The Irish: Calvinism vs Catholicism in America

For years the story about the Irish in America was an ode to their tenacity, intelligence, wit and certainly their profundity. It was also about their willingness and desire to become American. The transfer of loyalty to America was quick and profound. Irish-Americans have fought and died in every American war since they first began to arrive en masse before the Civil War. There is an even more important story about the Irish and it’s very timely in today’s political climate.

The story about the Irish in America is about race hate, ethnic prejudices, religious intolerance and Christian fundamentalism, a love affair with capitalism, cyclical economic problems, labor issues, pressures on cities and government, and mythologies about personal success -- all of which continue to haunt us today.

My writing tends to evolve as I write. I’ve never been able to stick to an outline or script in my life. Why start now? But if you will bear with me and read this and my subsequent article I think I can help you (and me) shed some bright light on our current problems. If we understand what the hell happened maybe we can help fix what’s happening now.

Let’s begin with the fact that between 1847 and 1860 nearly a million Irish Catholics arrived in the United States; they represented the first huge wave of poor refugees to immigrate. Until the Irish famine survivors arrived, Catholics were an extreme minority in a Protestant dominated land. Culturally and politically America was hostile to Catholicism; in some areas of the country this hostility survives to this day.

Anti-Catholic views were deeply embedded in the national character. Although America basically took form as an extension of English customs, common law and its Protestant faith, it is very important to understand that Protestant America evolved a very different form of Protestantism than the Anglican Church in England. The roots of this can be found in a quick overview of the Reformation which played out very differently in England than elsewhere.

Before the Reformation, which began when Luther, then a Catholic priest, had the audacity to nail his complaints about Rome to a church door in Wittenberg in 1517, there was only one Christian Church in the West and it was the Roman Catholic Church (there had been a schism before but the Reformation was a game changer like nothing that had come before). Luther wasn’t the first to challenge Rome or protest against its failings; let’s just say he was probably the first to live to tell about it. Thus, where there had been one (Catholic) influence, there were now two (Lutheran) but it didn’t stay that blissfully simple very long.

Within a very short period of time more religious leaders emerged, creating new denominations and challenging Catholicism and one another. Some truly represented theological differences with Catholicism while others, most notably Henry VIII in England, were old fashioned opportunists. Old Henry wanted more than multiple wives and he was clever enough to see that kicking out the Catholics allowed him to confiscate a massive amount of property and other wealth. Instead of being sincerely motivated to create a new denomination based on true theological differences from Rome, Henry just wanted to get rid of the pope, keep the broad, and grab all the dough. Shrewd.

Henry’s brilliant daughter, Elizabeth I, used religion to her advantage too and neither she nor her father, once they were in control of the money, were much interested in the refinements of theological thought and so it evolved that in large measure the Church of England remained very close in form and function to Catholicism. A lot of Englishmen didn’t like this and influenced by true religious zeal and the ideas of austere thinkers like John Calvin they wanted the Church of England to go the distance and “purify” itself of all traces of Roman Catholicism.

The history of the Puritan movement is fascinating and far too complex to serve up lightly in a blog but I’ll just say here that these men, who saw themselves as religious reformers, became a powerful force in history. They were the young intellectual and theological Turks of their day. In large measure the English found them wearisome. There came a time, after years of civil and foreign wars and the stresses of many social upheavals, when England was damn glad to see them go.

And as you already know, they came here.

Calvinist-Puritan thinking was “pietistic” and founded in Biblical literalism (which Catholicism is not) and an ethic of austerity, frugality and hard work that stressed Christian life consists in overcoming the flesh and glorifying God. The pietistic movement shaped the Anabaptists (Baptists), Presbyterians, Methodists and Congregationalists that laid down the concrete foundation upon which a nation was built. It was liberalized for a short time by the Enlightenment and humanism of the men we call the “founding fathers.” By the time Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams gathered to form a new union they had seen the choke hold Protestants of every stripe and denomination had tried to place on the individual colonies. (An excellent topic for another time.) Their response was to create a separation of church and state (lost in current discussions is the obvious fact that if the founding fathers wanted to establish a state church they could have done so.)

