Editorial: If Christians ever had too much influence in Northern Ireland, the rise in Sunday sport events shows they've now too little

The Irish FA originally planned to hold the Irish Cup final on Saturday 6.

The date was chosen to the Sunday the next day due to the coronation of King Charles. The coronation is good reason to change the date of a major sporting fixture – there has been no such crowning in 70 years – the sadness is that the change was to a Sunday.

Gradually in Northern Ireland, the idea of forgoing major sporting fixtures on a Sunday has dissolved. Another football final, the League Cup, has now been held twice on a Sunday in Belfast. The almost 40-year tradition of holding the Belfast Marathon on one of the May bank holiday Mondays was switched to a Sunday. Critics of the Monday event said it caused disruption on a weekday but in fact there was never much proof of it causing disruption on what was a quiet public holiday.

In a recent, widely-read letter to this newspaper Wallace Thompson of the Evangelical Society recognised “that society is becoming increasingly secular” but noted how loyalist communities “have repudiated their rich” evangelical heritage.

NI has indeed long been becoming more secular. In fact the Catholic community was more church-going than Protestants at the start of the Troubles, with weekly church attendance at over 90%. Now church going has plunged in both communities but while once it was possible to argue that religion had too much influence in Sunday pub, shop and leisure opening, proportionate to the number of people who wanted restrictions, now it is possible to argue the reverse. A large Christian minority has little influence in spheres from abortion policy, to keeping Sunday a day apart to getting a proper Sunday morning religious affairs programme on BBC Radio Ulster. When pendulums swing, they often swing too far, as they have done against Christian sensibilities.