David Quinn
Faith in anything, once lost, is not easily restored, writes David Quinn
Lately I’ve taken to calling myself a ‘lapsed’ or a ‘non-practicing’ Fine Gaeler. You might be the same, or else you might be a lapsed Fianna Fáil supporter who perhaps returned to the party at the recent election or maybe opted for one of the Independents or smaller parties.
My point is that there are a lot of us out there now, far more than in the past when party loyalties were much more stable and bobbed up and down by only a few percentage points in an average election.
The strong party loyalty that once existed meant that for years and years, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael between them commanded the votes of more than 80% of the electorate at a time when voter turnout averaged 75%. The two parties would chop and change their share of that vote with Fianna Fáil invariably coming out on top, until the 2011 election and the one just gone.
At the last election the combined level of support for the two main parties was just under 50%, a huge drop from their heyday.
Spiritual
The other 30% have scattered in all directions. Politics in Ireland is now undergoing the same sort of fragmentation that has already happened to religion. The floating voter is the equivalent of the person who says, “I’m spiritual but I’m not religious”.
The floating voter in effect says, “I’m political but I’m not party political”.
There is also a tranche of the electorate that doesn’t bother to vote at all. Last month, 35% of potential voters did not cast a vote. Either they are not political at all, or else they are, but simply couldn’t bring themselves to vote for any of the available candidates or parties.
In surveys of religion there has been a rise in the number of people who say they belong to no religion. It is often assumed this means they are not religious at all, not even ‘spiritual’. We can’t take this for granted, however.
Just as we can’t take it for granted that the entirety of the 35% of people who didn’t vote last month no longer believe in politics, nor can we assume that people who say they don’t believe in any given religion are therefore anti-religion or indifferent to religion.
Maybe what they mean is that they don’t belong to organised religion, that is, they don’t consider themselves Christian or Muslim or Hindu and so on.
The fragmentation in the West of both politics and religion probably result from the same factors, namely rising individualism and a general disillusionment with religious leaders and in political leaders, and probably also in the capacity of religion and of politics to deliver their promises, which are very big.
Until quite recently, institutions dominated life. The Church was one institution. The political parties were another. Trade unions a third. Marriage a fourth. (Marriage is called an ‘institution’, after all).
Once people joined an institution, they tended to stay with it for life. There was also the phenomenon of a job for life. It was common for people to work in the same trade or for the same employer from the moment they first began working until they retired more than 40 years later.
Today, membership of the Churches has declined massively. So has membership of the political parties. In Britain back in the 1950s about 10% of adults belonged to a political party. Today the number is more like 2%, and they tend to be older people.
Membership of trade unions has dropped hugely, and even marriage has declined.
Today, barely half of adults in Ireland are married, which is on a par with the United States where no-one would claim marriage is in great shape.
In contrast to the fairly recent past, we now often abandon religion altogether, move from one religion (or denomination) to another, or we become ‘spiritual’, not ‘religious’.
Likewise, we move from job to job, from one relationship to another and we move from party to party and candidate to candidate.
Some of this is understandable. There may no longer be as convincing a reason as in the past (before employee rights) to join a trade union. Our marriage may be abusive. The clerical abuse scandals have obviously caused understandable anger at the Church. Moving from job to job can improve our earnings prospects, and sometimes a change of job is as good as a rest.
But there is also a downside. Sometimes the collective action that trade unions can organise is still necessary. If we are no longer so committed to our marriage, our spouse might not be either. Good religion, as distinct from ‘toxic’ religion, is socially and personally beneficial, and if the bigger claims of religion are true, is salvific as well. If we are not loyal to our employers, maybe they won’t be loyal to us either.
In the case of politics, it becomes extremely difficult to govern when we become too cynical and too disillusioned with politics, and then we all suffer.
A lot of this disillusionment is absolutely understandable, of course. Promises are the hard currency of elections and politicians love making cheap promises and over-inflated claims. But cheap promises end up like cheap money; worthless.
Distinction
For Christians who take their faith seriously and don’t create an artificial distinction between religion and politics (both have a lot to say about morality so how can they be completely distinct?), all the parties have been disappointing to a greater or lesser extent.
Labour is now nakedly pro-abortion. Fine Gael is moving in that direction fast, the stridently pro-choice Kate O’Connell, newly elected in place of Lucinda Creighton, being a case in point.
Many of Fianna Fáil’s TDs, on the other hand, are strongly pro-life and that may stop the party leadership moving the party in a more ‘liberal’ direction on this issue.
Overall, however, it can hardly be denied that politics is fragmenting the way religion has fragmented and as with religion, it might be very hard to put this Humpty Dumpty back together again. Like the salt that loses its saltiness, faith (in whatever it might be), once lost, is not easily restored.