Creationism in Northern Ireland
By Roger Stanyard with additional help from Peter Henderson
3rd January 2006
We have undertaken an analysis of our database on creationist churches in Northern Ireland which has thrown up one surprising result but seems to show a similar picture to that on the mainland of the UK. Our definition of creationism here is young earth creationism. The sections of this web site on the Caleb Foundation and the European Theological Seminary also cover creationism in Northern Ireland.
General background: Northern Ireland is an exception in the United Kingdom in that regular church attendance remains very high (but still below that of the Republic of Ireland). Roughly speaking, it is comparable with the United States and well above the norm for Western Europe. Statistics on such matters are hard to interpret accurately – it does seem that, in general, the public tends to exaggerate the extent to which they attend church regularly and international comparisons are bedevilled with the problem of different polling questions and techniques being used.
However, a recent report here suggests still high levels of attendance, albeit with an overall decline.
There is, of course, the issue that religion is very atypical in the province because a person’s denomination is very largely tied to their broad political outlook. One basically defines the other and vice-versa. This report gives some background analysis.
The reason for us undertaking a specific survey on Northern Ireland are twofold:
1. We are concerned that it is a major base for the growth of creationist beliefs throughout the United Kingdom. It is difficult to conclude either way that this is yet a major issue – after all, the province only has a population of 1.8m out of a total UK population of 61 million. Moreover, creationism is unlikely to make any significant inroad into the Catholic population of the province. They account for about 44% of the population.
2. Our concern that creationists have specifically targeted the Northern Ireland education system. We draw attention to the promotion of creationism in schools there by the Biblical Creation Society and Stuart Burgess of Truth in Science (see, for example, the 2004 programme with Burgess at this site).
Overall Conclusions: As on the mainland, our analysis shows that creationism is much more rampant amongst small denominations and independent churches than it is amongst the mainstream churches. The small/independent denominations appear to account for 90% of creationist churches (our figure is actually 89%).
However, on the mainland, it is dominated by churches that describe themselves as Baptist (although few are members of the Baptist Union – our initial estimates suggest that around 54% of creationist churches in the UK are Baptist of some form)). In Northern Ireland, though it looks to be dominated by churches that describe themselves as Presbyterian (but, in practice are small non-mainstream denominations or independent). They account for around 41% of creationist churches there, whereas Baptists account for 22%.
The reason looks to be quite clear – the Baptist movement in general is not strong and never has been in Northern Ireland (at least in comparison with England and Wales).
What we are unable to do is to identify in absolute (quantitative) terms the number of churches in Northern Ireland that endorse creationism. We don’t actually think it can be done because of the problem of defining endorsement of creationism by an individual church. Even if we got round that problem, it would be an enormously time consuming and expensive exercise to undertake.
However, the anecdotal evidence suggests that belief in young earth creationism is rampant amongst Evangelicals in the province.
Instead, we hope that my approach is close to a sampling technique for the province's churches. What we’ve done is to identify those churches that have endorsed creationism either by inviting creationist speakers to present their case and/or by promoting creationism on their web sites (through web links, etc.) and/or by the pastor opening endorsing it. In terms of promoting creationism on a web site we have defined this as either providing links to creationist organisations such as Answers in Genesis or advertising creationist literature.
In practice, almost without exception, it has involved the former. The anecdotal evidence also shows that it is Answers in Genesis that predominates.
What we haven’t assumed is that a link to either Take Heed Ministries or the Christian Institute are endorsements of creationism. Whilst both are creationist, they have other agendas. We have also excluded from the term endorsement statements that say the bible is inerrent. That is so widely open to interpretation (and has been for centuries now) that it is not at all reliable evidence of belief in or endorsement of young earth creationism.
