Plantation to the United Irishmen: 1600–1799

Scripture in Stormont: Incidental reference to the Bible in Northern Irish politics

“…more discussion of the Bible with regard to these groups. The Ulster Scots 5 —with their Ulster Covenant of 1912—have often been described in terms of the “Old Testament” (e.g., MacIver 1987, 361; Akenson 1992, 117; Brewer and Higgins 1998, 146). The flag of Northern Ireland features a Red Hand of Ulster but replaces the shield in the background with a six pointed star (perhaps indicative of the six counties in the newly formed state) and in recent decades Northern Irish loyalists have come to identify with the state of Israel, not only due to republican identification with Palestine but with a sense of being God’s chosen people under siege (cf.…”

“…Use of the Bible permeates the “covenantal mode”: “Irish Catholics are Ulster Protestants’ Canaanites and Hittites, the evil outsiders to the covenanted community, from whom land was taken at the behest of God” (Brewer and Higgins 1998, 140). According to this thinking, “Catholic forms of devotion replicate Baal worship [and] Catholicism represents the Babylonian system referred to in Scripture, the Harlot, the Whore, the Beast and the abomination described in the Book of Revelation” (Brewer and Higgins 1998, 141). They refer to the following example:A daily prayer for deliverance was printed in the church page of the Belfast Telegraph during the furore over the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985, invoking a verse from Isaiah 14, that no weapon could prosper against those to whom God had promised the blessing of the land.…”

“…They refer to the following example:A daily prayer for deliverance was printed in the church page of the Belfast Telegraph during the furore over the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985, invoking a verse from Isaiah 14, that no weapon could prosper against those to whom God had promised the blessing of the land. (Brewer and Higgins 1998, 136–137)…”

“…On October 12, 1988 at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Northern Ireland MEP Ian Paisley interrupted a speech by Pope John Paul II, calling out, “I denounce you, antichrist! I refuse you as Christ’s enemy and antichrist with all your false doctrine!” 15 As Brewer and Higgins (1998, 138) observe: “The pope’s appearance at the European Parliament in 1988 represented for Paisley the recurrence of an age-old threat.” The term antichrist is used only in 1 & 2 John, where it is a term for people whose appearance marks the end time (1 John 2:18), who deny that Jesus is the Christ (1 John 2:22 and 4:3), and who do not acknowledge that Jesus has come in the flesh (2 John 1:7). While the latter two criteria can certainly not be said to apply to the Pope as representative of the Roman Catholic Church, and speculations as to the end of the world remain moot, the idea of the Pope as the antichrist has a long history in Protestant theology and politics starting with Martin Luther himself (see Russell 1994), though identification is usually made with “the beast from the sea” in Revelation 11:7, 13:1–19, and 17:7–18, 19:18–20, even though the term “antichrist” does not appear in Revelation.…”

“…6.Ian Paisley was surely the most famous and influential political figure in Northern Ireland from the 1960s until his death in 2014. For studies on Ian Paisley, see especially Bruce 1986, 2007; Smyth 1987; MacIver 1987; Cooke 1996; Brewer and Higgins 1998, 105–115.…”