Sarah Harte: Evangelical right in US is running forward to take America backward

The move towards a theocracy in the US is being hailed or critiqued as Christian nationalism and as a result, women’s reproductive choices will be on the ballot in November

Bishop Eamonn Casey and singing wingman Father Michael Cleary at a Mass during the historic visit of Pope John Paul ll to Ireland in 1979.

Two distinct images from last week’s news cycle sparked the thought that when the freaks get under the tent it takes determined women to expel them.

One photo was of sexual predator Bishop Eamonn Casey and singing wingman Father Michael Cleary. 

Hype men for Pope John Paul during his historic 1979 visit, both were said to have charismatic public personalities. 

In the black and white image, there is a hint of Flannery O’Connor characters about them, a gothic, sense of the perversely abnormal.

The other image was Trump and JD Vance at a campaign rally — the current poster boys for the evangelical right “running to take America backward”. 

All four men have displayed a presumption of male authority, a sense that they make the rules for women.

In the USA the move towards a theocracy is being hailed or critiqued as Christian nationalism and as a result, women’s reproductive choices will be on the ballot in November.

We had Catholic nationalism. We understand the perilous mixture of politics and religion, we understand only too well the policing of women’s bodies and have the scandals to prove it.

In a recent documentary, Casey’s niece Patricia Donovan detailed her rape by Casey beginning when she was five and her protracted efforts to get the Church to act to protect other children. 

Two payments were made by the Church to two of his complainants with four separate accusations of sexual abuse being made against him. 

The fact that the Church secretly banned him from public ministry in 2007 speaks volumes. 

When Annie Murphy insisted their son Peter be recognised, she was painted as a fallen woman.

Fr Michael Cleary had at least two children with Phyllis Hamilton. 

He began a relationship with the highly vulnerable Hamilton when she was a teenager and he was 34 — twice her age. 

This did not stop him from being outspoken on sexual morality and contraception lecturing young women about their sexual mores. 

It was Hamilton who ultimately insisted that their son Ross be officially recognised.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Republican vice presidential candidate  JD Vance at a recent campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. Picture: Evan Vucci/AP

Felon Donald Trump, deemed
liable for the sexual assault of the brave E Jean Carroll and an unlikely standard-bearer for any type of spirituality, is touting a Christianity that is entirely fake and transactional, including hocking God Bless the USA bibles.

JD Vance has whack job views about women with the quotes to prove it. 

He has no time for ‘crazy cat ladies’ who don’t push for America and consider that the reproductively indolent should be subjected to higher taxes.

The Wall Street Journal commented that the crazy cat lady comment “is the sort of smart-aleck crack that gets laughs in certain right-wing male precincts, but it doesn’t play with the millions of female votes many of them Republican who will decide the presidential election”.

Vance also wanted police to be given access to women’s gynaecological records so that they could be arrested if they travelled outside their states for abortions. 

He’s now trying to row back from this position saying he wants each state to set their abortion policy.

This all sounds depressingly familiar. Back in 1992 we too had looney tunes debates during the X case when we discussed whether gardaí could spot-check women leaving the country if they suspected they were off to procure an abortion.

Women's high personal costs for abstract ideas promulgated by men

My theory is that a lot of much older Irish women who possibly wouldn’t have an abortion themselves but with big feelings quietly voted for abortion because they saw the high personal costs for abstract principles that were often promulgated by men who would never have to face hard choices.

Men whose lives departed radically from the teachings of the church and the ones they rammed down women’s throats.

In the US the ascent of the Christian right while predominantly evangelical includes sympathetic Catholics and Mormons. 

The hijacking of the Republican party by Christian fundamentalists has its roots in the early ’70s with a breakthrough in the 1980 presidential race when Ronald Reagan made a deal with the religious right in exchange for a guaranteed block of votes.

Baptist fundamentalist and political operative Jerry Falwell operated as Reagan’s hype man.

The party strengthened its anti-abortion stance and travelled down a long winding path culminating in the dramatic 2022 fall of Roe v Wade and the elimination of a 50-year constitutional right to abortion. 

It was Trump’s three appointments to the US Supreme Court that solidified his support among the evangelical right. He is their hero.

Meanwhile in Ireland, in the ’70s and ’80s, we were still locking up women in mother and baby homes. Scandal after scandal ensued with more to come. 

It was reported last week that a report on historical abuse in schools run by religious orders will recommend a statutory inquiry to examine the sexual abuse of thousands of schoolchildren.

What sparked the move to secularisation in Ireland? Political scientist Lee Drutman wrote that a nadir can also enable a change of direction. 

It’s hard to pinpoint the tipping point in Ireland. Many commentators chart the implosion in the Irish church to the revelation in 1992 that Casey was a father which came a few months after the X case. 

Such an embarrassment of riches to choose from where nadirs are concerned.

Which vision of America will be chosen in November? 

In 2022 it was women and young people galvanised by the rolling back of abortion rights who gave the Republicans a relative beating in the midterms where abortion proved to be a defining, meat-and-potatoes issue. 

Exit polls showed it was the top issue for many Americans particularly for those under 30 who decided that the difficult decision to have an abortion rested with women and not political leaders.

It remains to be seen if Kamala Harris, women, and young people can beat older white men to eject Trump and Vance from the tent because they want the freedom to decide whether and when to have children. 

The maths seems to suggest it will take white women on the fence to overcome their whiteness and to say no to what the patriarchy plans for them.

Learning at the weekend that a period of “careful consideration and consultation” has begun into the interment of Eamonn Casey’s remains in a cathedral crypt seemed to underscore how far we have come.

Although the intellectually lazy sneering at faith, particularly the Catholic faith that has accompanied the secularisation of Ireland is lamentable, faith should be strictly a private matter.

In 1960 John F Kennedy said in a radically different America his Catholic faith would not dictate politics. 

It should never be for the faithful of any religion to dictate as some moral majority or for the state to impose theology.

And speaking of people falling foul of the moral majority, sadly Edna O’Brien died this week. 

A brilliant writer and fearless Irish woman she once wrote: “Our land was indeed was a land of shame … a land of strange, throttled, sacrificial women.”

We reached a point where we had enough of throttled women, and we must take care never to return there.

To paraphrase Harvard professor, Marshall Ganz, we created a new story of self, a story of us and a story of now. 

Please God America does the same in November.