One of the most profound tenets of Calvinism is the concept of “predestination” which is the belief that God has already determined who is saved or damned. As Calvinism developed, a deep psychological need for clues about whether one was actually saved naturally emerged and Calvinists looked to their success in worldly activity for those clues. Thus, they came to value profit and material success as signs of God's favor. This became an important underlying ethos. Other religious groups, such as the Pietists, Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists incorporated this underlying and powerfully defining line of thought, as well, so let’s just lump them altogether for the purposes of this article as “Protestants.”

Max Weber, in “The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism” wrote about the relationship between the ethics of ascetic Protestantism and the emergence of the spirit of modern capitalism. Weber argues that the religious ideas of groups such as the Calvinists played a role in creating the capitalist spirit and sees a correlation between being Protestant and being involved in business. Weber argues that the modern spirit of capitalism sees profit as an end in itself, and pursuing profit as virtuous so that worldly success is often seen as affirmation of God’s grace and pleasure.  

Aside from the huge importance of Protestant thought in America (then and now), there also emerged a “frontier” mentality that was a purely secular belief about success. America’s early unlimited spaces and open opportunities appeared to give anyone who was willing to work hard a chance for success. “Pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” and “applying a little elbow grease” to life became snappy formulas for success.

American culture became deeply infatuated with the idea that strength of character alone made a man successful and his success was proof positive that he was in with the Lord. Any form of non-conformity, cultural aberration, conflicts with the prevailing mores, or even just bad luck suggested a lack of character and a fall from grace.

Of course, the Irish came from an entirely different reality. They knew Grandma Rooney and a million others starved to death not because of any personal lack of character or Divine displeasure but simply because someone else held the reins of power. They also came from a religious tradition richly nuanced by 1500 years of theological thought that had given rise to a vastly different world view than the one embraced by Protestantism. When Luther threw out the papacy and its many sins he also threw out Aquinas, Augustine, Benedict and Jerome and the much more contextualized understanding of scripture that the Catholic Church had created.

When the Irish arrived in America they were met with hate for their race as well as their religion but they'd seen it before. Only now they were in a position to push back. Along with their strong backs and pugnacity they came with a historical tradition of resistance and defiance to oppression. Of course they also had the huge advantage that they spoke English.

But most of all they had their Church and America would never be the same. The differences between Catholicism and Protestantism are still at the heart of our culture wars.

(This article was also published at The Pragmatic Progressive 3/18/11) 

The Irish Potato Famine

Today is St. Patrick’s Day and since Irish Catholics played a significant part in America’s politics and culture – a culture that is swiftly dying or at least severely under attack -- it’s fitting to share with you some facts about Irish history that you may not know much about. Let me assure you that they are very timely today.

And no, this is not going to be a damn recipe for Irish Whiskey Cake.

Tomorrow I’ll post another article that will specifically address how the Irish Catholic ethos changed America. Today I’m concentrating on how that ethos was forged out of pain and misery and came to define a people.

It will tell you why a real Irishman will say “there but for the Grace of God go I” and not “that man’s in trouble because he deserves to be…”

And therein is the heart of the difference between Irish Catholicism and the Protestant Calvinist ethos and why they are in continual battle for the American soul.

We need to start with the story about an Gorta Mor which is Gaelic for “The Great Hunger” and sometimes also called “The Starvation.” You may know of it as the Irish Potato Famine. It was a period of mass starvation, disease and displacement that permanently changed Ireland’s demographic, political and cultural landscape – and also America. Approximately 1.5 million Irish died as the result of starvation and starvation-caused disease. Another million emigrated (the Irish “diaspora”).

Cataclysmic events in history have both remote and proximate causes and the Irish famine that began in 1845 was no different. The proximate cause of this disaster was a fungus commonly known as “potato blight.” The blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s and caused widespread suffering but the consequences of the blight were significantly more devastating in Ireland than other countries. The blight, of course, was not caused by the English. The ensuing disaster, however, was – both by their oppression before the blight and because of their reaction to the blight.  

