Rev. Henry Montgomery

Today my choir sang at the installation of a new minister at First Presbyterian Church Dunmurry (Nonsubscribing). The minister, Rev. Linda Ballard, is a member of All Souls Nonsubscribing (my church) and she requested that we sing at the august ceremony, which involved many speeches and readings and prayers by many poobahs of many religions. The church is lovely, as you can see from this internet photo.

I was taken by the plaque on the right.

Rev. Henry Montgomery served the church for an astounding 56 years. Since the church’s 1683 founding, it has had 12 ministers. Hard to believe. Montgomery led the breakaway of non-subscribers from mainstream Presbyterianism. The non subscribing church is the most liberal in Ireland--still more traditional and conservative than an American Unitarian church, but the closest thing I’ve found to a spiritual home.

A fellow minister wrote that “Rev. Montgomery was prominent in all efforts to advance the cause of civil and religious liberty. In the great question of Catholic Emancipation he took a conspicuous part; and it is not too much to say that his eloquent appeals contributed to the ultimate triumph of the Catholic cause, and helped to wrest from an un willing Government rights which had been so long and so unjustly withheld."
2-18