Evangelical Protestant Society

The Evangelical Protestant Society (EPS) is a pressure group representing Christian evangelicalism in Northern Ireland. It was founded in Belfast in 1946 and opposes what it terms "liberalism and false ecumenism", "Romanism" and "Popery".

The EPS sought, as did the National Union of Protestants (NUP), to serve as an umbrella organisation for evangelicals in the various Protestant denominations and organisations. The Union collapsed in the early 1950s and Norman Porter, who had been the NUP's director since 1948, took over as secretary of the EPS in 1953. In the same year Porter was elected an Independent Unionist MP in the Northern Ireland general election, losing the seat in 1958 and failing to retake it in 1959 and 1969.

The Society has published a range of Protestant literature and a free quarterly magazine, The Ulster Bulwark. Its representatives have addressed meetings and services across Northern Ireland and beyond. The EPS sought to modernise its operations in 2000-01, and, today, much of its work is media based. The work is directed by the EPS Council, and the day-to-day work is undertaken by the secretary, who also edits The Ulster Bulwark.

Porter's successors as secretary included Seamus Milligan, and Ray Pulman. Pulman, a former assistant minister of the Congregational Reformed Church who was involved with the EPS from 1997, was a former secretary of ILOL6, a member lodge of the Independent Grand Orange Lodge but in 2001 abandoned Orangeism on theological grounds.

The current part-time secretary, Wallace Thompson, in 2009 also became chairman of the creationist pressure group the Caleb Foundation. Thompson, a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, the Independent Orange Order and the Apprentice Boys of Derry, is a former civil servant. In 2008, while employed as an adviser to Nigel Dodds, a minister in the Northern Ireland Executive, Thompson caused some controversy by asserting in a radio interview (in his capacity as EPS secretary) that the Pope was the Antichrist.

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