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The city of Birmingham is the latest to acquire an Orange
Lodge. No, it's not Birmingham, the second largest city in
England, but Birmingham, Alabama, in the heart of the Deep
South in the United States. The Lodge, called Sons of William
L.O.L. No. 1003 draws most of its membership from the Episcopal
Cathedral in Birmingham, and several of the brethren are of
Scots-Irish extraction. At least one of them is a former Roman
Catholic, now a fervent Protestant.
Alabama may seem to be an unusual place for an Orange Lodge,
but in today's 'global village' with the world a very much
smaller place due to air travel and communications, that is
not so out of the ordinary.
There have been many Orange Lodges formed in the past in
the United States, but most of these have been in New England,
notably New York, New Jersey, the Boston area, and Manchester,
Connecticut.
The reason is fairly obvious - New England experienced the
greatest wave of Irish Roman Catholic immigrants following
the Great Famine, which threatened to swamp the Anglo-Saxon
Protestant population of the area.
Places like Manchester, Connecticut acquired their Lodge
due to a large contingents of Ulster Protestants settling
there. In the case of Manchester, it was a large influx of
linen workers from the Portadown area who moved to that part
of the United States in the early years of the 20th century,
and right up to the 1920s, due to high unemployment at home,
and the job opportunities in Manchester.
Up until the late 1950s the Orange Lodges and a pipe band
flourished in Manchester, and Ulster 'exiles' met in one another's
homes each week end to discuss the 'old Country' and people
back home.
The internet has produced intense interest in the Orange
Order, and in the past year there have been inquiries through
this modern system from places like Poland and Germany about
the Order and how to go about forming Lodges.
The Deep South in the United States has many close connections
with Northern Ireland and Scotland and as author Billy Kennedy
has shown in his excellent series of books on the Scots-Irish,
there is a natural affinity between that part of the United
States and Northern Ireland.
But unlike New England and other parts of the North, were
the Irish Roman Catholics settled in large numbers, and whose
descendents support republican and nationalist parties in
Northern Ireland, the Scots-Irish of the Deep South have tended
not to get involved in politics in Ulster. To a large extent
that is due to the fact that until recently, few have been
aware of the political situation in Northern Ireland.
Things are changing, and more and more people in the Deep
South are taking an interest in happenings in Northern Ireland.
And in places like Alabama, North and South Carolina, and
Georgia, there is growing unease about the effect of the large-scale
immigation, much of illegal, from Mexico and other parts of
South America.
The Deep South is still overwhelmingly Protestant, with Baptists
forming the majority. But there is a growing Roman Catholic
population, due in large measure to the Hispanic influx.
People in the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee look
at what has happened in neighbouring states like Florida and
California, where Hispanics now form a majority in many areas,
and are predicted to become the State majority in a few years
time.
Even in Texas, long a bastion of Southern Baptists, there
is a large and growing Hispanic minority.
Americans are very tolerant in religious matters and there
is no State church and no financial assistance for religious
run schools. But this tolerance is not always evident on the
part of incomers, used to living in coutries where the Roman
Catholic Church is in control of many matters.
It's a fluid and changing scenario, and in such a climate
many Americans are concerned that the traditional Protestant
and Anglo-Saxon values and traditions will be drastically
affected by the Hispanic influx.
Incidentally, the rector of Drumcree, the world-famous Ulster
parish, the Rev. John Pickering, was in Birmingham, Alabama
recently, and he was able to provide details about the Orange
Order to the Officers.
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