Protestant America
April 11, 2002

by Joe Sobran

     Today I write in an unaccustomed vein. I speak as a 
member of a minority group, though maybe not in the usual 
aggrieved style of minority group members.

     I am a Catholic in a Protestant country. Even if 
Protestants are no longer a numerical majority, they have 
made this country what it is, and its culture remains 
thoroughly Protestant. What does it feel like to be a 
Catholic in Protestant America?

     It feels wonderful. On the whole, Protestants must 
be among the world's most decent people. I feel grateful 
to live among them, and it's time someone said this. They 
are too nice to defend themselves even when they're 
smeared, as they often are.

     I have serious differences with them, because I take 
religion seriously. I know everything that has been said 
against them. I know their sins, their errors, their 
prejudices, their dark side -- even their silly side. I 
can criticize them too. I have criticized them in the 
past, and I will so in the future.

     Yet sharp criticism is a far cry from vague bad-
mouthing, and when I hear some malcontent running down 
this Protestant country as "bigoted" or "racist" I feel a 
mild impulse to suggest that he shut the hell up. I want 
to say gently, "Well, I'd sure hate to live in a country 
where your kind were the majority, pal." (Vivid examples 
may be found on the front page of today's paper.)

     In fact one of the chief faults of Protestants is 
that they are too nice for their own good. They have 
little instinct for self-preservation. They are slow to 
recognize deadly enemies, because they assume that others 
are as decent as they are. Your typical Protestant is 
like Shakespeare's Edgar in KING LEAR, "whose nature is 
so far from doing harms that he suspects none." And this 
amiable but tragic defect may yet prove the ruin of this 
great country.

     The word "Protestant" covers a lot of ground, from 
the strictest fundamentalist to the laxest liberal. Yet 
there is, if not a creedal common denominator, at least a 
specific common style -- a homespun gentility shared by 
every sort of Protestant, an ethos of simple 
friendliness, a love of honest plainness, even a certain 
aversion to elegance (expressed in disdain for the 
"fancy").

     This makes nearly all Protestants fatally easy to 
impose on, easy to take advantage of. The self-effacing 
Protestant style is even a topic of a special kind of 
comedy: think of Mary Tyler Moore, Garrison Keillor, or 
Bob Newhart. All three are Midwesterners; Newhart is a 
Catholic, but all Midwesterners are virtual Protestants 
in this respect. Protestants are supposed to be 
humorless, but there is a very definite Protestant humor, 
dry and subtle, and the world could use more of it. If 
only Osama bin Laden had been raised in Indiana! He is 
open to criticism on several grounds, but basically I 
think he just needs to lighten up a little.

     A Protestant might almost be defined as a man who 
has to be warned against his own virtues. He is nothing 
if not tolerant. It wasn't always so: once upon a time 
Protestants could persecute heretics with the best of 
them. But even then they were exercising that peculiar 
sincerity which they have seldom lost.

     At times American Protestants were suspicious of 
immigrants, and though their suspicions have become 
notorious, they were not without reason. At any rate, the 
suspicions were quickly abandoned, and the immigrants 
were welcomed as fellow Americans. Today the immigrants 
are glorified and the natives disparaged, as if the 
immigrants were the originators, rather than the 
beneficiaries, of tolerance.

     It might be suggested that so gracious a majority 
deserves more grateful minorities than it has received. 
Nobody thanks a Protestant. His virtues are taken for 
granted, like the elements of nature. He doesn't even 
think of asking for thanks. "Don't mention it," he is apt 
to say. Maybe more of us should insist on mentioning it, 
even if it embarrasses him a little. Protestants are so 
unassuming that even the Pope hasn't apologized to them.

     All this may help explain why President Bush is so 
completely at sea in the Middle East. He is learning, to 
his confusion and dismay, that Ariel Sharon and Yasser 
Arafat are definitely *not Protestants.* As a cynical 
son of the old Catholic Europe, with the blood of the 
Borgias coursing in my veins, I could have warned him; 
but he didn't ask me.

     Anyway, it isn't my purpose to glorify the 
Protestants; today I merely want to thank them.

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