Baptist pastor critical of the isolation of Protestants

Protestants in this State have been subject to "lonely times" and "a form of spiritual euthanasia," according to a Baptist clergyman. "Tone's vision passed into cold storage for almost 200 years," writes the Rev Robert Dunlop, pastor of the Baptist Church at Brannockstown, Co Kildare.

Although minority religious communities enjoyed constitutional protection on paper in the State, "they often felt dislocated on the ground," he says. They became a people "in retreat", the root cause of which was a gut feeling that they weren't wanted but were simply tolerated, he says in an article in the current issue of Ceide, a magazine on religious topics edited by Father Kevin Hegarty.

Catholic bishops were revered by their own flock and feared at a distance by scattered dissenters. A "belt of the crozier" could not be consigned to the mists of Irish myths.

"No one actually initiated religious genocide but the strict application of the Ne Temere (mixed marriages) decree amounted to a form of spiritual euthanasia," he says. Under that decree, both partners must give an undertaking that all children of the marriage will be reared as Catholics.

Referring to two personal experiences of "discomfort, a loneliness and non-belonging" he was made feel in Ireland because of his Protestantism, Mr Dunlop recalls being a young pastor in Athlone in the 1960s as a Corpus Christi procession passed him by. Hemmed in by the crowd, he didn't know how to respond as "a young garda saluted reverently and the whole company feel on their knees on the roadway." Not wishing to give offence, he feigned great interest in the suits in a draper's shop window, feeling "lonely and vulnerable".

The second event which encouraged a sense of isolation, though not as pronounced, was the papal visit in 1979. The attendant jubilation and public display of Catholicism facilitated by church, State and media filled him with unease. He felt "profoundly out of things".

Now, he says, we have been plunged into a situation in which this model of majoritarianism, in church and state, has collapsed because of "an eruption in the body ecclesiastic". The notion of accommodating non-conformists, whether a la carte Catholics or those who are confessionally different, had developed in Ireland. He sees this as an opportunity for imaginative generosity without abandoning bedrock convictions.

Mr Dunlop points out that small religious and social minorities, such as Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers, have deep roots and important distinctiveness. Some have been in the country since the 17th century.

"They provide a natural setting for the journey into a new Ireland where pluralism is not seen as a threat but as a liberative option," he writes. Then "the screen may be widened to take into the centre those who have been dispatched to the rim because they did not belong to the massif centrale. "We all need to come to terms with (Louis) MacNiece's struggle with a world `incorrigibly plural', and to feel `the drunkenness of things being various'. "