Extracts from a ‘Belfast Telegraph’ article on the deposing of Rev David DiCanio, Saturday 28th December.
The sacking of a Free Presbyterian minister has unsettled a church which is changing faster than some of its clerics would like
Tiny Protestant denomination has had a disproportionate political and societal influence – but after years protesting against others, now some of its ministers are protesting against it
The Free Presbyterian Church — Northern Ireland’s most hardline Protestant denomination — has just ejected a minister for being too hardline.
It’s an episode which in other circumstances might mean little, but which relates to a far deeper shift within the church founded by Ian Paisley in 1951.
Even that might be of little relevance beyond the few thousand members of this institution. Yet Free Presbyterianism has never simply been about God; it’s always been closely linked to developments in secular power.
Once that was about denouncing the powerful; these days, there’s a good chance that the powerful are in a Free Presbyterian pew on a Sunday morning.
Free Presbyterianism has never been a mass movement akin to the Presbyterian Church or the Anglican Church, let alone the Catholic Church. It’s smaller than the Baptist or Pentecostal churches, yet far better known because of the high profile of many of its members and its outspoken public protests which often attract media coverage.
Now, one of those protests has come against itself — and has come from a serving minister.
The Rev David DiCanio is a missionary in Liberia, but even that position — whose self-sacrifice tends to evoke particular respect — did not save him from effectively being sacked from a career which had lasted decades.
His ‘sin’, as defined by the church, wasn’t pride, or greed, or lust, or envy; much less stealing or murder.
It was the more archaic sin of ‘contumacy’ — stubbornness in the face of authority. Central to that, it seems, is that he refused to go to a meeting.
The meeting, it appears, was about a video the Rev DiCanio produced and which the Belfast Telegraph has seen. It’s long — more than 40 minutes — and repetitive.
Much of it is oblique to the uninitiated, including social media posts by individuals who are presumably Free Presbyterians.
But it appears to have contained a sufficiently dangerous idea to justify his sacking.
His real ‘sin’, it is claimed, is embarrassing the church authorities by exposing hypocrisy: While the church was condemning others for something, it was doing that thing itself.
The video is a series of clips from staid singers in Free Presbyterian Churches juxtaposed with US megachurches playing Contemporary Christian Music — a sort of Christian pop music involving guitars, lights, dancing and a pounding beat.
The message is that while the Free Presbyterians might not yet have the drums and the dancing, they’ve started down a slippery slope far away from their founding principles.
And it wasn’t simply a matter of taste. These things were pronounced as evil.
The censure of Rev DiCanio has been publicly denounced by two of his colleagues, the Rev Andrew Foster and the Rev Stephen Hamilton. Like the Rev DiCanio, they are all members of the Free Presbyterian Church of North America (FPCNA). While planted by the Northern Ireland church and continuing as its sister church, it is now separate and has its own structures.
But the allegation from within the church itself — which hasn’t been rebutted — is that the Rev DiCanio’s ejection was because of pressure from the church in Northern Ireland.
The Rev Ivan Foster, an elderly firebrand who was jailed along with Paisley in 1966, said: “This decision is the result of a ‘pandering’ by leaders of the FPCNA to the demands of some prominent ministers here in the Ulster Presbytery”.
Writing on his personal website, the former DUP Assemblyman, described modern Christian music as “evil” and a “sin”.
Defending traditional Psalms and hymns, he denounced the new music as something from a “religious nightclub” and added: “There is also evidence of effeminacy in many of the songs, in which male singers adopt a breathy, soft and seductive tone, more like that of a female.”
He said that Northern Ireland church leaders “secretly demanded” that action be taken against the Rev DiCanio — whose video focussed on churches in Northern Ireland.
The Rev Foster said what had happened was “contrived”, “unjust” and involved “wickedness”. He said it would “spread like a plague” if not addressed and that the church now stands at a “decisive crossroad”.
In a statement reproduced by the Rev Foster, the FPCNA said the Rev DiCanio had been found guilty by its judicial commission and “admonished to repent” but he had refused to comply. It said the Liberian mission was “managed through a non-governmental organisation” and it was up to it to manage the situation.
In a statement to his congregation in Canada, the Rev Foster’s son, the Rev Andrew Foster, said the church statement “contains little information about how such a serious outcome as the termination of a long-term minister and missionary for sinful rebellion, actually came about”.
He said the answer was the video produced by the cleric, which had been an “obvious rebuke” of “hypocrisy” and that he’d refused to attend when summoned to a meeting of the church’s presbytery.
Quoting from the church’s own website, he said it stated: “We reject the modern-day notion that says in order to reach the world with the gospel, we need to use the world’s music.
“We therefore refuse to use Contemporary Christian Music….”
Ivan Foster’s outspoken laments — which began when Paisley entered powersharing with Sinn Féin in 2007 — are themselves evidence of how power has shifted from hardliners like himself. If he had the ability to influence things internally, there’d be no need for public denunciations.
Yet the unofficial link between church and party remains uneasy, and is sometimes impossible even for two increasingly pragmatic organisations to reconcile.
When Paul Givan went to the Armagh service to commemorate Northern Ireland’s centenary, few people saw it as remotely controversial.
But within the church, Givan’s presence were incompatible with its opposition to ecumenical services. Although Givan is devout and could argue that the role of First Minister, which he held at that point, necessitated his attendance, the church had no time for it.
Precisely what happened next is unclear, but Givan didn’t deny reports that he’d quit the church over criticism from his local elders, saying that it was a “private matter”.
There have been many Givans over recent years, even if few of them have walked away so dramatically.
Two years ago, Free Presbyterian (and TUV press officer) Sammy Morrison highlighted that the more recent census showed a dramatic decline in membership. In 1991, there were 12,363 Free Presbyterians; by 2021, that was down to 8,433.
Its rate of decline over the previous decade was double that of the mainstream Presbyterian Church.
The current spat touches on many internal tensions and contradictions. There are rumours of moves against other ministers. As a dogmatic denomination, in some ways it is surprising that dramatic U-turns such as Paisley’s entry into powersharing haven’t led to a full split.
Even some thoughtful Free Presbyterians who are open-minded on Rev DiCanio’s situation are uneasy about what has happened. One referred to the troubling lack of records from the process as “an unpresbyterian secrecy which needs to change”.
What has happened represents the continued softening of the most hardline Protestant denomination in Northern Ireland.
But the outworking of such change is not necessarily easy to predict.
Givan, who spent many years in the church and remains a deeply conservative evangelical, gave an interview to the US religious website Patheos two years ago in which he said: ‘I don’t subscribe to this singular state-controlled system because ultimately, that’s informed by a particular viewpoint, and who says a non-faith, secular school is a better school? We need to protect the rights of parents to be able to have schools of their choice.”
As it happens, the Free Presbyterian Church has its own small network of independent fee-paying schools and in October the church secured a meeting with the Secretary of State to oppose the Government’s plan to levy VAT on all private schools.
Givan is now Education Minister and has considerable power to shape education policy.
Yet who is the chief beneficiary of his belief in educational pluralism, rather than a wholly integrated school system? The Catholic Church — the very institution Paisley identified as his chief target.
Faith and politics remain entwined for many in Northern Ireland, but increasingly that’s leading to surprising alliances.