Two recent experiences caused me to reflect on my ambivalent relationship with Irishness.

A TV broadcast of the All‑Ireland Gaelic Football Final and the Irish‑language signage for the Fleadh Cheoil (Music Festival) in Belfast (2-9 August) 1 caught my attention.

My reaction to both experiences was a combination of interest and intrigue that reveals much about the psyche of people like me – born and bred in Northern Ireland from its historic Protestant community. These cultural encounters highlight how language and identity intertwine.

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Unlike many people of Protestant descent living in Northern Ireland, I am happy to call myself Irish. I was born and have lived for half a century on the island of Ireland.

My Scottish ancestry and Ulster‑Scots heritage matter to me, but after four centuries on this island, Irishness has to be part of who I am.

A brief history of tensions in ‘Irishness’

That I should struggle with an Irish identity at all might seem odd to my ancestors, who would not have batted an eyelid at being called ‘Irish’. Even my great-grandfathers, all of whom signed the 1912 Ulster Covenant as an expression of loyalty to the British crown, would almost certainly not have had a problem.

Irish was not an unfavourable alternative to British for men whose vision for Ireland was as a constituent part of the United Kingdom within the worldwide British Empire. But they were wary of the Irish nationalism that emerged in the 19th century, which increasingly linked Irish identity with Roman Catholicism and political separation from Britain.

This tension shaped Protestant self‑understanding in Ireland for generations.

With the partition of Ireland in 1921, the Irish Free State, and subsequently Republic, was greatly influenced by the Roman Catholic Church and it adopted a national anthem, imagery and a story that excluded the Protestants of the new Northern Ireland.

They began to abandon their ‘Irish’ identity, which was left to the Roman Catholic population, preferring to speak of themselves as ‘British’. This polarity was reinforced by the Troubles from 1969 to 1998. This historical shift still shapes how Irishness feels to Ulster Protestants today.

A third option, ‘Northern Irish’, began to gain traction among people from both historic communities after the end of the Troubles and the establishment of a power sharing government.

In the 2021 Census, 32% of the 1.9 million people living in Northern Ireland identified as British only, 29% as Irish only, 20% as Northern Irish only, 8% as British and Northern Irish, 2% as Irish and Northern Irish only, 1.5% (including me) as British, Irish and Northern Irish only, and 0.6% as British and Irish only. 2

These figures reveal a much more fluid landscape than the one my great-grandparents knew.

These statistics have changed significantly over my lifetime. A steady decline in British identity and corresponding rise in Irish identity reflects a demographic shift, with the increasing percentage from the Roman Catholic community, largely due to differential birth rates and a growing number of people from a Protestant heritage identifying as non-religious. 3

The growth in Northern Irish identity, meanwhile, reflects a desire among many younger people to find a more neutral identity and a sense among Protestants of a growing distance in culture and values from Great Britain.

But this article is not about politics or aspirations for Northern Ireland’s constitutional future. It is about cultural identity and especially its connection with language.

Why Irishness can feel alien to me

The Irish language – historically spoken by native Irish people – was displaced over centuries of British rule in Ireland through a system of education and government exclusively using English, leaving on a small percentage of native speakers in pockets along the West coast called the Gaeltacht.

A similar process occurred with my ancestral Ulster‑Scots dialect, which gave way to standard English. So, I grew up speaking English with a distinctive accent and a few dialect words but easily intelligible by anyone in the wider English-speaking world.

I have never studied Irish (it was not part of my schooling), it was not part of my family heritage, and it has long been associated with nationalism in Northern Ireland. This emotional distance matters, because language shapes how welcome we feel in a place.

In short, Irish is foreign to me, and it has the potential to make me feel unwelcome and threatened. Not as threatened as many Ulster Protestants feel, who stridently resist any suggestion of Irish language signs on streets and in public buildings – a cause of regular controversies in Northern Ireland. 4 

Yet even for me Irish carries echoes of republican slogans like Sinn Fein (‘ourselves alone’) and Tiocfaidh ár lá (‘our time will come’) that feel exclusionary to me.

To be clear, this is not an issue with the Irish language. My unease arises from a combination of how the language has sometimes been used and my inner world of sensitivities, vulnerabilities and prejudices.

