'Dad was such a hardened Born Again Christian — it took time for me to accept I didn’t believe in God'

Clem Cairns, co-founder of West Cork Literary Festival, talks to Helen O’Callaghan about how he had a great childhood but his strict moral upbringing led him to be deeply suspicious of anything evangelical so he instead embraced commonsense over ideology

Clem Cairns, co-founder of West Cork Literary Festival.

My father was a very proselytising, evangelical person who liked to influence. He loved preaching. He was a keen member of the Church of Ireland growing up, but when I was a child, the church we went to was 12C off Lower Abbey Street.

I remember it as a most extreme Baptist church — big open pit at the front, you could lift up the floorboards and fully immerse the person being baptised.

One day after church, mum, dad and some other families — about 12 altogether, including children — went to Killiney Strand. Lovely summer day, beach full of people in togs and flowery shorts. We arrived in grey and black church-going clothes and sat down. Next thing, all the men formed a circle on the beach and started praying, holding these huge bibles.

They came back then to where we were sitting, gave the bibles to the women, took their jackets off, left shirts and trousers on, and went down to the water to baptise each other. They were holding each other’s heads, dunking them and praying, chanting.

This was much to the merriment of all the young lads on the beach. A lot of them hopped into the water in T-shirts and jeans, aping the men from the church, baptising each other, laughing their heads off. I was about seven — first time I felt excruciation.

I had the germ of a feeling. What is all this God stuff? Why do we have to show off like this? The belief thing never had any resonance for me. My childhood was a great one. Of all the things that could happen to you, your dad praying in a suit on the beach is pretty tame stuff.

They’d have once-a-week prayer meetings in the house. Two of my sisters and I upstairs, looking over the banister, sitting-room door open, all of them kneeling on the floor, elbows on the chairs, praying. Almost like a contest. Who could pray the longest, most literary, impressive prayer? Up into a chant, everyone saying ‘Amen’ — sounding like commentary at a horse race.

It was all I knew, until we moved house from Dundrum to Kilbarrack. I formed a lifelong friendship with the boy next door. His folk were everyday Catholics. Hanging out with him was a slice of normality when it came to religious thinking. 

Clem Cairns, co-founder of West Cork Literary Festival.

Growing up, we were told all other forms of religion weren’t as good as ours. But at the same time, the reality of the behaviour of those around you not living up to what they were telling you.

Not that the people in that Born Again church were bad. They were the most civil, obedient citizens in the country, never broke a law. But trying to live this mad extreme ideology forces you into disingenuousness.

It took some years for me to accept the idea that I didn’t believe in God. I suppose I was 11, 12… When I was 12, my parents changed. Suddenly, things that were terribly sinful up to then would appear in our house without any explanation. Like a bottle of wine on the kitchen table. I’d had a strict moral upbringing — swearing, gambling, drinking, smoking, these were all sins.

By the time I was 15, my parents considered all religion to be bunkum, a money-making cynical exercise by churches. They were going to nightclubs, wining and dining. Dad was such a hardened Born Again Christian for years and then an equally ardent anti-religious person.

I was angry that they never said anything about this change, no explanation. It took time to come to grips with. Like ‘what were you doing, telling us all that bullshit and then you go and drop it all?’ 

I became deeply suspicious of anything evangelical — political or religious. My friend’s mum, a very devout Catholic, would say, ‘What the Pope said about x, that can’t be right; I’ll ignore that bit’. I’ve always been drawn to commonsense over ideology.

And then my parents, after having great craic, went back to the religion. I was around 40 and horrified. They’d lost everything in one of those awful recessions and they found God again. I understood, but I said: “You’re not going back to the ridiculous stuff, are you?” Dad said: “Not at all.”

And yet he did! Isn’t that extraordinary?

Five years before he died, I asked him: “What is it about going to Heaven that’s so great? Aren’t Heaven and Hell the same thing? Infinity’s a long time.”

He said: “If you’re in the presence of God, there is only that. Time is meaningless because God is perfection, and in the presence of perfection it’s inconceivable that things couldn’t be perfect.”

That was something genuinely metaphysical and spiritual — the only part of it all I found impressive.

That extreme stuff in my upbringing? It’s part of who I am. I survived it. I’m better for having survived it. You don’t want your life to be a breeze because there’s no good without bad. Everything’s in a contradictory seesaw swing.

• Clem Cairns is co-founder of West Cork Literary Festival and of Durrus-based Fish Publishing, which he started with Jula Walton in 1994 to promote new writers’ work. Every year, it publishes the Fish Anthology, featuring winners of the Fish short story, short memoir, flash fiction and poetry prizes. The launch of this year’s Fish Anthology, as part of West Cork Literary Festival, is on Tuesday, July 14, at Marino Church, Bantry.
• West Cork Literary Festival, July 10-17: Visit westcorkmusic.ie.

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