TRANSPLANTED IRISH INSTITUTIONS - University of Canterbury

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Ulster was greatly influenced by the Protestants as they were very active in church
and political meetings and in the Orange Institution during the nineteenth century.
An
example of the Ulster Protestant mind-set was given at a meeting of about 100,000 people
in Belfast in 1869 to protest against the Irish Church Bill
At the heart of the day's entertainment were the speeches, many of which were populist history
lectures about the struggles and triumphs of Irish Protestants against an unchanging and disloyal
Catholicism. As events and heroes were recalled to the cheers of the crowd, the virtues most
admired were staunchness and unchanging principles, the evils most railed against were betrayal
and accommodation. These appeals to forefathers, faith and the settlement of the land not only
foreshortened the past, but helped even the most impious to believe that they were part of a
tradition protected by divine providence for a quarter of a millennium. Here was a memorial and
celebratory culture resonant with providential turning-points and rich in symbols. 4
The heroes of Ulster Protestantism were not theologians but defenders of the rights
of Ulster Protestants against encroachments by Roman Catholicism. The anti-Catholicism
in Ulster Protestantism has been highlighted by historians who saw evangelical religion
playing an important role in anti-Catholicism; "the hotter the Protestantism, in terms of its
evangelical zeal, the firmer was this belief and the sharper the antagonism against the 'whole
system' of Roman Catholicism."s
This was particularly noticeable in the context of
evangelicalism which emphasized religious conversion. Hempton and Hill summarized the
potential conflict between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants by arguing
The centrality of religious conversion to evangelicalism, however, led inexorably to a more
competitive religious climate in which evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics came into
more regular conflict. Evangelical enthusiasm thus reinforced an older tradition of anti­
Catholicism which combined elements of ethnicity, culture, civilization and colonialism to
produce a powerful and multifaceted ideology.6
It was the evangelical and anti-Catholic Ulster Protestant who joined the Loyal Orange
Institution which enshrined all the principles of Ulster Protestantism.
The Gaelic Revival of the nineteenth century strengthened the second tradition
which helped to define the distinctiveness between the Catholic and Protestant communities.
J.e. Beckett noted that by 1820 there was a shift in opinion concerning the term 'Irish'. He
quoted the words of a member of the powerful Beresford family who stated that 'the Irish
4Ibid., p. 181.
5Ibid., p. 182.
6[bid., p. 189.