Scots-Irish: Trying to Explain JD Vance

I’ve been interested to note that the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, J D Vance, is frequently described as “Scots-Irish.”

I was unfamiliar with that term or the people it described until, during seminary, I served an internship at several small Presbyterian Churches in the Susquehanna Valley and Catskill Mountains of southern New York. There I met the hard-bitten Scots-Irish, most of whom were dairy farmers, struggling to make ends meet on small farms on very rocky, mountainous soil.

The Scots-Irish came from the Scottish lowlands to Northern Ireland, Ulster. In the 18th century they migrated in two waves to North America. Many came to maintain their Calvinist Presbyterian identity in the face of the efforts of the British King to force them into the Church of England.

Arriving in the colonies in the 18th century, they were relative late comers who found the coastal areas already settled. This pushed them into the mountainous regions of the Alleghenies from southern New York, into Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky and as far south as Georgia and South Carolina.

They didn’t have the choice land of the plantation owners and were on what was then the frontier. As a consequence they were often in conflict with Native Americans. They acquired a reputation as combative, loyal to kin and distrustful of government, characteristics that were highlighted in U.S. Senator Jim Webb’s 2004 book about the Scots-Irish, Born Fighting. 

The small church I was serving had only recently abandoned its longtime Calvinist practice of a Thursday service of penance preparatory to the Sunday service of Communion. To be admitted to the three-times-a-year service of Holy Communion you had to present a small, smooth stone that was evidence of your participation in the service of confession and penance on the prior Thursday. Celebration of communion more than three times a year was considered “extravagant.”

Pastoral calling was a big thing there. I went out to visit people on their farms, standing in barns, sitting at kitchen tables. Showing up and listening during the week earned you the right to speak on Sunday. I learned that the barn and other outbuildings, were the domain of the husband, although wives could be found there to help with milking. Inside the house was the woman’s domain, with the men entering for meals and to sleep. For dairy farmers, there are no “days-off.”

During one such pastoral call, a family of seven were at the table for their mid-day meal. I pulled a chair alongside and engaged in conversation with the married couple, their 3 or 4 children, and a bachelor uncle, Clarence. Clarence, in faded denim coveralls, face unshaven, was maybe 50. He said not a word, until, at one point I used the word, “Sunday.” Maybe I had used it several times. Suddenly, Clarence brought his fist crashing down on the table, setting all the tableware jumping, and said in stern, gravelly voice, “In my day, we called it “The Sabbath!” “Yes sir,” I likely said, ” that’s right, the Sabbath.”

On another occasion, when a guest preacher at a different but neighboring church, I apparently lost the congregation the moment I took off my suit coat and loosened my tie — it was a hot August day — and preached in my shirtsleeves. Disrespectful to the Lord.

The Scots-Irish I came to know were also tight with a dollar. The big achievement of my year in their midst was to preside over the installation of a toilet inside the church building. Until then — this was 1975 — an outhouse would do. And this was country where the winter was long and harsh.

Still, I admired the people I came to know. They worked very hard. While they didn’t say much, they could be quite wryly humorous. They were loyal to family and uncomplaining. They would help you when you needed it. On more than one occasion that year a farmer used his tractor to pull our late-model car out of a snowy ditch.

They were wonderful singers, who sang in parts and harmony. For special evening services the church was lit by chandeliers that were lowered on a cable so the ascending circles of tiny oil lamps could be lit by hand. It made for a breathtakingly, beautiful evening in a simple wooden building where the maple and hickory pews had been polished by years of worship and prayer.

And they taught me a good deal about the ministry. I had come from sophisticated New York City, full of new ideas and full, no doubt, of myself. They weren’t much interested in “the latest” from seminary or from a young seminarian. What they wanted to know, when they came to church, was “Is there a Word from the Lord?” which is in fact the right question. When life is tough you don’t need some twenty-something’s bright ideas. You need a word from the Lord that will keep you going for another week.

So describing Vance as Scots-Irish, for those in the know, is saying more than just a footnote about ethnic background. It signaling the characteristics of a tribe: feisty, ready for a fight, and distrustful of government. Give him this much, he comes by it honestly.