Ian Paisley and the Docker Rally

In response to our recent evening looking at the life of Dr Ian Paisley, a church member handed me a clipping from the Lancaster Guardian (‘Bentham District Edition’). The date is missing, but on the article’s rear is an advert showing the Sound of Music at the Odeon (released 1965) and The Adventurers (released in the UK 1970), so I’ll take the later date.

The article is published the day of that year’s Docker Rally, a great annual evangelistic barn gathering in the Lune Valley at which I spoke a few years back. Evidently, Dr Paisley had been invited to preach, but then cancelled on account of that year’s general election, offering a substitute in the person of Rev William Beatie, MP. This itself is hardly front-page news, even for a sleepy northern city, but the protestation from the local Methodist hierarchy certainly was. Rev. Donald Parsons, chairman of the Lancaster Council of Churches, was interviewed by the paper during which he disassociated himself from the event, lacking ‘sympathy with Mr Paisley’s approach, pronouncements and activities’. On behalf of local Methodists, he said few would approve of the speaker and his message. In the spirit of balanced reporting, Mr Ward of Docker Farm and Bert Chambers of Heysham expressed their disappointment at the cancellation.

A couple of Methodists are then quoted in an attempt to defend the invitation, explaining that it was an event to preach ‘about the soul’ rather than politics, and a local farmer who pointed out that a Methodist minister was present when the choice was made, he possessing the minutes to prove it. He ends:

“Could I ask through your columns that those concerned with this vicious attack would read St Matthew 28 v 16?”

I’ve read that verse a number of times seeking some deep application to the Docker row in 1970 but cannot. Perhaps it was a misprint.

So was this just local Methodists publicly washing their dirty linen? No, it’s something far deeper. The modernist liberals were appalled by their evangelical circuit-mates’ inviting over the nation’s most zealous preacher. It is true that the Paisley of the 70s was a political firebrand, but this event was non-political. Had the rally’s planned speaker been a miracle-denying doubter, the local ministers and Church Council wouldn’t have raised a finger. Had he denied the resurrection, assured them there was no hell, offered nothing but sweet platitudes, I have no doubt that Rev. Parsons would have slept soundly in his bed that night. While researching this post, I came across former Methodists who recall him assuring one young lady who had given her life to Christ that "she would soon get over it". She never did. Little wonder this deathomist minister opposed Dr Paisley. 

Since that event, evangelical Methodists left their circuits in droves, founding free churches at Capernwray, Clapham, Heysham and Garstang. Rev. Parsons must have chuckled when the Ulster firebrand couldn’t come, but I think Rev. Paisley had the last laugh: pallid liberalism closes down churches while the life-giving gospel cannot be silenced. 

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