In the Loyal Orders - the Orange, Black and Apprentice Boys - as well as the smaller Independent Orange Order each lodge, preceptory and branch has a chaplain whose job it is to read a portion of Scripture during each meeting.
In the structure of the Loyal Orders, especially the Orange for example, District, County and Grand Lodge also has its specific series of chaplains, many of them ordained clergy from various Protestant denominations.
My late father, Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE, was a Deputy County and Deputy Imperial Grand Chaplain in both the Orange and Black orders and also served a three-year term in the Eighties as Assistant Sovereign Grand Master of the Royal Black Institution when then UUP Leader Jim Molyneaux was Sovereign Grand Master.
My father viewed his roles as chaplain as an extension of his work as a Gospel preacher and used the many annual divine services, Loyal Order missions and Twelfth and Black Saturday demonstrations to preach the Gospel message of Salvation.
The photo accompanying this specific column pictures my dad, right, resplendent in his Royal Black chaplain’s collarette at a traditional August Last Saturday demonstration beside his fellow Ulster Unionist, Roy Beggs Senior, then MP for East Antrim.
Given the tensions which the recent period of unrest has revealed in Northern Ireland where the perception is that racism is the new sectarianism, the Loyal Order chaplains have a vital role in keeping the lid on this volatile tinderbox to ensure that the Eleventh Night bonfire celebrations and the Twelfth itself are not hijacked by the genuine Far Right to stoke up more trouble - especially with the PSNI being so cash-strapped and having to rely on British mainland forces to supply additional riot cops if required given the number of police officers who have been unfortunately injured.
The skeptic might think; if ultra Right-wing trouble makers won’t listen to senior politicians’ appeals for calm, what chance have the ordinary Loyal Order chaplains in trying to persuade hardliners to keep cool heads?
After all, I recall the terrible events in the summer of 1998 during that year’s Drumcree dispute when three young Catholic brothers died in a loyalist arson attack in Ballymoney in the heartland of my dad’s North Antrim Assembly constituency.
When dad and two other senior Loyal Order chaplains attempted to get the Orange Order to leave Drumcree Hill as a mark of respect to the three murdered Quinn brothers, they received a death threat from the dissident Loyalist Volunteer Force - the anti-Good Friday Agreement terror gang established by Billy Wright in the aftermath of the Combined Loyalist Military Command ceasefire of 1994.
The LVF was essentially a breakaway from the Mid Ulster UVF in which Wright had been a leading light. Wright was shot dead inside the Maze prison in December 1997 just over six months before the Quinn massacre in July 1998.
Dad was the guest religious speaker during the platform proceedings at the Twelfth demonstration in Irvinestown in Co Fermanagh and we had to have a police escort from the Ballygawley roundabout into Irvinestown because of the LVF death threat.
At that time, too, dad had been elected as an Ulster Unionist MLA for North Antrim, but he was speaking in Irvinestown that 1998 Twelfth in his capacity as an Orange chaplain.
Dad was going to preach the Gospel of Salvation. However, the speaker before dad was Fermanagh South Tyrone UUP MLA Sam Foster, who, like dad, was a supporter of the Good Friday Agreement.
Foster was heckled non-stop during his speech by supporters of the militant Orange pressure group, the Spirit of Drumcree. We feared the worst. But like Daniel in the Biblical Old Testament story of the man of God who is cast into the dens of lions and the Lord kept the lions’ mouths shut, a similar situation happened at the demonstration field at Irvinestown that day.
Spirit of Drumcree hecklers who minutes earlier had voiced their strong and loud opposition to Sam Foster, remained absolutely silent during dad’s Gospel sermon. Indeed, the preaching of the Gospel seemed to act as a calming factor on those militants.
The big advantage is that many Orange lodge chaplains are ordinary men of the people, with clerics tending to take a more open role at District, County and Grand Lodge levels.
Put bluntly, if the hardmen of loyalism are tending to ignore the Unionist elected representatives, would they listen to people on the ground who are Orange chaplains? Indeed, perhaps the Unionist leadership of the various parties should consult the Orange chaplains - many of whom come from ordinary loyalist working class areas - on how to get their messages across to elements in loyalism who still feel violence is the only vehicle of communication through which to get their voices heard.
Traditionally, it is an ordained cleric who holds a senior chaplaincy within the Orange Order who has the privilege of preaching the sermon at the Twelfth demonstration fields as part of the platform proceedings.
Perhaps the time has come this year for the Order to tell the various Orange clerics to each give their sermons this Twelfth based on Christ’s Sermon on the Mount where He talked about ‘blessed are the peacemakers’.
Then again, how many in the working class loyalist community still take the religious part of the platform proceedings seriously enough to listen. But if the Orange chaplains can speak with one voice this summer, they might, just might be able to create a situation whereby the tap of street unrest is turned off permanently. We live in hope.
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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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