A feature of recent (anti-immigration) protests is the presence of Christian flags, not marked with any particular denomination or with Orange Order symbols but appealing to “Jesus”. These are a new addition alongside the other flags and imagery of loyalism – the Union Flag, Ulster Banner, Israeli flag – and the recent anti-immigrant boards and banners.
The image above shows a rally in Sandy Row, south Belfast, (from late November, 2025) in which a flag reading “Jesus – the way, the truth, the life” flies above a St Patrick’s Saltire and in the midst of a number of Flags Of Zion. (For a bizarre conjunction of Nazi and Israeli iconography, see I Never Felt More Like Singing The Blues.)
The second image comes from the large painted board seen in Sorry It Was All For Nothing, where a pair of ‘Jesus is king’ flags fly on either side of the board, in opposition to the “Islamic” flags carried by the cloaked invaders.
The third image – a simple “Jesus is king” on a black background – is from the flats on the Shore Road in north Belfast, which was the site, in late 2024, of flags supporting Donald Trump – see Take America Back and I Never Felt More Like Singing The Blues.
The final pair of images show BCM Rathcoole [the Rathcoole branch of Belfast Christian Ministry] flags flying in Rathcoole, Newtownabbey. As one would expect in Rathcoole, the BCM Fb page is strongly PUL-coded, but is free from anti-immigrant or Islamophobic content. It is possible that either the group’s flags have been mounted by a subset of anti-immigrant members (or outsiders) or that the group is taking advantage of the up-surge of interest in Christianity generated by the anti-Islam protests (and of the practice of flying flags from light-poles) in order to advertise itself. In these two images, the flags fly next to the national flag of the Netherlands (for King Billy/Orangism) and the Ulster Banner.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2026/2025 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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