THE BATTLE FOR THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF THE CITY

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PRO-LIFE WITNESS AT BELFAST CITY HALL: FREE PRESBYTERIANS GIVE THANKS THAT ILLUMINATION DID NOT PROCEED, BUT WARN THE BATTLE IS FAR FROM OVER

A calm and clear Monday evening in Belfast saw several hundred people gather on the granite forecourt at the corner of Donegall Square East, directly facing the City Hall, for a peaceful open-air witness organised by the Government and Morals Committee of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. The gathering drew an estimated four hundred attendees from congregations across the province, with a further thousand or more supporters from other pro-life groups standing in solidarity around the square. The service was led by the Reverend David McLaughlin, with the Moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, Dr Ian Brown, delivering the principal address.

The Occasion

The City Hall did not, in the end, stand lit in green. It was illuminated in its usual colours, the warm amber and soft white that the building carries on ordinary evenings. The green illumination had been approved by Belfast City Council’s Strategic Policy and Resources Committee in August, on an Alliance Party motion brought at the request of the National Women’s Council of Ireland, and ratified by the full council in September.

The Democratic Unionist Party then invoked the call-in procedure under the Local Government Act (Northern Ireland) 2014, on procedural grounds and on grounds of disproportionate community impact.
That mechanism obliges the council to obtain a legal opinion before proceeding, and the opinion was not expected to be ready in time.
The illumination was therefore placed on hold, and the National Women’s Council arranged an alternative projection on the MAC building instead.

The Campaign Against the Illumination

The Free Presbyterian Government and Morals Committee wrote to Council members to urge a vote against the illumination plans.
The Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr Alan McGuckian, wrote to all sixty councillors urging them to reconsider what he described as deeply divisive and upsetting plans.
More than twenty thousand people signed a petition against the decision.
A legal challenge was lodged in the courts.
An open letter signed by Christian and pro-life groups, including Precious Life, called on the council to reject the proposal outright.

What Was Not Won

The organisers were careful not to claim more than had been gained.

The council’s vote still stands.
The motion was passed.
The call-in suspends the decision pending legal advice; it does not reverse it.
Whether the illumination proceeds at a later date or is abandoned altogether remains to be seen.

The substance of the grievance, as every speaker made plain, is untouched by a delayed light show.

The Service Opened

The gathering began with the singing of I’m Not Ashamed/At the Cross, the hymn long associated with the Free Presbyterian Church and known among its people as the battle hymn of the denomination. Two further hymns were sung during the evening, I Stand Amazed and There is Power in the Blood.

The Public Reading of Scripture

Portions read aloud included:

Genesis 1:26–27
Job 31:15
Exodus 20:13
Deuteronomy 30:19–20
Proverbs 31:8–9
Psalm 71:5–6
Psalm 139:13–16
Jeremiah 1:4–5
Luke 1:39–45
John 3:16
Romans 1:16–17
Romans 5:8
1 Timothy 1:15

The Opening Prayer

The Reverend Timothy Ormerod, convener of the Committee, led the opening prayer.

He gave thanks to the Giver of life, saying with the words of Job that it is the Lord who giveth and the Lord who taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.
He gave thanks for the Scriptures, which teach us not to kill, and which declare that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and that even within the womb it is the Lord who covers and protects us.
He prayed for the nation, that God in mercy would turn it once again to Himself, that He would give it the fear of God and an adherence to the Scriptures of Jesus Christ, and that the gospel would flourish in our land and in our capital city once again.
He prayed for those in authority: councillors, politicians of all parties, MLAs and MPs across the United Kingdom, that as their hearts are in the King’s hand, God would turn them unto Himself.

A Personal Testimony

Before the Moderator’s address, the congregation heard a personal testimony from Mr Kyle Boyd of the Crossgar congregation.

He was born ten weeks prematurely in March 1985 at the Ulster Hospital.
He suffered a stroke in the birth canal and was diagnosed with cerebral palsy.
He spoke of his father’s prayer on a bedroom floor that his son might live, of surgeries in childhood, and of taking his first steps at the age of four.
Seated in his wheelchair, though able to walk a little, he explained that he prefers to sit.

Mr Boyd read from Psalm 139:14, “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” and from John 10:10, “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”

He told the gathering plainly that, given the laws of our land, had he been born in 2026 he probably would not be here. He spoke of the cruelty he had faced at school, of the questions he had put to God at fourteen, and of the answer he had found in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” He now has a wife, two children, and employment. His question to the gathering was direct: are those with disabilities a burden, or are they made in the purpose of God? Who, he asked, stands for the voiceless?

The Moderator’s Address

Dr Ian Brown, Moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church and Minister of Martyrs Memorial on the Ravenhill Road, then brought the Word of God to the assembly. His text was Proverbs 31:8, “Open thy mouth for the dumb, in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction.”

