very clear separation of church and politics as it has been suggested by some that although Dr. Paisley is widely regarded as one of the best preachers of the gospel in Northern Ireland; his involvement in politics may have made some of the task of evangelism especially to Roman Catholics, politically liberal Protestants and outsiders more problematic.
“Salvation comes to us, not through grace alone, but self-effort is also needed. Salvation can never be a certainty as it will only be decided at the moment of death, and there is certainly no hope of salvation outside of their community.” – one of the tenets of doctrine that the Reachout Trust article considers to be held by the Cooneyites.
Strangely, this is a strikingly similar message to that which I was given by our lay monk religious instructors at my Catholic schools.
It was not until I was fifteen that I one day challenged old Brother Eusebius on the issue of the unlikliehood of salvation outside the “One True Church” of Rome. (I suspect that Eusebius actually considered that it was more impossible than likely but was constrained from so saying by the current line being delivered in Catholic Ireland).
Since, whatever of doctrine, it was also drummed into me from an early age that conscience must be one’s ultimate guide, I asked:
“Surely, Brother if a Protestant, a good man, believes sincerely in his own conscience that, say, the Presbyterian Church is the One True Church then he could only but find salvation through following that conscience and adhering to that church?”.
I could see immediately that he was stuck and I used his hesitation to press him for an answer. He finally, sheepishly conceded that, yes, I made a good point but it was a more sophisticated matter of “informed consience” and recklessly refusing to listen to “The Truth” (as preached by His Holiness the Pope).
But Eusebius did give me a bit of a look after and I knew that I was going down as “troublemaker” in the Big Black Book.
Still, I liked old Eusebius and remember him fondly. He never leathered me without just cause and he did have a sense of humour founded on his observation of the sheer ridiculousness of the human condition.