The Moral Minority: Evangelical Protestants in Northern Ireland and Their Political Behaviour

Abstract

It has long been asserted that strong evangelical religious beliefs underpin strong unionist and loyalist political attitudes in Northern Ireland. Although recent literature has argued for a wide diversity of political attitudes amongst evangelicals, this has not been quantified. Based on analysis of the 1991 Northern Irish Social Attitudes Survey and the 1998 Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, this article argues that evangelicals are attitudinally different to other Protestants in Northern Ireland. However, their distinctiveness arises from their conservative moral attitudes and not, as widely claimed, from stronger unionist political values. Indeed, in terms of party identification, in 1991 evangelicals were less likely than other Protestants to support the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). And although there has been a small shift towards the DUP over the course of the 1990s, it is not due to any strengthening of the unionism of evangelicals, but rather the increasing importance of moral conservatism in predicting voters’ party choice in Northern Ireland.

Between the devil and the deep blue sea: nationality, power and symbolic trade‐offs among evangelical Protestants in contemporary Northern Ireland1

“…Ian Paisley and the DUP's infamous and potent blend of religiously inspired peoplehood, opposition to a 'priestridden' Irish state along with hints of British Israelism, evangelicals have often been dubbed political 'ultras' and have been seen as 'extreme' nationals (Rose 1971;Todd 1987;Fulton 1991;Akenson 1992;Bruce 1994). Although recent research has shown that evangelicals cannot all be characterised as political 'ultras' (Mitchell and Tilley 2004;Ganiel 2002;Jordan 2001;Brewer 1998), it is the strong Unionists who are discussed in this article.…”

“…Evangelical Protestants 2 have found their position profoundly affected by these shifts in power relations. Comprising about a quarter of Northern Ireland Protestants, or just over ten per cent of the population of Northern Ireland as a whole (Mitchell and Tilley 2004;Thomson 1998;Bruce 1994), evangelicals have been a vocal and influential minority. Like other Protestants, evangelicals identify predominantly as British, and certainly as 'not Irish', although their form of national identification is, to say the least, complex and contested.…”

“…This enables us to get a sense of where the political attitudes of the sample lie in order to evaluate how priorities may be changing. The aim is not to claim that all evangelicals prefer the DUP -only half of them do (Mitchell and Tilley 2004) -but rather to isolate a suitable group for analysis. Moreover, if we can establish that there has been significant change in the content of national identity among conservative evangelical DUP supporters, whom we might assume to be highly resistant to political change, then we might be more hopeful for future change among the wider Protestant grouping.…”

Dimensionality of Policy Space in Consociational Northern Ireland

“…A left-right ideology measure was generated from five items which displayed a good level of internal consistency and was, among Protestants, a strong predictor of party preference (with the DUP associated with more left-wing voters). A study by Tilley et al (2008Tilley et al ( ) used pooled 1989Tilley et al ( -2004 data from NISAS and the Northern Ireland Life and Times survey (NILTS) and found that economic left-right attitudes (using three items which form 'a fairly internally coherent scale') did not predict vote choice for either Protestants or Catholics. Similar findings were arrived at by John Garry (2009).…”

“…Regarding the measurement of citizens' attitudes on this dimension, and its relationship with party preference, Mitchell and Tilley (2004) used a four-item scale to measure moral issues (on sexuality and abortion) and found reasonable internal consistency, suggesting a fairly well-structured attitudinal dimension. Focusing on the 1991-1998 period, the authors found that moral conservativism increasingly predicted Protestant support for the DUP rather than UUP.…”