Murderers, serial killers or rampaging psychopaths: the odds are that the generally deranged characters portrayed will be Protestant evangelicals. So contends Pastor David McConaghie, himself a Protestant evangelical - he doesn't like the term fundamentalist because, he says, it isn't theologically correct. Evangelicanism gets a hard time in Hollywood, US, he says, and not a lot better in the general media, whether in America or in Ireland. "I find it really annoying when I hear ecumenists saying that people like me are fostering hatred, that it is people like me who encourage people to join paramilitaries."
The point was raised obliquely at a recent meeting of the Assembly. The Rev William McCrea, who with fellow Free Presbyterian Minister the Rev Ian Paisley represents the main political face of Protestant evangelicanism, turned his burning vitriol on "Sinn Fein/IRA".
The next speaker was Mitchel McLaughlin of Sinn Fein, who largely ignored McCrea's attack except to comment about the "developing mixture of evangelical Protestantism and loyalism, with the formation of new loyalist groupings".
Two points were being made: one by McCrea alleging that Sinn Fein was inextricably linked to the IRA and therefore linked to the killings by the IRA; the second, by McLaughlin, that there was an alleged inextricable link between Protestant evangelicalism and certain loyalist paramilitary groups, and implicitly therefore certain DUP politicians should look to some of their own following before rounding on republicans.
Pastor McConaghie acknowledges that in certain quarters, particularly among nationalists, there is a perception - one that is misplaced, he insists - that many loyalist paramilitaries are born-again Protestants. For instance, the murdered LVF leader Billy Wright claimed to be born again. Recently, the Orange Volunteers, who have been responsible for several sectarian attacks against Catholics, insisted before speaking to a television reporter on reading from the Bible, apparently finding scriptural support for their actions.
Pastor McConaghie says that while some loyalist paramilitaries might claim to be saved through the Lord Jesus Christ, their actions were clearly contrary to scripture. He adds: "There is no tangible support for any terrorist campaign by any group within evangelical Protestantism. I would be 100 per cent certain that all the terrorists who killed each other, or killed themselves in action . . I would be absolutely certain that the vast majority of them came from what would be termed the ecumenical churches."
Just look back to the paramilitary funerals of the Troubles, he adds. "There have been so many funeral corteges that have come from what you would call the four main churches that they all seem to merge into one memory. "Very, very few people from the evangelical churches have died through terrorism," he adds. "That's why I take it very hurtful when I am branded as the kind of individual who by my attitude, by what I preach, by my beliefs, perpetuates and prolongs the Troubles and inspires people to go out and commit atrocities. I find that very insulting."
Pastor McConaghie, a member of the Elim Pentecostalist Church, describes himself as a "banger" - a clergyman who learned his proselytising techniques the hard way, in gospel tents and street corners, spreading the gospel with fire and fervour. If there is a pulpit to be thumped to catch a congregation's attention he'll thump it. He argues his case trenchantly, and reckons his views would generally reflect those of Northern evangelicals. Ecumenists in the "four main churches" - a term he finds offensive - are his main target. "I would concede that I would be fairly robust in my description of them, and I would expect and allow them to be robust in their description of me." He is against the Belfast Agreement, and would tend to support the DUP.
It is estimated that there are about 100,000 born-again Protestants in Northern Ireland, made up of those belonging to the scores of strictly evangelical churches, and evangelicals within the three main Protestant denominations - Church of Ireland, Presbyterians and Methodists. A good majority of that number would be like-minded politically. It's the base from which the DUP wins much of its support. Pastor McConaghie was born a Presbyterian, in a DUP political household. Through his teens he felt unhappy with what was on offer in his local church in Ballymoney, Co Antrim. "One Sunday the minister preached on the theme, Born Again - So What? He said there were people who called themselves saved and born again, and you couldn't trust one of them. That was the final straw."
