Rich Episcopalians
But I'm wondering about your thoughts on the 'dead, rich, and Republican' founders of the Episcopal Church, a detail noted by Allen. What's that all about?
She didn't write anything about "Republican founders." She said,
This is a clear reference to the days when the Country Club Republicans dominated the GOP. They were overwhelmingly Episcopalian with some Presbyterians and Quakers thrown in for good measure. At the time, the Epicopalians tended to be more moderate and appealed to those who didn't want to completely abandon traditional Christianity, but who also had no interest in dealing with any of that pesky doctrinal or scriptural fidelity. In those days, the church, for them, was little more than an extension of the country club.
The "no more!" is a reference to the fact that the days of the ascendancy of the country-clubbers in the GOP is past and its decline was marked by the influx of right-wingers and evangelicals into the party.
In a humorous aside, those same country-clubbers, who mostly either died or became Democrats, are the source of the shrill demagoguery about "rich Republicans" in which the clueless Democrat politicians (as well as more than a few rank-and-file Democrats) still love to engage. The huge irony is that they are attacking a straw-man that blew away twenty years ago. I don't need to belabor the fact that tilting at the ruins of that particular windmill is one of the big reasons the Democrats are out of power and likely to stay that way for a while.
She didn't write anything about "Republican founders." She said,
Despite the fact that median Sunday attendance at Episcopal churches is 80 worshipers, the Episcopal Church, as a whole, is financially equipped to carry on for some time, thanks to its inventory of vintage real estate and huge endowments left over from the days (no more!) when it was the Republican Party at prayer.
This is a clear reference to the days when the Country Club Republicans dominated the GOP. They were overwhelmingly Episcopalian with some Presbyterians and Quakers thrown in for good measure. At the time, the Epicopalians tended to be more moderate and appealed to those who didn't want to completely abandon traditional Christianity, but who also had no interest in dealing with any of that pesky doctrinal or scriptural fidelity. In those days, the church, for them, was little more than an extension of the country club.
The "no more!" is a reference to the fact that the days of the ascendancy of the country-clubbers in the GOP is past and its decline was marked by the influx of right-wingers and evangelicals into the party.
In a humorous aside, those same country-clubbers, who mostly either died or became Democrats, are the source of the shrill demagoguery about "rich Republicans" in which the clueless Democrat politicians (as well as more than a few rank-and-file Democrats) still love to engage. The huge irony is that they are attacking a straw-man that blew away twenty years ago. I don't need to belabor the fact that tilting at the ruins of that particular windmill is one of the big reasons the Democrats are out of power and likely to stay that way for a while.
posted by Anonymous | 3:54 PM
1 Comments:
Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Quakers are still overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly Republican. There has been no trend towards Democrats among Protestant whites, in fact there has been a trend away. Core Episcopalian communities like Greenwich & New Canaan, CT for example are still very Republican. WASPs as a whole group have simply been eclipsed politically.
Post a Comment
<< Home