DAILY NEWS

Presbyterian revival takes root south of the Irish border

Photo above – Rev David Bruce, secretary to the PCI’s Council for Mission in Ireland, will be the church’s next moderator

A surprising Protestant revival is taking shape on the island of Ireland, says the man poised to take the helm of its biggest denomination, Adam Kula reports in the Belfast Newsletter

But Rev David Bruce says this surge is not concentrated in historically-Protestant Northern Ireland, but in the Catholic-dominated Republic.

Rev Bruce, who will take the reins of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI) from current moderator Dr William Henry in the summer, studied accountancy and has combed through the church’s books to get a picture of attendance numbers across the 19 island-wide Presbyteries.

The long-term picture for the PCI (as with other denominations) shows that generally-speaking pews are emptying, with a plunge in baptisms and the numbers of families registered with a church.

South of the border though, an unexpected pattern has begun to emerge in recent years.

When it comes to Presbyterian numbers in the Republic, “since the foundation of the state there has been a gradual decline” said Rev Bruce.

“But around the mid-2000s it began to level out, and then to turn – we were seeing the beginnings of growth. And that continued and has continued.”

Asked if it would be right to say the Presbyterian church south of the border is actually growing, he said: “Yes, statitstically it is.”

Although there are patches of growth in some parts of Northern Ireland, Rev Bruce said: “There is something happening in Connaught, Leinster and Munster that is not happening in Ulster.”

The overwhelming number of the PCI’s “home mission” congregations (ones which receive extra support due to being in places with few Presbyterians) are in the Republic, and Rev Bruce says the eastern seaboard of the Irish state is “a priority for us when it comes to mission”.

He said: “In 2003 in Drogheda there were 19 people who attended church on Sunday morning. Now it’s 300. To contain them we had to sell the old building and build a new one.”

He also cited a church in Malahide, a prosperous Dublin satellite town, which was started in the 1980s. In 2013 that church “planted” a new church in Donabate. And Donabate is now planting a church in Balbriggan.

Likewise, in the west Dublin district of Lucan the church there planted a new congregation in Maynooth 15 years ago, and it has gone from zero to 80 families today.

CRUNCHING CONGREGATION NUMBERS:

In terms of hard stats to back up the growth claims, the oldest figures the News Letter can find on church membership date back to 2007.

At that time, the overall number of people across the island, of all ages, who were registered as having a connection to a Presbyterian congregation, stood at just under 261,700.

But by 2019 it had fallen to roughly 198,800.

It is difficult to do like-for-like comparisons between individual Presbyteries because of a re-organisation of their boundaries after 2007.

But a pattern is unmistakable: the numbers of people in the Northern Irish-based Presbyteries overwhelmingly fell between 2007 and 2019 – in some cases by several thousand at a time.

South of the border the picture is quite different.

In very rough terms, by looking at the Monaghan and Dublin & Munster presbyteries and adding the congregations in Donegal, the numbers of people connected to Republic of Ireland congregations does appear to have gone up – from 11,440 in 2007 to 13,140 in 2019.

Ever the accountant, Rev Bruce however says these figures sometimes do not show the full picture.

This is because so many people with non-Presbyterian backgrounds now come to worship on Sundays, give money to the collection – but do not formally register as “Presbyterian”.

Instead Rev Bruce suggests looking at the cash collected on Sundays.

Out of the 24 “home mission” churches in Dublin & Munster Presbytery, 18 of them saw a jump in the cash collected between 2012 and 2018 (sometimes a colossal one, with takings more than doubling in one congregation).

In Monaghan Presbytery, 16 of the 22 “home mission” churches also saw spikes in offerings (however, similar figures for Donegal were not available).

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

As to what he puts this growth in the Republic down to, Rev Bruce listed a number of factors.

One is the “atomisation” of society in the Republic, which he reckons to be worse than in NI.

In response to this, many people have sought out churches to give them a sense of community, and find that as atheism has increased they have a developed a feeling of “missing God”.

He also said that the growth of multiculturalism in the south has meant a wealth of traditionally-inclined foreign nationals are now drawn to the church.

“We have one church in Galway which is 80% non-Irish,” he said. “There’s probably about 18 different nationalities represented in that fellowship.”

Added to that is the disenchantment with the Catholic church, given the recent scandals.

He said: “A lot of our ministers in the Republic are telling us stories about people who are coming with that sense of emptiness. A lot of the people who are coming to our churches, finding faith with us, are not card-carrying Presbyterians. They wouldn’t have come from our heritage at all.”


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