He was in his mid-teens when he found salvation. At the time, he says, he was sinful in the presence of God. "I could not say I was a great sinner. I didn't run with gangs, I smoked a few cigarettes, took a few drinks, but never committed what people would understand as gross, open sin. But, of course, sin is sin." Now he doesn't drink or smoke. He is 33, married for the past 10 years to Coleraine woman Darlene. He's the chief spokesman for the Caleb Foundation, an organisation which promotes the evangelical viewpoint.
Pentecostalism, he explains, holds to the belief that the spiritual gifts, including the gift of tongues, which the early church experienced and enjoyed, continued throughout church history. He himself has experienced speaking in tongues, he says.
He is certain that God made the world in six days and that on the seventh day he rested, because it says so in the Bible. That would be a prevailing view in evangelical churches. "I believe that God created the world in six literal days; I don't hold with the scientific argument for evolution. I don't object to evolution being taught in schools, but creationism should also be taught." Pastor McConaghie is aware of a new book, Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland, 1600-1698, by John Brewer, Professor of Sociology at Queen's University, Belfast, with research assistant Gareth Higgins. Prof Brewer, a Presbyterian, complained of a Protestant anti-Catholicism that was a "tradition with long historical roots and part of a long political agenda".
The professor argued that anti-agreement unionists (a sizeable number of whom would be evangelicals) were becoming more and more anti-Catholic. "Since the agreement they appear as if more desperate."
But Pastor McConaghie rejects the charge that he, or most other evangelicals, is anti-Catholic. Such comments are yet another unjust slur on people with a particular religious conviction. "I disagree fundamentally with many tenets of the Roman Catholic faith, but does that make me anti-Catholic? It doesn't. I believe you can profoundly disagree with what someone believes and says and teaches but still have a love and respect for that individual."
He is, however, also certain that anyone who is not born again - and that includes all Catholics - is damned. The idea of Catholic evangelicals is a nonsense, he believes, because Catholics subscribe to the Mass, and "the Mass is blasphemous".
He does not accept it as a cruel notion of God that unless a person is born again he is eternally lost, a judgment that applies not only to Catholics but to those who have never had Christ preached to them. "Every Catholic, every Protestant, every Muslim, every Hindu, every member of the Elim Church that is not born again is ultimately lost, ultimately damned - it's a biblical word, I don't oppose it." He criticises Prof Brewer's views and the opinions of others who say evangelical teaching is inherently anti-Catholic. "Ecumenists say they are tolerant but they apply a double standard. They have to accuse me of being anti-Catholic. They can't see me as acting out of conscience, of adopting a rational, intelligent, mature position . . . They criticise the tenets of the faith that I hold, yet they say they are not anti-evangelical or anti-Protestant. "If someone from an evangelical background dares to go on television or appears in the press to question the most minor particle of ecumenism, he is immediately branded as a ranting, raving, heretic-burning bigot. Ecumenists can say things like that as if they were paragons of tolerance."
He rejects the view that his is a cold and cheerless church. "A Christianity that brings no joy is a very strange Christianity. If a person has had their real sin, and guilt of sin, removed, if a person knows deliverance from that there must be accompanying joy. To know peace with God is the most joyous thing in the world." He adds, however: "But if I am preaching on a text that condemns drunkenness it would be remiss of me not to say drunkenness is wrong. If I am preaching on a text that condemns sexual impurity, I must address that issue."
One of the great Protestant slogans down the years is "For God and Ulster". You'll still hear it proclaimed on the Twelfth and at Drumcree and at Orange meetings. It's a combination of church and politics, not always a happy mix.
Pastor McConaghie, while politically committed to "Ulster", says that the true evangelical's main focus will be on God. He or she may have strong political convictions, but Christ will be the main element in a Protestant evangelical's life. And so it applies to him. He says: "I am not afraid of any movement, because I believe the Lord has risen and will come back. I am not afraid of ecumenism or a united Ireland, because no matter what happens nobody can take away my faith."