That is how language and communication work. Understanding is often shaped by context – in this case a history of distrust and conflict – and personal predisposition.

If we want to hear others fairly, we need to be aware of these factors and do our best not to allow them to skew our understanding.

Returning to the two experiences that sparked this reflection, however, I am pleased to say that I do not feel threatened by either the broadcast of the All-Ireland or Belfast’s hosting of the Fleadh. These reactions reveal how culture and language intersect in my own life.

Gaelic football is as foreign to me as the Irish language for similar reasons of heritage, schooling, and political association. It is, however, a remarkably energetic and skilful game and I am tempted to watch more.

Irish music, by contrast, is not at all unfamiliar. I have long enjoyed Irish and Scottish traditional music, which share deep cultural roots.

The Fleadh moves around Irish cities each year. 2026 is the first time in its 75-year history that it has been held in Belfast and only the second time in Northern Ireland (it was in Derry in 2013). I think it is wonderful to have a world-class festival in Belfast – it will be good for tourism and commerce. It will enrich the city. I hope to attend some events.

The flexibility and potential of language

Language and culture are inextricably linked. My own experiences in cross‑cultural ministry and marriage have shown me how language shapes thought and belonging.

Why does Irish music feel familiar to me while the language feels foreign? Perhaps it reflects an inconsistency within me, but I think, in part at least, it is because language carries something music does not: truth claims.

A tune has no propositional content to accept or resist; words do. A tune can evoke emotions and intensify the impact of lyrics set to it, but wordless tunes are more open to interpretation than words. The listener can invest them with his or her own meaning and memory.

Words are not so endlessly flexible. They are intended to convey meaning. They stake a claim on truth and demand that we accept or reject it. That’s what makes language dangerous, and also what makes it, for a Christian, the most theologically loaded of all cultural forms.

Philosophers have long recognised the connections between language, identity and truth and, since the eighteenth century, some have argued that truth is no more fixed and certain than ever-changing vocabularies and perspectival interpretations.5 

Linguistic theories that meaning is never fixed contributed to postmodern scepticism about truth and meaning. Some thinkers have taken this theory of language into their view of existence, arguing that reality is not fixed either and truth is never absolute, but a matter of interpretation and perspective.

You have your truth and I have mine. This scepticism echoes in contemporary gender debates as people question whether words like ‘man’ and ‘woman’ refer to realities.

Suspicious views of language undoubtedly hold some truth, but something is wrong when basic biological facts are disputed on the basis of linguistic theories. Words can be misinterpreted and they do change meaning over time and place, but they are not endlessly flexible.

They can convey meaning and establish shared understanding. We know this in our everyday relationships. There can be misunderstandings but, with effort, care and patience, we can also share a world of thought through the gift of language. If that were not true there would be no education, no science, no friendship, no marriage.

The language of ultimate truth

Language can convey meaning. But debates about the relationship of language to truth raise a deep question: can language truly reveal ultimate reality?

Christians answer a resounding ‘yes’.

We believe that language is a gift from God and He reveals Himself through it. We believe God has spoken words recorded in a book. But the Christian confidence in language goes further. To see how, a comparison with Islam may prove enlightening.

Muslims and Christians share the belief that God, our creator, has communicated with human beings in human words. He translated His ideas into our language so that we could grasp His truth and know Him.

However, Muslims differ from Christians in believing that the words they claim God gave to Muhammad – recorded in the Qur’an – cannot be translated into other languages.

Christians, by contrast, believe that the Bible can be translated into other languages so that faithful translations are the Word of God.6

Why do Christians believe this when Muslims believe the Qur’an must be read in Arabic? The reason is found in one of the passages I recently read with a Muslim friend, John 1, where we read (verses 1, 2 and 14):

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. […] And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

This is a plain statement from one of Jesus’ closest disciples that Jesus was not merely another prophet speaking the words God gave Him. He was the Word incarnate.

The Word who pre-existed with God and who was God. The Word who put on a body to enter our world. This title – Word – expresses the truth that God and His words are inseparable.

To trust His words is to trust Him. And His words are a true and accurate disclosure of who He is. That is why we trust the Bible. But the ultimate revelation of God was not in words but in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus is also called the Word in the Qur’an (Surah 3:45), but the Muslim holy book also rejects the idea that this means He was more than a prophet (Surah 4:171). But the deity and incarnation of Christ are central to Christian belief.

