The links between the highest levels of Government in Northern Ireland and a small Biblical fundamentalist pressure group can today be revealed by The Belfast Telegraph. The Caleb Foundation’s agenda includes creationism being offered in science classes and all new laws based on a literal reading of the Bible.
Caleb has been called Peter Robinson’s ‘Militant Tendency’, a lobby group with the ability to push policy away from his liberal agenda.
Instead, Wallace Thompson, its chairman, believes Caleb is championing God’s agenda on such issues as the inclusion of creationism in schools and museums.
He envisages a puritanical society which would rule out abortion for rape victims, ban gay marriage as well as closing shops and restricting sport on Sundays.
For a small lobby group representing a fundamentalist minority of the population, Caleb has had a strong record of recent policy successes, particularly with DUP ministers.
There is no suggestion that there is anything improper in Caleb’s lobbying.
Issues it has successfully lobbied on include reform on prostitution laws, the inclusion of a creationism exhibit in the Giant’s Causeway visitors’ centre, raising the price of alcohol and limiting opening hours, tightening up the abortion laws to exclude rape and foetal abnormality and banning of gay adoption.
Mr Thompson said that they did not specifically lobby for a gay blood ban, but “approved of the position of the minister” Edwin Poots.
Mr Poots, the Health Minister, is one of several politicians who have joined the Caleb Facebook group and who Mr Wallace describes as “the sort of people who would identify with our agenda on a raft of things”.
Besides Mr Poots, a number of other top unionist politicians are listed as Facebook friends.
Mr Thompson confirmed that they sympathised with the issues the group supports.
They include another minister (Nelson McCausland), a junior minister (Jonathan Bell), an MEP (Diane Dodds), an MP (Gregory Campbell) and two other DUP MLAs (Paul Givan and Stephen Moutray, who is also mayor of Craigavon), as well as Jim Allister, the TUV leader, and Sammy Morrison, his Press officer.
Mr Thompson added that Mervyn Storey, the DUP education spokesman, is a Free Presbyterian representative on the organisation’s ruling council of reference (CR).
David Simpson, the DUP MP, is also a leading young Earth creationist who is close to Caleb and has employed David McConaghie, a former CR chairman, in his office. Mr Thompson himself is a former adviser to Nigel Dodds and his daughter Sharon is married to Mr Dodds’ son.
He believes the list “reflects the fact that the DUP has been the main voice on the issues that we have been pursuing and on the abortion issue”.
He stressed that the politicians “are not in our pockets, but are simply evangelical Christians who share our concerns”. Even at that, this represents the sort of high-level political access and influence that most lobbyists would envy.
“Those politicians are getting elected and I suppose people know what they are voting for,” he said.
Mr Thompson sees Caleb using its influence with them to push in a clear direction. “Ideally all legislation should reflect biblical morality,” he said, conceding that “politics is the art of the possible and we recognise that we are where we are and the law will not always reflect the morality we want to reflect”.
He believes every word of the Bible is literally and historically true, and that all who are not born- again Christians will go to hell. That sense of mission lends urgency to his work.
“We want to see our nation and our province built upon biblical foundations that will bring blessings to people. We would prefer, for example, to see shops closed on a Sunday to give the workers the right to have some time with their family,” he said.
On the issue of abortion, Mr Thompson endorses Jim Wells' recent statement that it should not be allowed in the case of either rape or foetal abnormality.
“I don’t think the mother should be given the right to murder someone. Where do you draw the line? It is a living soul from conception. Whether I am the mother of the child or not, I have no right to decide what will happen to another living human being,” he said.