Letter: Free Presbyterians accepted the abomination of sharing power with Sinn Fein/IRA, which has helped a minister to hold an Irish language event

The Free Presbyterian ministers writing in the News Letter (April 21) describe themselves as “aghast” that the Rev Paul Thompson, minister of Antrim Free Presbyterian church, should invite senior Sinn Fein representatives to an Irish language event hosted by the denomination (Letter: ‘We regret the fact that fellow Free Presbyterian ministers would allow themselves to be used over the Irish language’).

That Rev Thompson felt able to do so is doubtless in large measure due to the apathy and indifference shown by the church when the former moderator, Ian Paisley, supported by office bearers such as William McCrea, Mervyn Storey and Maurice Morrow entered into an unholy power sharing alliance with Martin McGuinness in 2007. To this day the Free Presbyterian church has never officially and publicly condemned, nor censured those office bearers complicit in, that gross betrayal of Biblical Protestantism.

Sharing power with IRA/SF is not simply politically wrong, it is morally abominable and completely contrary to the teaching of the Bible. Events such as that organised by Rev Thompson are the direct result of an abject failure on the part of the denomination to deal with the political compromisers in its ranks. Most of the six men who signed the letter were Free Presbyterian ministers before 2007 and I would respectfully put it to these men that their public silence on the iniquity of power sharing with republicans played no insignificant part in the decision of Antrim FPC to hold this Irish language event.

After all, if senior FPC ministers and elders can share power with republicans at Stormont without censure, why would it be thought that a local meeting including republicans would attract any criticism?

Richard Ferguson, Dollingstown