Ben Lowry: Traditional Catholics and Protestants are slowly aligning politically

Last week I wrote on the missed opportunity of not having a single victim candidate in West Tyrone (see link below) to challenge Sinn Fein pro IRA talk.
Traditional Christians might soon have no place to go politicallyTraditional Christians might soon have no place to go politically
Traditional Christians might soon have no place to go politically

This week, we report (see link below) on how one of the various candidates in the by-election, Thomas Buchanan (DUP), hopes to get pro life Catholic votes.

The likelihood is that he will get some such votes, but numbered in the scores or low hundreds. Not of the magnitude that will lead to any material change in the outcome.

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Such Catholic support for the DUP is tiny in number, but it nonetheless marks one of the most dramatic cultural and political shifts in modern Irish history.

Nationalist parties, particularly Sinn Fein but to a lesser extent the SDLP, have rapidly abandoned association with Catholic orthodoxy.

Some people will sniff at the notion that Sinn Fein was ever close to the Catholic church, and it wasn’t, but some leaders of the republican movement were famously mass goers. Those who were not knew that many of their voters were.

Now things are moving so fast, in contested matters such as abortion and same sex marriage, that the DUP is one of the last parties to defend a traditional Christian stance. Even that is under risk, with liberal DUP elements wanting to play down such views in a secular age.

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This then raises the prospect of traditional Christians soon having no place to go politically. Last year (see link below) I have mooted the idea of a Christian Party, primarily Christian in its ideology. But there is no sign of such a party.

Gradually people of strong faith have more that combines them religiously than divides them tribally.

On our letters page (see link below) an evangelical Protestant writes a letter on how he has been canvassing in the Republic’s Eighth Amendment abortion referendum.

We have run letters from dismayed Catholics (see links below), criticising the absence of nationalist parties in the ‘No’ campaign.

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Traditional Protestants and Catholics are slowly aligning politically. But whether they will be significant or tiny in number is as yet unclear.

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter deputy editor