Let’s look at the remote causes first: Ireland suffered an anguished, bloody history evolving around English invasions, English colonization, and multiple uprisings and civil wars for roughly 600 years before the potato blight. The country was repeatedly devastated by brute force and English law, as well as forced deportations. It is estimated that over 50,000 men, women and children may have been sent to Bermuda and Barbados in the 1700s as slaves. Most well known of all the English laws were the infamous Penal Codes. The laws were designed to obliterate Irish culture, Catholicism, and in the end human dignity.

Here is a sample of the Penal Laws imposed against Irish Catholics; if you know anything about the infamous Nuremberg Laws enacted in the Third Reich against the Jews you’ll see a chilling resemblance between the two:

Under the Penal Laws an Irish Catholic was forbidden to:

receive an education, enter a profession, hold public office, vote, speak Gaelic, keep firearms, engage in trade or commerce, live in a corporate town or within five miles thereof, own a horse of greater value than five pounds, purchase land from a Protestant, accept a mortgage on land in security for a loan, receive a gift of land from a Protestant, inherit land or chattel from a Protestant. Irish Catholics were also forbidden to educate their children in their own homes, send them to a Catholic teacher, bring a Catholic teacher into come to the home, or send them abroad for an education. The laws were not always rigorously applied and sometimes were even ignored; but the point is they give grim evidence to the brutal realities of English domination over Ireland.

English policies toward the Irish during the famine years exacerbated the famine crisis and turned a natural crop disaster into a disaster of epic proportion. When the Irish call the famine the Starvation or The Great Hunger or an Gorta Mor it contextualizes the disaster as less of a recurring natural tragedy or act of God and more accurately as the consequence of deliberate national policy. Throughout the famine, the English never stopped importing massive amounts of crops and livestock from Ireland. Christine Kinealy, the author of Irish Famine: This Great Calamity and A Death-Dealing Famine, documented that Irish exports of calves, livestock (except pigs), bacon and ham actually increased during the famine. The food was shipped out of Ireland under British armed force from the most famine-stricken parts of Ireland.

British policies toward Ireland during the famine were greatly influenced by a refusal to allow the crisis to harm the English economy and English business interests. There is debate about whether British policies toward the Irish during the famine were merely callous or deliberately sinister. Cecil Woodham-Smith wrote in The Great Hunger; Ireland 1845–1849 that no issue has provoked so much anger and embittered relations between England and Ireland as "the indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation."

England had long talked about the “Irish Problem” and during the famine it became more than a political metaphor; historians have found statements in newspapers and Parliament about how the starvation of the Irish could finally free England of its unfortunate problem. What was the problem? Apparently, a stubborn refusal to die off and give the English absolutely every inch of Irish soil. To give a measure of what they had lost over a hundred years, the Irish owned 45% of Irish land in 1760. In 1850 they owned less than 5%. At the time of the famine they were squatters in their own land.

These discussions of fact are not inconsequential. At issue is whether an Gorta Mor represents the first genocide in modern history. International law defines “genocide” as certain specified acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

In 1996, Francis Boyle, professor of law at the University of Illinois at Urbana, wrote a report commissioned by the New York-based Irish Famine/Genocide Committee, which concluded that the British government deliberately pursued a race and ethnicity-based policy aimed at destroying the group commonly known as the Irish people and that the policy of mass starvation amounted to genocide per the Hague convention of 1948. Famine stories have burned deeply into the Irish cultural consciousness – an effect seen in cultures that have survived genocide. Based on Boyle’s impressive scholarly research, New Jersey now includes the famine in its "Holocaust and Genocide Curriculum" at the secondary education level.

The English had long viewed the Irish as a separate and inferior race. They were likened to swine and monkeys and called every other abdominal name. The racial aspects of Irish oppression are very interesting.

After the Reformation and the devastating religious wars that followed, Catholics and Protestants learned to live side by side each other in their respective nation states, such as in France and Germany. This never happened in Ireland. The English oppression of Ireland, which reached its most devastating period after Cromwell invaded in 1649 during the Counter-Reformation, incorporated a racial component that transcended religious intolerance.