He took as his theme the duty of the Christian to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves, and he built his address upon five propositions drawn from Scripture.

1. The Inversion of Symbols

The Council’s decision had been to illuminate the City Hall in green.

Green in nearly every culture signifies nature, growth, birth, and life.
It is the colour of spring, of new beginnings, of fertility and hope.
It denotes healing, freshness, and safety.
Outside a pharmacy one sees a green cross; at the traffic lights before the gathering, green bids the traveller go forward.

To use such a colour to mark abortion, Dr Brown said, is a twisted reality: a full turning of the truth upon its head. If the Council wished to be honest about what it was celebrating, the colour should have been red, the deepest hue of red, the colour of guilt and of blood. “Murderous, guilty red,” he said, “would be so much more appropriate.”

2. The Scale of the Slaughter

Dr Brown set out the global figures.

Approximately seventy-three million abortions each year.
Virtually two hundred thousand every day.
Six out of ten unintended pregnancies, and three out of ten of all pregnancies, now end in abortion.
The figures rise alarmingly year on year.

He attributed this to a nation that has systematically pushed God out of its national consciousness, throwing out His Word and replacing it with guidance from politicians and think tanks. The result, he said, is a society that makes excuse for, and even celebrates, every kind of immorality: the evils of homosexuality, drug abuse, divorce, pornography, and abortion running rampant in our countries.

3. The Position in Northern Ireland

Turning to our own province, Dr Brown set out the change that has taken place here.

Before April 2020, abortion was illegal in this country in almost every circumstance.
The official figures were correspondingly low: some ten to fifteen abortions each year.
Following the Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2020, imposed by Westminster during the suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly, what had been a trickle became a flood.
Between March 2020 and March 2025, a total of 11,192 abortions were carried out.
The figure had risen from roughly ten per year to nearly ten per day.

Dr Brown illustrated the scale in terms familiar to his hearers: an entire town the size of Castlederg, or Ballygowan, is wiped out by abortion in Northern Ireland every single year. What had been the safest place in the United Kingdom for a child in the womb, he said, had become the most dangerous region in the United Kingdom for a child in the womb.

He described the situation as war: war on the unborn. And he noted the particular tragedy that those being killed can neither represent themselves before a court of law, nor plead for a stay of execution, nor defend themselves from certain death once their mother submits their innocent little body to the brutal tools of the abortionist.

He drew attention to the Bill introduced by Sinn Féin in the Dáil in June of this year, the Health (Abolition of the Three-Day Waiting Period) Amendment Bill, which seeks to remove the mandatory seventy-two-hour waiting period between a woman’s first GP consultation and her obtaining of the medication that will kill her child. He observed that jackdaws have more protections and more rights in our country than an unborn child, and that lobsters, crabs, and octopuses enjoy protections under animal welfare legislation that the unborn child does not.

4. The Corruption of Language

Dr Brown then addressed the language of the debate.

Those who advocate the killing of the innocent in the womb deceptively call it healthcare, the pregnant individual’s bodily autonomy, or the termination of pregnancy.
The child being killed is never referred to as a child but relegated to an embryo, a fetus, pregnancy tissue, or a product of conception.

The purpose of such language, he said, is to blind the minds of those listening and watching as to what is really going on.

5. The Biblical Doctrine of the Unborn Child

Here his address was most closely reasoned. He asked the governing question of the Reformed faith: what does the Bible say?

When God spoke of Rebekah, pregnant with twins in Genesis chapter 25, He said that the children struggled within her. The word used for the children is the ordinary Old Testament word elsewhere translated “sons.”
When the information is given that Elizabeth had conceived John in her old age, the Bible records that she conceived a son.
When Mary came to her cousin Elizabeth with the news that she was with child, we are told that the babe leaped in Elizabeth’s womb. John was as much a person in the womb as when he was born.

Dr Brown then made the linguistic argument upon which his case rested: the very same Greek word, brephos, is used in the New Testament to describe the unborn John the Baptist, the newborn baby Jesus, and the little children who came to Christ that He might pronounce a blessing upon them. The same word, for the unborn, for the newborn, and for the growing child.

All of the biblical evidence, he concluded, says this: God considers the unborn child to be a person, and therefore that child’s life should be protected as every other life is protected. The child in the womb, in God’s eyes, is a living person.

6. Murder and the Judgment of God

Dr Brown then demonstrated from Scripture that to deliberately abort the life of a child in the womb is murder, and that God’s judgment falls upon those who slay the unborn.

Only of human life does God say in Genesis 1, “Let us make man in our image.” It is His handiwork, the result of His creative genius, brought together in splendid fashion.
In Exodus 20 we read, “Thou shalt not kill.” There is something precious and unique about human life, and God has set up the barrier.
In Exodus 21, the case of two men striving together, with a woman with child among them: if the child is delivered and no damage follows, a punishment is imposed; but if any mischief follows, if the life of the child is lost, then it is life for life.

