Opinion

Time we celebrated Protestant positivity

AS we plod our selective ways through a decade of centenaries, little attention has so far focused on a hugely important quincentenary (five-hundredth anniversary) in two years' time.

The Reformation, which established Protestantism, began in 1517.

Since we have spent many of those 500 years apparently fighting over religion, it would be a huge omission not to include the birth of Protestantism in Ireland's devotion to the past - even though Ireland was the only northern European country not to embrace the new religion.

The European Reformation lasted for over 100 years. It was a breakaway from a Church which, not for the first or last time, had lost the run of itself.

Protestantism was largely imported into Ireland through plantation and political power. As a result, Ireland's adherence to Catholicism was as much a consequence of anti-English politics, as it was of pro-Roman theology.

Although the new religion would later fragment into component parts, it was traditionally associated with English rule in Ireland. (It led Brendan Behan to conclude that an Anglo Irishman was a Protestant on a horse.)

Despite this, Protestantism played a key role in shaping at least three significant areas of Irish life: radical politics, culture and business.

It was a Protestant who first articulated the concept of an independent, Irish republic. Wolfe Tone's Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland represented Ireland's first civil rights movement, which was inspired by the radical Presbyterianism of Drennan, Jackson, Neilson, Russell, Hope and McCracken.

Their free-thinking tradition allowed them to recognise the need for rebellion as the concluding point of rational analysis, rather than as the starting point for ill-prepared war, which was often the hallmark of later, Catholic-only risings.

Their tradition was carried on in the nineteenth century through justice-seeking Protestants such as Emmet, Mitchel, Martin and Smith O'Brien. It survived into the twentieth century, when Erskine Childers was executed for fighting on the Republican side in the Civil War. His son became President of Ireland in the 1970s.

It even survived until the formation of the non-sectarian Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association in 1967. (Those who refer to the dark days of the past, have no idea of the bright days that immediately preceded them.)

Dr John Moulden, one of the foremost living authorities on Irish traditional music, has illustrated the significant contribution which Protestants made to that aspect of our culture. This immense contribution is now largely unacknowledged and forgotten. He lists long forgotten Protestants who maintained Irish traditional music: George Petrie, Samuel Lover, Canon James Goodman and Jane Ross of Limavady. Modern Irish literature was shaped significantly by Protestants, including WB Yeats, Lady Gregory, Sean O'Casey and J M Synge. Ireland's first president was Douglas Hyde, the son of a Church of Ireland rector. Irish business was significantly developed by Quakerism (The Society of Friends) a breakaway group from the Church of England. Members advocate pacifism (which is reason enough to celebrate in this country) and teetotalism (same again). From establishing soup kitchens during the Famine, to organising a Long Kesh visitors' centre during internment, the Quakers have a proud, humanitarian record.

Among the industries they established were Bewleys and Jacobs. Forster Green, a 19th Century tea merchant, used most of his fortune to set up the well-known Belfast hospital.

Bessbrook, Co Armagh, was a model village built for mill workers in the mid-1800s by the Quaker Richardson family who owned the linen mill. It boasted "no pub, no pawnshop, no police."

Sadly, this wonderful radicalism in politics, culture and business was ultimately undermined by 200 years of sectarian politics. Liberal unionism was suffocated by the Orange Order (which advocated civil and religious liberty, but only for themselves) and the repressive new state of Northern Ireland.

Terence O'Neill, its most liberal Prime Minister, said that if you treated Catholics with kindness, they would live like Protestants. He was too liberal for Ian Paisley whose loutish manner, bigotry and naked ambition led him to replace free thinking Presbyterianism with a poisonous mix of religion and right wing fanaticism. Before Sinn Féin politicised the Irish language, the DUP had politicised religion. Our 30-year war drove many Protestants, temporarily at least, into Paisley's arms, through atrocities at Kingsmill, Darkley, La Mon and Enniskillen. When peace came, the Good Friday Agreement told them they were no longer Irish, even though the Red Hand Commandos still write Lámh Dhearg Abú on their murals.

Irish Protestants deserve to have their contribution to Irish society honoured and remembered. It will be a good celebration - but only if we forget to invite political unionism.