Billy Wright (loyalist) - Born Again Christian

Born Again Christian

Wright was released from prison in 1980 and he went to Scotland where he lived for a brief period. He had been there only six weeks when he was taken in for questioning by the Anti-Terrorist Squad based at New Scotland Yard. Although he was not charged with any offences Wright was nonetheless handed an exclusion order banning him from mainland Britain. He soon returned to Portadown and initially tried to avoid active loyalism. He obtained a job as an insurance salesman and married his girlfriend Thelma Corrigan, by whom he had two daughters, Sara and Ashleen. He took in his sister's son to be raised alongside his own children when she went to live in the United States. He was regarded as a good father. In 1983 he became a born again Christian and began working as a gospel peacher in County Armagh. He had studied Christianity whilst in prison to pass the time.

As a consequence of his religious conversion, Wright eschewed the highlife favoured by many of his loyalist contemporaries such as Johnny Adair and Stephen McKeag, abstaining from alcohol, tobacco and drugs. He was also well-read, and knowledgeable on a variety of subjects, including Irish history and theology. In particular he had studied the history of Protestantism in Europe. Wright's religious faith had contradictory influences on his life. On the one hand, he argued that his faith drove him to defend the 'Protestant people of Ulster', while at the same time, he conceded that the way in which he had taken that fight to the "enemy", the cold blooded murder of non combatant civilians, would ensure his damnation. He spoke of this dilemma during an interview with Martin Dillon:

"You can't glorify God and seek to glorify Ulster because the challenges which are needed are paramilitary. That's a contradiction to the life God would want you to lead. If you were to get yourself involved in paramilitary activity in its present form, or the form in which it manifested itself during the Troubles, then I don't think you could walk with God... ...There's always the hope that in some way, someday - and there are precedents within scripture - your hope would be that God would draw you back to him. All those who have the knowledge of Christ would seek to walk with him again. People would say, 'Billy Wright, that's impossible,' but nothing's impossible if you have faith in God. I would hope that he would allow me to come back. I'm not walking with God.... Without getting into doctrine, without getting too deep, it is possible to have walked with God and to fall away and still belong to God".

When asked by Dillon whether or not the conflict was a religious war, he replied: "I certainly believe religion is part of the equation. I don't think you can leave religion out of it".

Wright's sister later claimed that he had foreseen the September 11 attacks when he told her that as she was living in New York she was abiding in a "city of sin"; he then went on to predict that the World Trade Center towers would be destroyed from the air.