This is a bit overdue, since it was published (subs needed) in the Financial Times at the beginning of the month. It’s a short portrait of a man who has been one of the dominant features of Northern Irish politics over the last fifty years. Love him or loathe him (and there’s not been many who’ve found themselves languishing in the grey area in between), the man has been a phenomenon that could not be ignored!
It’s a sunny Sunday evening in a prosperous middle class area of East Belfast. The Martyr’s Memorial church overlooks spacious parkland and on to the sweeping green hills in the North and West of the city. This is my second attempt of the day to catch what many think of as the quintessential voice of Ulster and one of the most legendary preachers of his times.
The organist plays an Old Testament style hymn in quick time. A slightly stooped old man comes quietly out of the door to the left of the pulpit. Climbing the steps some papers slip out of his frail hands. He bends and patiently gathers them up. The organist skips quickly to the end and the doors close behind us.
The old man is Ian Paisley. He’s dressed in a white collarless shirt and a sharp grey jacket. He draws himself up to his still impressive seventy eight year old frame, and invites us all to sing the first hymn. But five verses in, he stops and instructs the congregation to put smiles on their faces. He gently chides them, “We’re not singing about the mortuary. We’re not singing about the old undertaker and the corpse. We’re singing about heaven, halleluiah!”
His humour is both direct and characteristic. Over the years the same pulpit has witnessed a multitude quips, sometimes at the expense of opponents, more often with ‘old red socks’, as he is wont to call the Pope, as the butt of his ebullient humour. But today his own mortality is nearer the surface, and the congregation find it hard to smile. This is more of a valediction than celebration.
The Martyrs Memorial is a Calvinist cathedral. Built around a plain but impressively wide pulpit and placed at the perfect height to give the preacher eye contact with every individual on three sides and two levels. There is no sign of microphones visible to the congregation. The acoustic carries the preacher’s voice naturally through the cavernous interior.
To one side, the sign reads “Salvation to the Utmost”. A phrase he uses several times within the service. His declamatory sermonising style is not unlike that of Martin Luther King’s. The voice rises on a shuddering crescendo as he takes his audience to view in turn the gates of heaven and hell. In a moment it drops to a gentle whisper to intimate hope, treachery or fear.
In a younger man, such style might be vulnerable to parody. But Paisley speaks a language from a time before irony, or postmodern angst, a time of moral certainty over the reviled relativism of contemporary Ulster. And it’s built upon the genuine conviction that’s driven his whole life. Both message and messenger go down well with the often wrapt, but mostly aging congregation.
And yet there is evidence of change within the church. It was once said that the Free Presbyterian Church was simply the DUP at prayer. But his overwhelming success of his political party in thoroughly eclipsing David Trimble’s Ulster Unionist Party stands in marked contrast with the many empty pews tonight. But for a well-groomed party of children and teenagers bussed in from a sister church in Ballymena, the Martyr’s Memorial holds less than a fifth of its capacity.
The leader of Irish Free Presbyterianism tells his flock ‘though the harvest is plenty, the labourers are few’. He recommends a history of evangelisation in Ireland – he’s known to regret that earlier generations of Presbyterian missionaries did not make greater use of the Irish language of the native Catholic population to spread the Protestant word. Then he calls for missionaries to head south to proselytise the largely Catholic south.
To break the ice he urges the senior citizens amongst them to make use of the free bus and rail travel the southern Irish government offers all citizens of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, something that might have been unthinkable for many of them even five years ago. He assures them that the campaign has already begun by sending every Catholic priest in Ireland a taped copy of his Easter sermon. The results, he promises his congregation, will be explosive.
But he is tired. It has taken every ounce of spirit and the professionalism he’s cultivated over the years to pace himself to the end of the service. The door to the side of the pulpit swings open. On the wall inside is a more familiar picture of his younger self, probably from the early seventies when he was undoubtedly in his prime. It’s a sharp and poignant reminder that this preacher’s time has almost run.
The strange paradox of Ian Paisley is that despite his notoriety amongst Northern Ireland’s Catholic population for his frequent attacks upon the integrity of their church, many still retain affection for the ‘big man’. That’s partly because of his reputation, maintained even through the worst years of the Troubles, for fighting on behalf of all his constituents regardless of their political conviction or religious background.
But perhaps it’s also because there is something disarmingly genuine and at times even gentle about the man. As the service ends, he invites any of us who are not yet committed Christians to come and see him so he can tell them how they might be saved. And the faithful crowd round him, as they might a fond old grandfather.
A version of this article was first published in the Financial Times Magazine, on the weekend of 31st July/1st August.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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