In order to justify its continued political oppression of Ireland, which became increasingly more difficult to do for religious reasons alone, it became necessary for the English to think of the Irish as racially inferior. Race hate needed to be layered over their denominational differences – which were, after all, very limited. The Anglican Church and the Catholic Church are barely distinguishable in doctrine and practice. An Anglican has more in common theologically with a Catholic than with a Lutheran or a Methodist. Therefore, hatred based on religion alone would not seem logical. Defining the Irish as racially inferior and incapable of civilized behavior made oppression more reasonable.

The English definition of the Irish as a separate and loathsome race followed the Irish to America and easily fit within a culture that was already severely racially divided by law and custom. Toward the end of the nineteenth century pseudo-scientific beliefs about race and the rise of eugenics, as well as social-Darwinism were also in place. Vilifying and discriminating against the Irish was as easy for the nativist WASPs in America as it had been for the English.

The Irish, however, weren’t buying it. Like post-Holocaust Jews they said “Never Again.”

Some references:

http://www.preventgenocide.org/genocide/officialtext.htm)

http://www.irish-society.org/home/hedgemaster-archives-2/history-events/the-penal-laws-era

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Irish_Potato_Famine_(1845%E2%80%931849)

http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/

http://www.authenticireland.com/irish+famine

http://adminstaff.vassar.edu/sttaylor/FAMINE/

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Understanding the Irish in America and an Gorta Mor

Well, I think it's time for some Irish history here at the Windy City Author's blog. Although this week will bring us St. Pat's Day and everyone in Chicago becomes Irish at that time, I think what's happening across America culturally and politically right now makes this a perfect time to reflect on Irish history and the role the Irish have played in changing America. 

All ethnic groups have shaped America. I'm not one to extol one group over the other because I believe every ethnic group has placed an indelible and important stamp on America. I love cultural diversity and I have always wanted to learn all that I could about the different races, cultures, and religions of the whole world. Growing up in Chicago gave me a window to the wider world and the privilege of actually getting to know and live with a variety of wonderful people. 

So this blog entry is not a paen to the Irish; it's not meant to say they are better than any other group. It's just to explain to you what made them different from other immigrant groups and how that difference has been played out in American culture and political thought.  

First of all, the Irish arrived in America with a leg up because they spoke English. The importance of this cannot be over estimated. They also arrived with a deeply ingrained history of resistance to English authority and oppression, as well as the more recent searing experience of the an Gorta Mor (The Great Hunger) or what is more commonly known as the Irish Famine. Additionally, they benefited from both the spiritual and pragmatic guidance of their Irish priests, men who were also steeped in the Irish history of resistance to oppression. The Catholic Church, although present in America since colonial times, was a minority religion in an often very hostile land. The Irish were the first large immigrant group of Catholics and their success in America became very important to the wider Church.

The combination of the same language, a long history of resistance to WASP overlords, and the backing of their Church empowered the Irish to more quickly than any other immigrant group rise in defiance of the ruling establishment. The Irish understood that the men who held power controlled the soup pot and the Irish were determined to never again not control the flow of soup.

Rather incredibly the ghosts of an Gorta Mor continue to haunt the true Irish heart. The other day I received a note from an old high school friend, Mary Kennedy, now a very accomplished attorney, who spoke of her heartbreak watching the tragic events in Japan unfold... quake, tsunami, nuclear threat. Her empathy was profound for a very different race of people on the other side of the world, as I'm sure it is for millions of other Americans. But what struck me was that in particular reference to the possibility of a nuclear meltdown Mary was said that the Japanese people's horrific memory of Hiroshima must burn in their hearts like the memory of an Gorta Mor burns in hers.

This remarkable empathy for others, although certainly not unique to the Irish heart, is integral to the Irish ethos and I would suggest that it more than any other force in American politics shaped the American journey away from its Calvinist traditions.

Today America is returning to those Calvinist traditions and we will not be the better for it.

To understand this, let's first be sure we understand an Gorta Mor.

To be continued...