The Loyal Orders are made up of three organisations - the Orange Order, its senior body, the Royal Black Institution, and the Apprentice Boys of Derry. There is also the smaller Independent Orange Order.
Whether it be an Orange lodge, a Royal Black preceptory or Apprentice Boys branch, there is one major item in the calendar of each organisation - the annual divine service and church parade.
This was an opportunity for the Loyal Orders to clearly demonstrate their Christian principles. It was very much a family occasion. My late father, Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE, was a Deputy Imperial Grand Chaplain in the Orange and Black, and a Past Assistant Sovereign Grand Master in the Black. He was also a member of the Apprentice Boys.
Dad was always a staunch preacher of the Gospel of Salvation and used annual divine services to tell the congregations about the need to become ‘born again believers’.
On occasions, he would be a main speaker at traditional revivalist missions organised by the Loyal Orders. On many occasions, he would preach at the religious service which formed an integral part of the platform proceedings at Twelfth and Black Saturday demonstrations.
However, while dad and many other Loyal Order chaplains played a key role in cementing the relationships between the Orders and places of worship, I honestly believe it was the disastrous events surrounding the Drumcree protest in Portadown in 1998 which marked a change - indeed a cooling - of the relationship between the Loyal Orders and Protestant places of worship.
Shortly before the Twelfth that year and just a few months after the signing of the historic Good Friday Agreement, the successful referendum in support of the Agreement, and the inaugural Stormont Assembly elections, three Catholic brothers died in an arson attack on their home in Ballymoney.
Dad had been elected as an Ulster Unionist Party Assembly member weeks earlier and Ballymoney was at the heart of his North Antrim constituency.
Interviewed at that time about the murder of the three Catholic brothers, dad said:
We are burning our children on the altar of our hatred. This is the harvest of inflammatory speeches and intransigence on both sides.
When dad and two other senior Loyal Order chaplains called on the Orange Order to leave Drumcree hill as a mark of respect to the dead brothers, they received death threats from a breakaway loyalist death squad.
However, Drumcree generally after that 1998 massacre in Ballymoney was to witness a slow distancing of many in the pro-Union middle class from the Loyal Orders, especially the Orange.
More than a quarter of a century on from those horrific days in 1998, the key question which the Loyal Orders must now address is - given the importance of the annual divine service, can the Loyal Orders say they are welcome in every Protestant place of worship across Northern Ireland?
Without doubt in recent years, the Loyal Orders have indulged in a massive charm offensive with the community to show that events, such as the Twelfth, the Sham Fight in the Co Down village of Scarva, and Black Saturday, are family fun days.
While all these events continue to be well supported by the community, there is a creeping suspicion that the Loyal Orders may not be as well received in certain Protestant places of worship and denominations since the start of the new millennium.
On one hand, there is the problem of theological liberalism and wokeism within Protestantism.
The ecumenical movement still has a strong influence within the Christian faith and many of the Protestant clerics who consider themselves theologically liberal or ecumenical may not want to have a Loyal Order parade to their place of worship, or even an annual divine service given that the Loyal Orders are emphatically Protestants-only organisations.
On the other side of the coin, those on the militant fundamentalist wing of Protestantism can regard the Loyal Orders as sinister secret societies which they perceive as running contrary to Biblical commands to ‘come ye out from amongst them’.
The Loyal Orders, especially the Orange, have always been viewed as the social cement which keeps the various elements of the pro-Union community together. In the lodge room, the upper class businessman could sit shoulder to shoulder with the working class labourer and call each other ‘brother.’
The Loyal Orders have to be pro-active and reach out to places of worship and denominations which in 2025 regard those Orders with an unhealthy dose of suspicion.
With the so-called ‘Big Three’ main denominations within Protestantism - Presbyterianism, Methodism, and the Church of Ireland - suffering a decline in numbers in the pews, perhaps the time has come for the Loyal Orders to reach out to some of the newer and popular Pentecostal movement places of worship.
Has the time come for the Loyal Orders to launch a charm offensive to build bridges with the Faith Mission movement and Christian Workers’ Union network of halls across Northern Ireland?
Could we ever witness a time when the Loyal Orders would also be regularly holding their annual divine services in Gospel Halls run by the Exclusive and Plymouth Brethren denominations?
In much of the last century, the Loyal Orders played a key role in encouraging the pro-Union community to also have faith in the ballot box. It has now been suggested that some 48 per cent of the pro-Union community has snubbed the ballot box in elections.
Could a new plan of action for the Loyal Orders in cementing their relationship with all places of worship would be to encourage Christians from all Protestant places of worship to get registered, and ensure that they physically go to the polling booths on elections days.
Perhaps the banner which the Loyal Orders could promote is - ‘you can’t complain if politicians vote to bring in anti-biblical legislation if you won’t go out to vote for Christian candidates’.
That should be a key theme for those Orange chaplains and clerics working on their Twelfth platform speeches and sermons.
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| Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter John is a Director for Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. |
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