To observe the Rev Ian Paisley and the Rev William McCrea orate in the Assembly, or from any political plat- form, provides a flavour of what one may encounter in hundreds of Protestant evangelical churches around Northern Ireland.
To hear and watch the two reverend gentle- men - the build-up, the impassioned delivery, the biting attack, the flashes of anger and humour, the generous use of biblical references, the gesticulation, the operatic facial expressions - is to gain an insight into what thousands of people experience in these churches every Sunday, and on some weekdays as well.
When they are in full flow, their colleagues on the anti-Belfast Agreement benches don't generally cry "Amen" or "Hallelujah" - as one would tend to hear in evangelical churches - but they'll pound the benches and exhort encouragingly, as the occasion demands.
The congregations in the evangelical churches will similarly respond if they hear a good preacher. Pastor Robert McEvoy, of the little Elim Pentecostal church in Randalstown, Co Antrim, is a case in point. This particular Sunday night there are about 60 of his flock in the church to hear a visiting preacher, Pastor John Harris.
Pastor McEvoy prepares them for the sermon. He leads the people in redemption hymns. He plays the accordion. He reads with passion from scripture, enthusing and energising the congregation. We hear the unprompted responses from the pentecostal faithful, "Lord have mercy", "Yes, dear Lord, yes", "Amen, Amen".
It doesn't have the wild abandon of some of the revivalist American churches, or the swinging soulfulness of some black Baptist churches, but there's no doubting the passion and fervour. Here are ardent and convinced born-again Christians. It's a world most southerners, even many southern Protestants, would not recognise. The sense is of a people at prayer, getting on with their lives, and their beliefs, in a place where politics should not intrude. Yet, just as most Northern Catholics would tend to vote for nationalist politicians, so too would most evangelicals tend to vote for anti-agreement parties. Here, too, religion crosses over into politics.
In the elections of this decade the DUP vote has been around 110,000. In the Assembly election it rose to over 145,000. The party, led by Free Presbyterian Minister the Rev Ian Paisley, would have a strong support base within Protestant evangelicalism, although quite a number outside the born-again fold would also support the DUP.
It is estimated that there are about 100,000 born-again Protestants in Northern Ireland, made up of those belonging to strictly evangelical churches, and evangelicals within the three main Protestant denominations, principally in the Presbyterian Church but also in the Church of Ireland and Methodist Church.
Because there are so many churches it is difficult to be specific about the born-again population. According to Norman Richard- son's book, A Tapestry of Beliefs - Christian Traditions in Northern Ireland, there are 63 religious groups with 10 or more adherents, a third of which would have fewer than 100 members. There are an additional 74 religious groups with fewer than 10 adherents. Evangelicals would be members of many of these groups.
The voting patterns of recent years would point to a strong majority of evangelicals being comfortable with the political line of Dr Paisley. Said one Protestant minister: "The DUP base vote has to come from somewhere. It doesn't come from Protestant middle-class or loyalist working-class areas, so the born-again flock would be the obvious base."
Most of the born-again Assembly politicians are with the anti-Belfast Agreement bloc. Many of the DUP's 20 Assembly members are evangelicals. As well as Dr Paisley, they include Peter and Iris Robinson, Ian Paisley jnr, the Rev William McCrea, Nigel Dodds, Gardiner Kane and Gregory Campbell. Not all subscribe to the Free Presbyterian Church; Peter and Iris Robinson are members of the Elim Pentecostal Church.
Born-again Protestantism cannot be viewed as a monolith. For instance, the brethren, strict Protestants who meet in gospel halls all over Northern Ireland and who number 10,000 or more, would not vote at all. As one Protestant clergyman explained, "The brethren are more concerned with the world that is coming rather than the world of the present."
Protestant evangelicals and Catholics would have similar opinions on issues such as abortion and euthanasia, but they could never make common cause because areas central to Catholicism such as the Mass, transubstantiation and confession are anathema to evangelicals. "We might have similar views, but I could never see Protestant evangelicals and Catholics sharing a platform," said Gregory Campbell, security spokesman for the DUP and a member of the Free Presbyterian Church in Derry. He is conscious of the claim that the born- again certainty about the next life, and the equal certainty that those not born again, including Catholics, are lost, translates into notions of religious and political superiority.
Campbell said there may have been a supremacist Protestant attitude in the past, but it was now very uncommon in Northern Ire- land. "I think you will find that supremacist view in certain parts of the Bible Belt in the US, but generally not in Northern Ireland. I have been involved in evangelical worship for 25 years and I have never come across it," he said. "Supremacism is a notion that I find objectionable. I know of no born-again Christian who would regard himself or herself as being superior," added Campbell.
He says Protestant evangelicals tend to get a bad press, and in the run-up to the millennium it's going to get worse. "There's going to be all sorts of head cases, viewed as Protestant fundamentalists, doing all sorts of weird things as the millennium approaches. Protestants who think they've been in for a hard time up to now are going to get some awakening."
Campbell, an Assembly member for Foyle, said that on election canvasses he did not play the evangelical card. "I don't find I have to make a particular pitch. People would tend to know where I stand on religious and moral questions."
Most Protestant evangelicals, according to Campbell, would be anti-Belfast Agreement, although that conviction would be founded more on their moral than political beliefs. Confirming that view, one evangelical minister said that a small minority of his flock was briefly in two minds about the Belfast Agreement, but ultimately decided to vote No be- cause the waverers saw the early prisoner releases and the idea of "terrorism rewarded" as fundamentally immoral.
Where many Catholics and non-evangelical Protestants weighed up the merits and demerits of the agreement and decided, sometimes reluctantly, to vote Yes, born-again Protestants could in conscience only vote No. Politics is the art of compromise, but not for evangelicals. Basic morality, rather than finding middle ground to accommodate two sets of views, was the bottom line for evangelicals, the minister explained.