'Keeping the flag flying? - The involvement of children in the Orange Order during its years of dissolution 1836-45' (original) (raw)

Between a Rock and Hard Gospel - the Orange Order and the Church of Ireland

"The Church of Ireland Hard Gospel project arose from media depictions of the Orange Order's contentious use of Church property and facilities, and from participation in the Order by clergy and laity. The Church divided against itself, its pluralist image in Ireland ensnared in sectarian conflict during the 1990s. After Easter each year the Orange Order initiates public celebration of what the supremacist organisation regards as its British way of life, based on support for biblical Protestantism and the “being Protestant” British monarchy. It habitually wears out shoe leather until leaves fall in the autumn, in celebration of “civil and religious liberty”. Approximately 2,500 marches, parades, feeder parades, band practices and bonfires occupy the highways and byways of the North. Many Britons, on encountering these displays, find them alien to British identity. They are always accompanied by physical attacks on Catholics and by other provocations, some of which are detailed here. The Order's insistence on marching in some mainly nationalist areas of Northern Ireland caused a crisis in the Church's relationship with the Order during the 1990s. Sectarian violence that accompanied the Order's attempts to defy bans on marching in those areas appalled many Church members. The ban on marching through the mainly nationalist Garvaghy Road in Portadown in particular, one week prior to the annual 12th July protest, provoked violent opposition: “In 1995, after two days of violence, mediation between local nationalists and the Order took place and a limited parade was allowed. In 1996, the parade was banned. While police and soldiers held the Orangemen back behind steel barricades, Billy Wright - who by this time had a terrifying reputation throughout mid-Ulster - sent his gang to murder a Catholic [Michael McGoldrick, a taxi driver]. The chief constable changed his ruling. The parade would be allowed, he said, because otherwise too many lives might be lost.” (Susan McKay, Guardian, 17 Nov 2001) The epicentre for mobilisation against police and then statutory Parades Commission marching bans was the Drumcree Parish Church. It was used for an Orange Order church service each year, before a futile post-1996 attempt was made to walk the Garvaghy Road. Facilities offered by the church, in the form of meeting rooms, plus toilet and cooking facilities, helped to maintain the protest for weeks on end, year after year. [....] Download PDF for rest of article"