Belfast could no longer be regarded as a Presbyterian city as it had been in the revolutionary period of 1798, according to the Dr John Dunlop, former moderator of the Presbyterian Church.
It had become increasingly a Catholic, nationalist and republican city, although the republicanism found there today was not at all like that of 1798, he told the Humbert Summer School in Ballina yesterday.
The republicanism experienced in Belfast in the past 30 years had been significant in the absence from its ranks of Dissenters and Anglicans.
Those professing republicanism in Belfast today could better be described as armed nationalists, rather than republicans.
"Their relentless aggression is one factor in the absence of Presbyterians, not only from Belfast, but from many other towns in Northern Ireland," he said.
"The chill factor has been such that many Protestants now like to live in less fraught surroundings." A Presbyterian friend told him recently: "In our town, we no longer matter."
The trend whereby Presbyterians, along with Anglicans and Methodists, were no longer bidding for houses in many parts of Belfast was a tragic manifestation of demographic suicide, Dr Dunlop said.
"It is entirely against our own interests to do what we are doing, because we are leaving schools and churches marooned."
Dr Dunlop said that physical force republicanism had threatened and even eliminated from the Presbyterian identity the element of being Irish "which some of us want to be thought of".
Dr Dunlop added that the constructive challenge to the political parties with ministerial posts in the new Assembly was whether their politicians were up to the challenge of giving constructive leadership to the whole community and not sectarian leadership to a part of it.
"Are they willing to take decisions which will help everyone, including tough decisions which will result in fierce criticism from some of their own constituents?" he asked.
Speaking on the "98 legacy" Judge Cyril Kelly said that since 1798 Irish nationalism had become, and remained, peculiarly Catholic. The Constitution was an interesting attempt to bridge the Catholic and secular strands of nationalism and contained many elements which would have been praised by those involved in 1798. But, because it had its framework from continental Catholic constitutions, it also included elements that appeared threatening to those from the Dissenter tradition.
"The Constitution, whether by political effort or judicial interpretation, is becoming less nationalistic from a Catholic-nationalism viewpoint and more secular in a way that Wolfe Tone would have approved," Judge Kelly said.
"Can we now say, 200 years on, that we are propagating a genuine brotherhood of man, fully equitable and inclusive, not prey to powerful commercial interests, uninfluenced by motives of personal, sectional or individual advantage? Some of those who invoke 1798 do so for reasons which those involved in 1798 would not understand and with which they would most certainly disagree."