This difference explains why Christians believe God’s Word can be translated. If God could take on human form to make Himself known and to save us, then the words spoken by Jesus and the prophets and apostles who came before and after Him can be translated.

We can have confidence in the stable meaning of language because we have a stable God who speaks. Words can be distorted and used to control. But those who proclaim the gospel must shun such practices and speak the truth of God plainly without manipulation (2 Corinthians 4:2).

Words may change meaning and we may misunderstand them, but the Word of God is eternal and unchanging (Isaiah 40:8). Words have power. God’s Word accomplishes His purpose (Isaiah 55:11).

God spoke creation into being (Genesis 1) and the gospel is God’s power to save people (Romans 1:16). As it is preached, Jesus is revealed to people and as they trust in what is preached, they trust in Him. Believing He died and rose again and confessing with words that He is Lord, they are saved (Romans 10:9).

The Word who became flesh saves people as the gospel word becomes fresh when it is preached or shared by God’s people.

A translingual prayer

I was looking forward to the Fleadh. I may even become a Gaelic football spectator. I doubt I will ever be able to learn Irish. But I am praying that those who count these cultural forms as their heritage will come to hear the gospel and be saved.

Even a few words in a language can convey a message of peace and acceptance, as was seen when the late Queen Elizabeth II stunned her audience and drew a mouthed “wow” from the Irish President by opening her speech during a state visit to Dublin in Irish. 7 

In the mid-1800s, Ulster Presbyterians – my ancestral group – learned Irish in order to reach people with the gospel.8

The gospel should be our priority too and we must lay aside our suspicions, hostilities and ignorance for the sake of people who do not know the Word who made them and entered the world to save them.

It is part of our calling to “become all things to all people” for the sake of the gospel so that some may be saved and share in its blessings with us (1 Corinthians 9:22-23).

If embracing my Irishness serves the gospel, then lig dó a bheith amhlaidh. 9 Or, in a wonderfully translingual word of the kingdom that sounds almost the same in every language and gathers people from every tongue: Á(i)mé(a)n.

Paul Coulter, author, executive director of the Centre for Christianity in Society in Northern Ireland. This article was first published on the author's blog, Connected Christianity. If you would like to be informed when the Christian Leadership Integrity Commitments are released, please subscribe to this blog.

Notes

1 https://fleadhcheoil.ie/

2 https://datavis.nisra.gov.uk/census/census-2021-population-and-household-estimates-for-northern-ireland-statistical-bulletin-24-may-2022.html

3 In the 2021 census, Catholics outnumbered Protestants in Northern Ireland for the first time (45.7% Catholic, 43.48% Protestant).

4 The latest controversy has surrounded signage in Belfast’s Grand Central Station: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clykypppn2no

5 Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) argued in his 1772 Treatise on the Origin of Language that language is not a neutral tool for expressing pre-existing thought, but the medium for a people’s distinctive way of thinking and perceiving the world. To think in a different language is, in some sense, to inhabit a different world. In his 1873 essay, On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), who believed all knowledge is perspectival and interpretive, claimed that language does not transparently represent reality and words impose artificial sameness on a world of flux and difference. Poststructuralist linguists, Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) and Michel Foucault (1926–1984) took this suspicion of language further. Rejecting the structuralist idea that language has fixed meaning, they argued that meaning is not fixed but produced through unstable processes of interpretation.

6 Scripture is infallible – without error – as originally written in the original text and we must be careful to ensure translations use the most reliable text in the original and translate it accurately, When they do so, the result is not merely an expression of God’s truth but the living and active word of God. There was a period in Church history in the Medieval and early Modern periods when this was not the view of the institutional Church, which insisted that the Bible could not be translated from the original or the approved Latin Vulgate translation, which was good in many ways but suffered from its translator’s (Jerome) lack of access to the earliest manuscripts . In the same period, it insisted that services must be conducted in Latin even though it had long been a dead language. Since the Reformation, the vision of God’s Word in words that the common person can read and understand has prevailed.

7. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13450099

8 https://presbyterianhistoryireland.com/history/presbyterians-and-the-irish-language/

9 “let it be so”