Presbyterian Minoritisation

Abstract

In the previous chapter, I suggested that although Ulster-Scots emerged out of the nexus of Protestantism/Unionism/Loyalism, its promoters desire either wholesale separation from such identities or to simply decouple from its worst excesses. As a result, the relationship between Ulster-Scots and the various features of the ‘Protestant community’ appears rather equivocal and contradictory in the Ulster-Scots story of peoplehood. However, these equivocations and contradictions are symptomatic of the fact that Ulster-Scots is, at its heart, an attempt to overcome collective humiliation by developing an ethnically framed dignity discourse. As we saw in the previous chapter, the ambiguity of ‘Protestant community’ features in the Ulster-Scots peoplehood story is also true of its link to religiosity. At times it is Protestant, at others specifically Presbyterian, and occasionally explicitly inclusive of multiple religious backgrounds (essentially, Catholics). Religious affiliation is the aspect of the ‘Protestant community’, which is most freely expressed in the data. In this brief chapter, I outline the use of religiosity in the Ulster-Scots narrative. After discussing further the nature of this relationship, I contend that Presbyterianism functions primarily as an instrument of minoritisation: a (disenfranchised, excluded, perhaps even victimised) minority in a plural society.