That, he said, is God’s demand: to deliberately abort the life of the child in the womb is murder.

He then traced the judgment of God upon those who destroy the unborn.

Hazael, king of Syria, was identified in Scripture as one who would dash the children and rip up the women with child.
In 2 Kings 15 we have documented the brutality of Menahem, king in Samaria, who added to all his gruesome deeds the ripping up of women with child.
In Amos chapter 1 we read, “Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of the children of Ammon, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have ripped up the women with child of Gilead.”

God requires the same punishment for killing a child in the womb, Dr Brown concluded, as He does for the killing of a man. He considers that child as real and as precious as any adult.

7. The Witness of Bonhoeffer and Wilberforce

Dr Brown anticipated the opposition of the pro-abortion lobby, which, he said, would prefer the Church to be silent. He noted that such campaigning had succeeded in obtaining exclusion zones outside abortion facilities, in order that the witness of the Church might be silenced.

He then turned to the example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor whom Hitler sent to the scaffold in 1945.

Bonhoeffer spoke as strongly against abortion as he did against Nazism.
As early as 1933, when the Nazi persecution of the Jews was gathering momentum, he was convinced of the duty of those around him to speak.
He often quoted Proverbs 31:8, “Open thy mouth for the dumb.”
The Nazis killed six million Jews and others whom they called undesirables over six years in the Second World War.
We today, in our Western world, this supposed bastion of liberty and protector of the weak, take the United States alone, where approximately 1.1 million abortions happen every year, and are killing children in the womb at the same horrifying rate as the Nazis did in the war.

This, Dr Brown declared, has to be the great slavery issue of the twenty-first century, and it will draw the kind of revulsion from the world that was generated in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when William Wilberforce stood up in the English Parliament and campaigned for the abolition of the slave trade. Wilberforce took time, suffered many setbacks and reverses in the vote, but Wilberforce persevered, and Wilberforce won. May we in this twenty-first century never give up the battle, and never give in to those who are thirsty for blood.

Compassion for the Wounded

Dr Brown did not conclude without a word to those who have suffered.

He spoke of the many women who have had an abortion and been left with a crushing legacy of grief, pain, and guilt.
He noted the articles that regularly appear, and which any may read, on the price of abortion: the child I will never see, the aftermath so crushing.

Then he turned to the assembly with the gospel. Christians must stand against those who defend abortion, for God hates hands that shed innocent blood, as Proverbs 6:17 declares. But we declare not only the law but the remedy.

He quoted the closing lines of The Ballad of the Unborn by Mrs Clayton:

“My shining feet will never run on early morning dawn; my feet were crushed before they had a chance to greet that dawn. My lips and tongue will never taste the good fruits of the earth, for I, myself, was judged to be a fruit of no worth. My eyes shall never scan the sky for my high flying kite, for when, still blind, destroyed were they in the black womb of night. Nameless am I, a grain of sand, one of the pointless dead; but the deed that made me floats on seas of red.”

And then, quoting Proverbs 31:8 once more, “Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction,” he set before the gathering the choice: choose not death, but life; choose not eternal, spiritual death, but life in Christ, who says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

He closed with a word of invitation. This world today, he said, is a world without direction, without certainty, without hope, but there is all of that in Christ. Come and welcome to Jesus. Despite your sin, He will never turn you away.

The Service Concluded

The gathering closed with the singing of There is Power in the Blood and prayer by the Reverend Gordon Deane, former convener of the Government and Morals Committee.

He gave thanks for the God of life, who breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.
He thanked the Lord for the witness given against the desire of men to murder and to kill and to destroy.
He prayed for the Government, the City Council, and all those who would seek to foist murder and mayhem upon us, that God in mercy would look down, turn the tide, and open the eyes of men to the destruction being wreaked upon our society.
He prayed that Belfast and Northern Ireland would listen to the Word of God.

The organisers thanked the PSNI for their cooperation in facilitating the open-air service, and those present dispersed quietly into the night.

What Remains

The City Hall stood in its usual colours behind them, the green illumination delayed by the call-in and the legal challenge, and the National Women’s Council’s alternative projection appearing elsewhere in the city. Those who had gathered gave thanks for that, and were right to do so. But no one present mistook a delayed illumination for a settled victory.

The regulations remain in force.
The services remain commissioned.
The unborn of Northern Ireland remain as unprotected as they were before the council met in August.

The words of the Moderator, spoken to a province that once recorded ten abortions a year and now records nearly ten a day, will not be answered by a light that did not come on. They will be answered only when the laws that made this slaughter lawful are themselves repealed.