The approach has involved going through the past itineraries of creationist speakers (such as Ken Ham and Monty White) and visiting the web sites of churches in the province. The latter is somewhat problematical in that most churches don’t bother with a web site. It looks to be no more than about 20%. However, some denominations are keener on using web sites than others – Paisley’s Free Presbyterian Church is an example of one that is keen. We also ruled out visiting the web pages of Catholic or Church of Ireland churches. This is because in the first round (checking creationists’ itineraries), none were identified. However, for the rest it involved a systematic trawl.
Technically, therefore it is not a sample of all churches in Northern Ireland but only ones were we might expect creationism to have taken root. However, we have no reason to think that this materially alters the results.
The analysis does not give any indication in quantitative terms of how widespread the belief in creationism is in the province. Nor can it be refined to do so. All it attempts to show is where, by denomination, creationism has taken root. We must also add that the vast majority of churches we have identified in Northern Ireland do not openly endorse creationism in any way.
However, Peter Henderson has pointed out that a lot of church leaders are young earth creationists but keep quite about it. He suggests that even in the Roman Catholic Church there, some priests are YECers. He also suggests quite widespread YEC beliefs amongst pastors in the main Presbyterian denomination including his own local church (where the pastor is openly a YECer). It is thus more widespread that our survey suggests.
This seems to tally with other anecdotal information such as the frequent visits to the province by leading creationists from such organisations as Answers in Genesis, the staff recruitment policies of the Vardy schools, the web site of Take Heed Ministries and so on.
We don’t think the analysis can be used to show that belief in creationism is more prevalent in Northern Ireland than it is on the mainland although that analysis, once completed, might show it is more prevalent amongst the Northern Irish protestant population than it is in the population of the UK as a whole (don’t bet on that though).
As a general overview, it appears that religious belief by denomination in Northern Ireland is pretty highly concentrated amongst three organisations – the Roman Catholic Church (678.000 adherents), the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (349,000) and the Church of Ireland (Episcopalian – 258,000). The rest look to be basically also-rans in comparison. We expected Northern Ireland Protestants to be much more diverse in their denominational affiliations. Not so, it appears. For example, Paisley’s Free Presbyterian Church (12,000) has a membership which is only about 3% of the main Presbyterian denomination. Even the Methodists had only 59,000 members. (The figures are from the 2001 census and only include membership of these churches in Northern Ireland).
Peter Henderson, though, points out that the smaller denominations with few churches often attract very large congregations. For example, the main Brethren church in Northern Ireland, Crescent Church in Belfast, frequently attracts congregations in excess of a thousand. Monty White of Answers in Genesis has spoken there.
Whilst the Elim Pentecostal church is not that big membership wise, it also has some very large congregations. The main ones are The Ulster Temple, Bangor Elim, Portadown Elim and Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle, which again, attracts over a thousand people to its services. (Assemblies of God has only a tiny presence in the province, though.)
One (and only one) denomination in Northern Ireland appears to publicly endorse creationism. The Fellowship of Independent Methodist Churches in Northern Ireland endorses Answers in Genesis – see http://www.fimc.org.uk/links.htm. Unfortunately this does not say very much because it appears to only have about 1,000 adherents. In addition four Independent Methodist churches individually endorsed creationism. The Methodist Church in Ireland does not; nor, as far as we can establish, do any of its individual churches. We can find no evidence at all for creationism within the Salvation Army in Northern Ireland.
We were unable to find a public endorsement of creationism by Paisley’s Free Presbyterian denomination although Paisley is known to be a YECer.
Table 1: Churches in Northern Ireland Identified as Endorsing YEC
Denomination Number of Churches Endorsing YEC
| Denomination | No. of Churches Endorsing YEC |
|---|
| | |
| Roman Catholic | 0 |
| Presbyterian Church in Ireland | 5 |
| Church of Ireland | 0 |
| Independent Methodist | 4 |
| Reformed Presbyterian | 5 |
| Free Presbyterian | 3 |
| Denomination Unknown | 3 |
| Pentecostal (Unknown branch) | 2 |
| Elim Pentecostal | 1 |
| Brethren | 4 |
| Evangelical Presbyterian | 3 |
| Independent Presbyterian | 3 |
| Baptist (affiliation unknown) | 2 |
| Baptist (Assoc of Baptist Churches in Ireland) | 8 |
| Baptist (Independent) | 1 |
| Congregational (Congregational Union of Ireland) | 2 |
| | |
| Total | 46 |
| | |
Footnote: We estimate that there are up to about 1,500 individual churches in Northern Ireland.
