Qualla: Union Theological College

Union Theological College: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PeterClarke, CC BY-SA 3.0. For eleven years between 1921 and 1932, the elected representatives of Northern Ireland did their parliamentary business inside a Presbyterian college library. The Gamble Library, a domed reading room designed in the 1870s for theology students, served as the chamber of the House of Commons; the wood-panelled chapel housed the Senate. Stormont was still being built across town, and the newly formed statelet had nowhere else to go. Today the same building, the Union Theological College on Botanic Avenue, trains ministers for the Presbyterian Church in Ireland - and has spent much of the last decade in news stories about heresy charges, professorial dismissals, and the slow severing of a 150-year relationship with Queen's University Belfast.

Image: PeterClarke | CC BY-SA 3.0

Union Theological College: Lanyon's Stone

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Giorgio Galeotti, CC BY 4.0. Sir Charles Lanyon designed the building in 1853, the same architect who gave Belfast the main quad at Queen's University across the road. He built it from Scrabo stone, the warm sandstone quarried in County Down, set in a Renaissance Revival style with a Doric porch grand enough...

Image: Giorgio Galeotti | CC BY 4.0

Union Theological College: The 1927 Heresy Trial

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ross, CC BY-SA 2.0. The college's most famous early controversy involved a professor named J. Ernest Davey, who in 1927 was put on trial for heresy. The General Assembly drew up five charges, each tied to a foundational doctrine. The first alleged Davey denied that Christ's righteousness alone makes...

Image: Ross | CC BY-SA 2.0

Union Theological College: Parliament in the Library

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Erl Johnston, CC BY-SA 4.0. When Northern Ireland was carved off from the rest of Ireland in 1921, the new Parliament needed a temporary home. The Assembly's College agreed to host it. The Commons sat in the Gamble Library, a domed Victorian reading room founded in 1873 by Caroline Gamble in memory of her h...

Image: Erl Johnston | CC BY-SA 4.0

Union Theological College: Sacked on the Radio

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bosonic dressing, CC BY-SA 3.0. In June 2018, Laurence Kirkpatrick - Professor of Church History and former Principal - went on BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback programme. He had taught at the college for twenty-two years. After the interview, the church disciplinary panel found that his comments on same-sex relatio...

Image: Bosonic dressing | CC BY-SA 3.0

Union Theological College: The End of the Queen's Link

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Kirkpatrick affair pushed Queen's University Belfast - which had run an Institute of Theology with the college and three others since 1926 - to review the relationship. A Quality Assurance Agency report flagged "weakness in the college's maintenance of academic standards." A ...

Image: Andreas F. Borchert | CC BY-SA 4.0