On religion, earning your audience and Easter bonnets like wedding cakes.

Before I left Dublin, an American friend advised me not to introduce politics into conversation with people I didn’t know well, because they don’t discuss politics in the US as freely as we do in bars around Ireland. That is inconvenient for me because when I’m not talking about politics, I wish I was and the only reason I’m not is because I have been for an hour. I took the advice on board but it jarred on me. How are we supposed to learn? Where’s the listening, if liberals are one corner and conservatives in the other and ne’er the twain shall meet? Was I fated to hear just one side of any debate? Absurdity! Imagine going on with it! No wonder this country’s political institutions are in such bad shape. Except, wait…

In Ireland we do the exact same thing with religion. Oh, and we’re having zero-craic with religion too.

Do you know who is having craic with religion? The dapper and delighted congregation at All Saints in Andersonville, that’s who.

Over a month ago I ended up at dinner with a friend and members of her church. I was new in town and I’d literally nothing else to be doing but was still dubious because I assumed that the evening would be all about Jesus and all things conservative. It wasn’t, which surprised me because at home we talk with our mates and colleagues about religion but if – apropos of nothing – a stranger told me they were a Catholic or in a church group, I’d brace myself for a lecture on abortion or gay marriage. When I was in Mobile AL, a kind lady minded my bags while I ran across to Taco Bell (first and only time) and despite this, when she mentioned that she was a Christian I assumed she must be One of Them because she had the TEMERITY to mention religion because WHO DOES THAT? Spoiler: loads of people in America, and some of them are sound. I don’t know what she meant declaring herself a Christian, or what anyone here means when they say it. Is it a statement of values or beliefs, or as inconsequential as saying you’re from Roscommon? I am however hearing it more than I would at home, and I’m beginning to learn that the reflective reaction need not be the immediate defense of reproductive rights or non-denominational education. People just say it but it’s not necessarily a gateway into what they’re about, unlike Ireland really. We wring our hands at America’s polarization but it’s no harm to remember Ireland’s not much better if talking Jesus is as antagonistic as talking Trump is here.

Out of curiosity, I went along to church, even though I don’t really know what I think of religion. I have little heed on the specifics of theology or one church’s rules over another’s, but I do believe in a God or higher-being of some sort. And that said higher being cares less about policing who’s having sex with whom or who’s praying loudest than He/She does about us treating others as we would wish to be treated. I’m healthy and happy and so is my family, and I’ve travelled the world without as much as a scratch, so I go to Mass or say prayers occasionally to throw a thanks out there. And anyways, going to the services of a different denomination is arguably a cultural venture… and All Saints Episcopalian Congregation in Andersonville did not disappoint. Granny used to have a saying, “a lot less would do” for ostentatiousness or an excess of ebullience (the same phrase was indeed directed at me on more than one occasion). She’s dead a few years now but if Granny had been with me in Andersonville to see the pastor, Bonnie, literally throw open the church doors and literally race up the aisle declaring that the Lord was risen, she’d have died all over again (there was never much of it around Ballinlough in her lifetime). It could not have been more different from Mass at home. Such joy! The choir had a trumpet and cymbals! There was a $20 note in the basket and not a field being fought for! The sacristan’s Easter bonnet looked like an actual cake and the congregation was a veritable catwalk of bright suits and fabulous dicky-bows. The altar is in the heart of the church so when the bishop (who, by the way, had pinned to his vestments his race number from the parish’s 5km he had run that morning ) gave his sermon, it was no droning lecture from on high to a congregation mentally planning out the dinners for the week. It was, in fact, one of a handful of sermons I’ve ever heard that was relevant. 

However, I also have a Blindboy-esque hot-take from the service…

“I think my granny might have inadvertently summed up the innate disposition of the whole of the Irish nation”

My unassuming, gentle and mild granny; philosopher-in-chief, coiner of the immortal words, “a lot less would do”. I have sometimes said it with a withering disdain, but she didn’t because Granny – and Ireland – had and has an innate aversion to anything with the bang/whiff of trying too hard or being overly eager. She was only saying what she saw. Examples: Irish people baulking at complimenting another for fear of being too keen, not hugging mothers or their mothers not hugging them, not wearing that fabulous dress for fear of being ‘a bit much’ or not speaking up when there was something to say. Think of all the eyeball-rolling that would be going on if either Bonnie or the bishop came to rural Ireland – with me in the front row, chief-eye-roller, leading it no doubt. We have a national aversion to the ostentatiousness of others (not our own, mind; see the entire Celtic Tiger period when my ski trip was fine but yours was ‘notions’) and compensate for our reticence by cutting the showy down to size. But the smugness of doing so comes at a price, if you think of what we’re missing out on. The bishop and Bonnie were willing to go all-out to earn their audience and while I’m not suggesting that the local priest needs to get dancing up that aisle, it is notable Bonnie and the bishop have a full church when nobody in Ireland does. Audiences must be earned and anyone in Ireland today banking on obligation or duty to fill their churches, businesses or pubs or to get them elected is going to soon find themselves in quiet rooms.

I see a lot here in America that’s different (or ‘cracked’) but much of it is on its way to Ireland, as we can see by how increasingly inward we’re turning in on ourselves and our penchant for sitting in watching Netflix. Going along to church showed me that if I want to be engaged and my interest piqued, I for one need to go easy on shunning the effusiveness of those engaging me. And if I am to engage others, I need to get my bonnet on and buy a trumpet, like they have at All Saints. Just with less hugging.

I’ll leave the last word to Sr. Michael.