Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

Iris Robinson did a fine job of emphasising her husband’s pragmatic and secular instincts earlier this week on the Nolan show. Having spent some time bemoaning the loss of the word ‘coloureds’ and offering homosexuals the services of a psychiatrist to get them ‘turned around’, Iris stressed that she shared these beliefs with her ‘born again Christian’ husband. Wonderful. Only in Northern Ireland could Peter Robinson represent progress in edging the First Minister’s post away from an even more extreme religious nut-case. And as if to emphasise the element of continuity between Robinson and his Ulster nationalist predecessor, O’Neill makes an interesting contribution in the comments zone of a post on Slugger which includes a ‘TagCrowd’ of the new First Minister’s inaugural speech. He notes that there are no tags for ‘unionist’, ‘unionism’, ‘Britain’, ‘British’ or indeed ‘UK’. The King is dead, long live the King.

We do not need any great reminder of the influence of fundamentalist evangelical Christianity in Northern Ireland. After all our largest political party is rotten with those who believe they are being guided by God. In fact our outgoing First Minister, who is accustomed to preaching the most virulent form of Christianity, will shortly be replaced by Peter Robinson, who attends with his wife the revivalist evangelical Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle, one of the largest church congregations in Europe. It is quite an indictment of the nature of the party when Robinson is considered to be on the godless secular wing of the DUP. In case we needed another reminder of the influence of fundamentalist Christianity, 30,000 people (that is thirty thousand people) from our little province of 1,500,000, attended rallies featuring the evangelist Franklin Graham in Belfast’s Odyssey Arena over the weekend . Of course, in the United Kingdom, people are entitled to freedom of conscience and free

Pete Baker has been tenaciously blogging on two fronts over on Slugger O’Toole. But his latest thread fascinatingly links the allegations of cronyism against the First Minister, over his backing of Seymour Sweeney’s plans for a new visitor centre at the Giant’s Causeway, to the DUPiban’s emerging belligerence over creationism . It is as scary as it is preposterous that visitors to our shores may be treated to the wisdom that the causeway was formed 4000 years ago during Noah’s flood! As a poster on Slugger wryly notes, they may as well advance as science the "Finn MacCool Theory".