Presbyterian Church disapprove of imposition of “a particular worldview”
The announcement last week by Northern Ireland Secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris (Conservative), that he planned to introduce compulsory lessons in how to access abortion to all of the North’s post-primary schools marks the latest chapter in a contentious issue in Northern politics.
Mr Heaton-Harris, citing the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Act (2019), said that he had a “legal duty” to act on recommendations that had been made in a United Nations report on matters pertaining to relationships and sex education. It must have come as a surprise to many in the North that a UN report had such legal weight in the UK. Were the UN to issue another report, say supporting a United Ireland, would Mr Heaton-Harris be in the same rush to legislate for it?
Indeed, the whole business is very Kafkaesque. The Executive Formation Act (2019) was, in the chaos of a pre-Brexit Westminster, used by opportunistic Labour MPs to bring about changes in Northern Ireland’s abortion and marriage laws. Both those issues were supposed to be voted on by the voters of Northern Ireland but a range of political forces – from Tory, to Labour, to SNP – piled on to change the law and remove any chance that electorate might vote the wrong way, should they ever get the chance.
Speaking last week, Mr Heaton-Harris, sounding like a Tory from 1823 rather than 2023, said that there was a need to bring in these changes to “mirror the approach taken in England”. Ah, English laws and customs, is it sir? Whatever the complexities of unionist and nationalist identities, neither group in the north-eastern corner of Ireland considers themselves English.
So, in the space of few years, not only has abortion been made available in the North but it must soon be legally taught as part of the school curriculum. Democracy is indeed an odd thing.
Not surprisingly, the Catholic Bishop of Derry, Donal McKeown, objected to the plans, saying that the legislation would “impose a particular way of approaching this issue on all schools” and that those schools now risked being “penalised and criminalised for not obeying the legislation”.
Of equal interest was what the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, Doctor John Kirkpatrick, had to say. While accepting that issues relating to relationships and sex education needed to be taught in an “inclusive manner”, Kirkpatrick, in his blunt Ulster way, said that the Secretary of State wanted to “impose a particular worldview on the education of children in Northern Ireland”.
Those bald words should not surprise us. If we go back to 2019, the Presbyterian Church reacted strongly to abortion and same sex marriage being brought about by a slight of Westminster hands; saying that there were “many pressing issues to be dealt with in Northern Ireland, not least those affecting our schools, hospitals, social care and welfare systems. These affect the lives of many of the most vulnerable and marginalised people in our society, including the victims of our violent past. Political cherry-picking of issues by MPs, when talks to restore devolution to Northern Ireland are on-going and should be encouraged, is both regrettable and unhelpful, running contrary to the spirit of devolution”.
(Those “many pressing issues” still remain, by the way.)
Further, representatives of the Methodist Church in Ireland, the Church of Ireland and Evangelical Alliance NI also spoke of their concerns in 2019 over the changes. A minister for the Free Presbyterian Church, the church of the DUP’s late founder, the Reverend Ian Paisley, said they were “totally opposed” to the new laws and that the process in Westminster had been an “affront to democracy”. The News Letter, a newspaper read mainly by people from a unionist and Protestant background, led with a front page headline: “MPs impose abortion and gay marriage law.”
Those concerns, from across a wide spectrum of Protestant churches, were ignored and, a few years later, compulsory lessons on abortion are now to be added to abortion services. Of course, there were politicians and advocates, North and South, who supported the changes in 2019 and the additional changes this year.
There are a number of things that stand out about this. First, if you are a Catholic reading this in the Republic, it may be of cold comfort to realise it but it is not just the Papists that they are out to get. Christianity, across a wide spectrum, is antagonistic to the plans of Westminister and Leinster House. (That “worldview” that Dr Kirkpatrick mentioned no doubt.)
Further, looking at this from simply the viewpoint of Northern Protestants, there seems to be a conscious and on-going policy to hollow out their religious concerns. The governments in London and Dublin appear to have taken the view that Protestants cannot be Protestants but can still be unionist.
How long that indulgence continues to be granted is anyone’s guess.