We found some evidence that creationism is accepted by parts of the main Presbyterian Church in Ireland – about five individual churches appear to endorse it. However, that was matched by the five Reformed Presbyterian (Covenanters) who endorsed it. Don’t forget that the latter is an also ran in terms of adherents – about 2,000.
For the most part the churches we identified in Northern Ireland as endorsing creationism mostly described themselves as Presbyterian but were not mainstream Presbyterian. Six of them appear to be independent churches. Three were Free Presbyterian. In total we identified 19 churches in Northern Ireland that in some way endorsed creationism and at the same time described themselves as Presbyterian. Peter Henderson also points out that one of the Free Presbyterian schools is openly teaching young earth creationism.
(Note that Ian Paisley’s parents were not Presbyterian but Independent Baptists. There is some controversial history surrounding Paisley’s split from the mainstream Presbyterian church – words to the effect that he was never a Presbyterian in the first place.)
This compares to eight of the Association of Baptist Churches in Ireland (Baptist Union) which is altogether a much small denomination than mainstream Presbyterian. It has about 19,000 adherents. Another three looked to be independent Baptist churches.
We came across three Pentecostal churches endorsing creationism. One is Elim (which has 5,000 or so adherents in the province) but we can’t pin down what the other two are (AoG has virtually no presence in the province). We also identified four Brethren churches endorsing creationism. The Brethren appears to have about 9,000 adherents there.
(We have to be careful of terminology here because a couple of churches thus identified might be better described as “Brethren-like” in that they have leaders that are like pastors.)
We identified two Congregational churches endorsing creationism. However the Congregational movement only has about 5,000 adherents in NI. We also found three churches whose denomination we could not identify but who endorsed creationism.
We identified not a single Church of Ireland or Catholic Church that endorsed creationism. Some of the very small denominations were also impossible to pin down. The Pentecostal Apostolic Church has a small presence in NI, with about ten churches. However, not one had a web site.
Republic of Ireland: We have not attempted to look at the growth of creationism in the Republic of Ireland. We assume it is not fertile ground for creationists because of the obvious dominance of the Roman Catholic Church. Moreover, our understanding is that the small Protestant community in the Republic is fundamentally different from that in the North because it is dominated by the Episcopalian Church of Ireland. The Presbyterian presence is much less significant there amongst Protestants. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that creationism has made small inroads there. A number of the known creationist advocates (including Ken Ham and Monty White) have spoken there and the country even has its own creationist organisation – see http://creation.ie.
We think it is worth pointing out to reader from outside of the UK some of the cultural issues involved here. The mainstream Presbyterian Church in Ireland is basically an off-shoot of the Church of Scotland and its concentration in the North reflects the proximity of that part of the 32 counties to Scotland and the historical colonisation and plantation system. The Church of Ireland tends to be more evenly spread as it was the English rather than the Scots who predominated in the control of what is now the Republic. Bizarrely, the Church of Ireland was established until 1871 even though it was very much a minority denomination across all 32 countries. Our understanding is that the Church of Ireland is less of a fudge that the Church of England in that it doesn’t have a strong Anglo-Catholic wing.
Scotland (General comments): The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland (Wee Wee Frees) closes its web site on a Sunday! However, it is tiny, (perhaps with no more that 100 members). The Free Church of Scotland (Wee Frees – about 10,000 members) appears to not endorse creationism but Christians in Science instead. However, its recent offspring, the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) – about 800 members - appears to be heavily included by creation – one of its leading clerics is involved in Truth in Science
