In the autumn of 1969, during the darkest days of the conflict in Northern Ireland, James Callaghan, who was then the Labour home secretary, and the Reverend Ian Paisley, loyalism’s most extreme and charismatic leader, sat down together in Belfast. Struggling to persuade Paisley that civil rights for Catholics posed no threat to the Protestant majority, Callaghan appealed to one of the few commitments the two men had in common: their Christian faith.
“Look here, Mr Paisley,” Callaghan, a devout Baptist, is reported to have said, “aren’t we all children of God?”. Paisley, heir to four centuries of Calvinist theology, was horrified. On the contrary, he replied, “we are not”. The meeting became a debate on the order of grace and the nature of salvation. The peace process stalled once again.
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