Paisleyism and Civil Rights: An Ambassador Unchained
This book examines the Northern Ireland civil rights movement and the Reverend Ian Paisley’s opposition. Although street demonstrations began in the summer of 1968 and lasted a year, activism to advance Ulster’s catholic community originated in the late 1950s. During this period, Paisley crusaded against Protestant apostasy and the liberalization of the Unionist government, and asserted a Calvinist response for protestants.
Paisley formed a political and theological association with North Americans who professed militant fundamentalism and fought the integration of American society. Between 1965 and 1968, Paisley made three visits to the United States and Canada. During these extensive speaking tours, he witnessed the consequence to a successful campaign. The relationship, religiosity and first-hand knowledge of current events helped to shape Paisley’s counter-demonstrations in Northern Ireland, and create an atmosphere for sectarian strife and the “Troubles.”
Richard Lawrence Jordan began his professional career with the Fundamental Recording Company, promoting alternative and Americana bands in a global context. He then obtained a PhD in Modern British History at Louisiana State University in 2008, with a dissertation on the important influence that both civil rights and North American, militant fundamentalism had on Paisleyite religiosity and political activism. His work won two awards and was published as The Second Coming of Paisley: Militant Fundamentalism and Ulster Politics (2013). He has worked at the universities of North Alabama and Drexel, USA, and spent time as a Visiting Scholar at the Princeton Theological Seminary. His publications include “A Militant Crusade in Africa: The Great Commission and Segregation” in Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture (2014), and his research interests include Paisleyism and the alternative music industry.
“A superb work on Ian Paisley’s transatlantic connections, [it] will interest historians of Northern Ireland, the US, and the global civil rights era.”
Daniel Geary
Associate Professor of US History, Trinity College Dublin.
“[This book is] an engrossing and important study in transatlantic religious and political history. In charting the sustained interchanges between Ian Paisley and Protestant fundamentalists in the US during the black freedom struggle of the 1950s and 1960s, it shows clearly how much Paisley’s argument and tactics owed to the US example of faith-inflected massive resistance. Contextual, transnational in the truest sense, and brimming with new insights, this is not a study that should be missed by anyone interested in Ulster Protestant resistance to Northern Ireland’s own ‘civil rights movement’ during ‘The Troubles’.”
Markku Ruotsila
Author of Fighting Fundamentalist: Carl McIntire and the Politicization of American Fundamentalism
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