The Scarlet Woman and the Red Hand

Evangelical Apocalyptic Belief in the Northern Ireland Troubles

Searle

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781630872250
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book provides a comprehensive description of how evangelicals in Northern Ireland interpreted the Troubles (1966-2007) in the light of how they read the Bible. The rich and diverse landscape of Northern Irish evangelicalism during the Troubles is ideally suited to this study of both the light and dark sides of apocalyptic eschatology. Searle demonstrates how the notion of apocalypse shaped evangelical and fundamentalist interpretations of the turbulent events that characterized this dark yet fascinating period in the history of Northern Ireland. The book uses this case study to offer a timely reflection on some of the most pressing issues in contemporary negotiations between culture and religion. Given the current resurgence of religious fundamentalism in the wake of 9/11, together with popular conceptions of a clash of civilizations and the so-called War on Terror, this book is not only an engaging academic study; it also resonates with some of the defining cultural issues of our time.

1

Religion and Apocalyptic
in Northern Ireland

Introduction to Chapter 1

It has been claimed that the scholarly effort to explain the relationship between religion and conflict in Northern Ireland is in danger of becoming “research saturated.”119 Despite the profusion of articles and monographs, however, genuinely new ideas and original insights into the underlying dynamics of religious convictions in Northern Ireland have been rare. The problem is partly attributable to the dominance of social science approaches, many of which are predicated on the dubious methodological premise that religious convictions and the language in which they assumed textual form can be understood through a proper grasp of the social contexts out of which they purportedly arose. Moreover, despite the considerable academic interest, there remain crucial aspects of the question concerning the role of religion in the Troubles that have not been adequately examined. The apocalyptic-eschatological dimension of the conflict is a notable example of a prominent theme that has not received a level of scholarly interest commensurate with its significance. The aim of the first part of this chapter is to survey some of the main contours of the scholarship in relation to religion and apocalyptic in Northern Ireland and to offer a constructive criticism towards the development of a new approach. The final part of the chapter will consider how this book advances scholarship in millennial studies by offering an original approach that departs from both the traditional deprivation thesis as well as more recent revisionist attempts to understand millennial phenomena in culture.

The Study of Religion in the Northern Ireland Troubles:
Review and Critique of Existing Scholarship

The role of religion has been a point of great controversy in the historiography of the Northern Ireland Troubles. For many years one of the paramount objectives of historians, social scientists, and even psychologists120 of the Troubles has been to explain “the significant part which religious belief [was] playing in stimulating conflict and hostility between Protestant and Roman Catholic in Northern Ireland.”121 Some have maintained that the influence of religion was nearly always deleterious and contributed to the exacerbation of sectarian hostility.122 Others have acknowledged that while religious thought could be misused to serve violent ends, its influence was, on balance, benevolent.123 Still others have taken the intermediate view that religion was a neutral force and could be used ideologically either to advance the cause of peace or to aggravate existing sectarian antagonism.124

Although this question is not the main focus of this study, it does form a constant backdrop to our efforts to understand the characteristics of Northern Ireland evangelicalism. It is thus hoped that the findings of this research will offer a new perspective on the “religion question” by focusing attention away from sociological phenomena and upon the apocalyptic-eschatological substance of the religious convictions of evangelicals.

The Protestant-Catholic dichotomy of religious belief and national affiliation has been widely accepted as an axiom of Northern Ireland society by a wide range of social scientists and historians of the Troubles.125 Richard Rose, writing at the beginning of the Troubles, even went so far as to describe Northern Ireland as a “bi-confessional” society.126 Some scholars have sought to downplay the significance of religion as a factor in the conflict and tend to relegate its importance to its role as an ethnic or national label. Others have maintained that religious forces underpin the political context. In 1984, John Hickey argued that in Northern Ireland “[i]t is more a question of religion inspiring politics than of politics making use of religion. It is a situation more akin to the first half of seventeenth-century England than to the last quarter of twentieth century Britain.”127

To his credit, Hickey challenged the prevailing sociological accounts of religion in Northern Ireland as “a by-product of the social environment”128 by suggesting that in Northern Ireland “doctrine can, in fact, account for sociological reality.”129 Despite these perceptive insights, Hickey’s analysis is deficient in that it lacks a theoretical basis for the claim that doctrine can be constitutive of social reality.130

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s academic commentators continued to maintain that religion was at the forefront of the Northern Ireland conflict. In 1986 the sociologist Steve Bruce wrote a sociological analysis of the politics and religion of Ian Paisley.131 After an illuminating analysis of the coalescence between the politics and theology of Paisley and his followers, Bruce came to the conclusion that the “Northern Ireland conflict is a religious conflict.”132 Although other theories were put forward, including the notion that the conflict was a colonial dispute133 or a matter of social and economic inequality,134 the most comprehensive rejection of Bruce’s thesis came from John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary in 1995.135 Recognizing that none of these accounts were able to penetrate “to the heart of divisions in Northern Ireland, as they all simplify, exaggerate and generalize their preferred causal explanation,”136 Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd proposed the notion of a “system of relationships” of difference, dominance and division, which reinforce one another.137 Religion was regarded as one factor in a plurality of dynamics which animated sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland. Gradually, the notion that religion had any significant role to play in the conflict in its own right was dismissed by many researchers of the Troubles. By 1999, leading scholars had established that the relative insignificance of religious factors was now a matter of “academic consensus.”138

It may well be the case that the debate regarding whether or not the conflict was “about religion” has been a continual distraction away from the most promising lines of inquiry into the history and culture of Northern Ireland in the twentieth century. The problem with the debate lies not only in the critical assumptions of scholars whose own convictions inevitably lead towards a partisan portrayal of the role of religion in the conflict,139 but also in the terminological confusion which has arisen, not least in regard to the meaning of the word “religion.” Commentators on the Troubles have expressed their uncertainty about where to draw the boundaries between politics and religion in the culture of Northern Ireland Protestants. “Within Unionism,” observes Duncan Morrow, “there is clearly an enormous blurring of the doctrinal and the ideological and thus of the border between the religious and the political.”140 The Anglican archbishop, Robin Eames, eager to sep...