It Neither Picks My Pocket nor Breaks My Leg

“But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782


Nearly thirty years ago, I stood at a rally in the Glens of Antrim to hear a “sermon” given by one of the great demagogues of our time, the Rev. Ian Paisley. Paisley, a minister and head of the Free Presbyterian Church, opened in his sonorous voice with the line, “I have hated God’s enemies with a perfect hate.” Those enemies: Papists, of course, and the Whore of Babylon (the Roman Catholic Church), the Anti-Christ (better know as the Pope) and all their allies – consisting, as far as I could tell, of anyone who disagreed with his particular vision of the world. No touchy-feely New Testament - Sermon on the Mount - “love thy enemy” - nonsense from our Ian; it was strictly the God of Abraham for the lads.

The rally was a festival of Orange paranoid delusions and thinly veiled threats toward the “minority” community. Conspiracy theories abounded. One of the warm up acts for “Big Ian” announced that the IRA was an agent of the international conspiracy of “Communists, Freemasons and Jesuits.” Also, it was common knowledge the six northeastern counties of Ireland would soon be the sight of an apocalyptic battle worthy of the Book of Revelations. They, the good Protestants of Ulster, were a besieged people.

My “guide” to this event flashed me a stern look as if to warn me not to give in to my instincts and roll on the ground in fits of convulsive laughter. He needn’t have worried. A quick survey of the grim Ulster visages surrounding me gave no doubt to the folly of guffawing out loud. Even a knowing smirk might prove not only inappropriate, but potentially deadly as well. After all, Paisely justified his violent anti-Catholic pogroms in 1968, by saying, "Catholic homes caught fire because they were loaded with petrol bombs; Catholic churches were attacked and burned because they were arsenals and priests handed out sub-machine guns to parishioners"; he also attributed the massive discrimination in employment and housing for Catholics were simply because "they breed like rabbits and multiply like vermin".

This was not a group of people to trifle with – especially if you might be perceived to be one of the “vermin”.



"I have hated God's enemies with a perfect hate."

So, why exhume a long ago rally in an obscure corner of the planet where insanity and fanaticism are assumed to be the norm? Only one reason - I have personally traveled to the nexus of where religion and politics have crossed, often with tragic results. Paisley was not only the leader of a church; he was also the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) – the largest political party in Northern Ireland. Not only could Paisley lay claim to moral authority, he had the political clout to carry out his “mission”.

While the fusion of the political and the religious in Ireland dates back to the 16th century, its unhappy history still serves as a chilling reminder of what happens when gods and princes join forces, and are bent toward any enterprise. I thought to myself, perhaps a little too smugly in retrospect; as I left that rally in 1977, that what I had witnessed was an anachronism, a vestigial nightmare peculiar to a backwater where the events of three hundred years ago were spoken of as if they were last week. And, how lucky I was to reside in a country where this sort of nonsense cannot take place or, at least, it was confined to the lunatic fringe.

Now, nearly three decades later we seem to have found ourselves in the pages of Ronan Bennett’s bête noir novel, Havoc, in its Third Year. Set in 1630’s Northern England on the verge of civil war, Bennett’s depiction of Puritan theocracy has a decidedly modern ring. Adam, the manservant to the protagonist, John Brigge has recently been converted to the zealots’ camp, envisioning the world thusly:

“We live in bitter times and the world is divided in two: those who live inside the godly nation, and those outside. Inside is righteousness and strength. Outside is barbarism and terror.”

This, of course, is the language of fanatics; the language you might expect from demagogues like Paisley and his Orange brethren, or a mullah from the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is the mindset of Mohammed Atta – leader of the 9/11 hijackers. The wizened rabbis of Judaism’s Ultra-Orthodox sect would be comfortable with it as would be the Sikhs who attacked a theater in England causing the playwright to flee into hiding. Radical Hindu nationalists, when they take time out from killing their Muslim neighbors, to trash and burn shops selling St. Valentine’s Day cards would also be in agreement.

The famously tolerant Netherlands has lately experienced a spate of Islamic radicalism that has turned murderous, resulting in the death of one of its film directors, Theo Van Gogh, and resulting in the protective custody of two of its MP’s. Several other European countries, including Great Britain, Germany and Sweden, have seen a rash of “honor” killings involving young women who have somehow violated the honor of their Muslim families.

There doesn’t seem to be a major religion in the world (or any of their attending sects) that has not been infected with the dangerous virus of fundamentalism. A virus that is spreading as the spirit of the Enlightenment - rationalism, scientific inquiry, religious tolerance and economic liberalism – is weakening under the onslaught.

Thomas Jefferson’s plea, “But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg” is barely audible in the Babel of religious bigotry consuming large swaths of the planet.


Thomas Jefferson

Increasingly, Adam’s admonition is also becoming the language of the body politic in the United States. From President Bush on down there seems to be nearly a daily invocation of the “Lord” from political hacks that Thomas Franks describes as “nearly blasphemous”. The religious Right, straying far from the principles of traditional conservatism where government is to a minimum, seeks to use the power of government to impose their “inerrant” plan for the rest of us.

The religious Right’s victories in the 2004 election, where anti-gay referendums were passed in thirteen states, are a frightening reminder that the well of intolerance is deep indeed. Hardly a day passes where there is not a story of another assault on the First Amendment and the protections provided in the separation of church and state. School boards are feeling the growing pressure from well-organized groups to teach creation myths in place of scientifically based evolutionary theory. Nearly a third of biology teachers report they are hesitant to even mention the term in their classes.

The recent media spectacle surrounding the Terri Shiavo case highlighted how tightly interwoven the fundamentalist movement and the current administration really are. The Republican Party, at this point in time, seems to have misjudged the American public’s reception to these fringe ideas as reflected in recent polls, but they are beholding to the fanatics and their battle is hardly through.

While we here in the United States have yet to see the violent nature of religious zealotry, unless you count abortion clinic bombings, the rhetoric of these demagogues is growing shriller and coming more to resemble the language of that rally in Northern Ireland so many years ago.

As I said earlier, I thought I had witnessed a ghost from the past outside that market town in County Antrim, something that would soon be going out of the world. Little did I realize at the time, I might have been privy to a ghastly vision of the future.

©2005 Barney F. McClelland

You can read more of Barney F. McClelland’s work at Butterflies and Wheels