The moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland is the most senior office-bearer within the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, which is Northern Ireland's largest Protestant denomination.
The moderator is elected by the General Assembly and serves for one year as the public representative of the denomination. The moderator may be either a teaching or ruling elder from within the denomination but, as yet, no ruling elder has ever been elected to the role. The appointee's formal role involves acting as the moderator of the General Assembly. During the rest of the year, the moderator acts as an ambassador for the General Assembly and for the Presbyterian Church in Ireland as a whole.
The government of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland has a form known as Presbyterian polity, and is much like that of other Presbyterian churches around the world. Individual churches are represented at both the Presbytery (local) level and General Assembly (All Ireland) level.
The serving moderator is given the honorific style Right Reverend (Rt. Rev.). [1] Former moderators are known as Very Reverend (Very Rev.). [2] The moderator and the two Church of Ireland and two Roman Catholic archbishops are thirteenth to seventeenth in the order of precedence in Northern Ireland, according to the seniority of their consecration or election.
The current moderator is Richard Murray, minister of Drumreagh Presbyterian church near Ballymoney. [3]
Robert Stewart, 1st Marquess of LondonderryPC (Ire) (1739–1821), was a County Down landowner, Irish Volunteer, and member of the parliament who, exceptionally for an Ulster Scot and Presbyterian, rose within the ranks of Ireland's "Anglican Ascendancy." His success was fuelled by wealth acquired through judicious marriages, and by the advancing political career of his son, Viscount Castlereagh. In 1798 he gained notoriety for refusing to intercede on behalf of James Porter, his local Presbyterian minister, executed outside the Stewart demesne as a rebel.
The United Free Church of Scotland is a Scottish Presbyterian denomination formed in 1900 by the union of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the majority of the 19th-century Free Church of Scotland. The majority of the United Free Church of Scotland united with the Church of Scotland in 1929.
The Regius Professorships of Divinity are amongst the oldest professorships at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. A third chair existed for a period at Trinity College Dublin.
Dundee Parish Church is located in the east section of Dundee's "City Churches", the other being occupied by the Steeple Church. Both are congregations in the Church of Scotland, although with differing styles of worship.
Henry Cooke (1788–1868) was an Irish Presbyterian minister, an opponent of secularisation, and, in response to Catholic mobilisation under Daniel O'Connell, an advocate of "Protestant unity".
Alexander Stewart was an Irish landowner who grew rich by inheriting a fortune from Robert Cowan, a former governor of Bombay. His son Robert became the 1st Marquess of Londonderry.
Thomas James Welland was an Irish Anglican bishop.
John Edgar was a minister, professor of theology, moderator of the Secession Synod in 1828 and moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland in 1842. He was Honorary Secretary to the Presbyterian Home Mission during the Famine in 1847.
Abbey Presbyterian Church is a church located at Parnell Square, Dublin. Designed by architect Andrew Heiton of Perth, Scotland, it is a decorated Gothic building, with a spire 180 feet (54.9 m) high. The church was erected in 1864 with funding from Alexander Findlater (1797–1873), a Dublin merchant and philanthropist, and is known colloquially as "Findlater's church", and it is referred to in two of James Joyce's novels as Findlater's Church.
Josias Leslie Porter DD LLD (1823–1889) was an Irish Presbyterian minister, missionary and traveller, who became an academic administrator. He was Moderator of the Irish General Assembly in 1875.
Ormond Quay Presbyterian Church is a former church located at Ormond Quay, Dublin.
William Dool Killen was a minister of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and church historian.
William Bruce (1757–1841) was an Irish Presbyterian minister and educator.
Samuel Hanna (1772?–1852), Irish presbyterian divine, was born at Kellswater, near Ballymena, Co. Antrim.
William Gibson (1808–1867), Irish presbyterian divine, son of James Gibson, a merchant in Ballymena, Co. Antrim, was born there on 8 May 1808.
The Unitarian Church in Ireland presently consists of two Congregations, Dublin and Cork, part of the Synod of Munster, in the Republic of Ireland, which has itself been part of the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland since 1935. Some congregations remain closely associated with the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches. These churches would abide by the traditional Unitarian principles of Freedom, Reason, and Tolerance.
Hugh Smith Morrison (1858–1929) was a Northern Ireland surgeon and politician.
Henry McIlree Williamson (1824–1898) was an Irish-born minister of the Free Church of Scotland who served as Moderator of the General Assembly to the Presbyterian Church in Ireland in 1896.
Frances Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry, was an English aristocrat and mistress of a large landed and politically connected household in late Georgian Ireland. From her husband's mansion at Mount Stewart, County Down, in the 1790s her circle of friends and acquaintances extended to figures engaged in the democratic politics of the United Irishmen. Correspondence with her stepson, Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, and with the English peer and politician John Petty, record major political and social developments of her era.