The problem with the suggestion that they should "unshackle themselves" is that pro-lifers didn't ghettoise themselves with the Republicans by their own decision. The Democrats "ghettoised" them when they made a conscious decision in the early 1970s to ditch significant socially-conservative sections of their traditional support base in the belief that this would strengthen their appeal to what they saw as the classes of the future (career women, university graduates etc). There are still some Democrats at local level (and a dwindling number in the house of Representatives) who are pro-lifers
The American system makes the creation of third parties more or less impossible short of a major split in the existing parties (first past the post); this is offset by the weakening of party structures caused by open primaries (this is one reason why the Republicans cannot simply throw social conservatives under the bus as Fianna Fail did from the 90s here and the Conservatives have done in Britain)
This is a piece from a website which criticises the equation of free-market economics with social conservatism/religious truth. The writer argues that a Catholic Party in the US is a non-starter for a variety of reasons (some of these, such as the Church being damaged when such a party takes up problematic positions, are pretty clearly inspired by the record of clericalist and Christian Democrat parties in Europe); the writer hopes instead for a political realignment in which social conservatives might find common cause with "communitarians" on the left, as distinct from those who prioritise state power:
ethikapolitika.org/2015/01/22/catholic-party-bad-church/Here is a piece from FIRST THINGS magazine which would generally argue that alliance with the Republicans is the best policy, outlining what is the problem with the Republican establishment and what can be done about it:
www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2015/01/the-republican-establishment-and-pro-lifersEXTRACT
Are politicians in the Republican establishment a bunch of political cowards? Are they crooks who can be bought off by business interests? Some probably are just mercenaries (like the Barbour political clan) [HALEY BARBOUR IS A FORMER REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR OF MISSISSIPPI - HIB], but I think that most of the Republican office holders, staffers, big money donors, consultants, and lobbyists are basically sincere in their worldview. They are not so much cowardly or corrupt as they are indifferent. Even if they are, in some sense, pro-life, it is a very low priority issue and embarrassing to argue about (the Democratic establishment has no such inhibitions—strange that). Think about the feedback loops. From Republican experiences with the mainstream media, anything that is not pro-choice radicalism inevitably gets portrayed as pro-life radicalism. From the establishment’s perspective, even talking about abortion makes Republicans seem ever so intolerant, and it distracts from more important issues like getting the America’s job creators the guest workers they need to replace those lazy and incompetent Americans who can’t cut it. [I.E. RELAXING IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONS TO IMPORT CHEAP LABOUR; THIS IS INDEED A MAJOR MOTIVE FOR MANY PRO-IMMIGRATION REPUBLICANS, REPRODUCING THIS QUOTATION DOES NOT MEAN I NECESSARILY ENDORSE THE WRITER'S POSITION ON THE POLICY ITSELF - HIB]
That doesn’t make the Republican establishment pro-choice radicals. If they prioritized legal abortion, they would be Democrats. They are willing to accommodate other forces within the party—if they have to. But they will also put their own priorities first as often as they can get away with doing so. They will gladly take advantage of a constituency that seems gullible, easily distracted, or poorly organized. Like President Obama (an abortion extremist if ever there was one) likes to say, power concedes nothing without a fight. Pro-lifers should keep that in mind as they deal with Republican politicians.
So what are pro-lifers to do? Obviously and firstly, they should ruthlessly punish fraudulently pro-life Republican officeholders. They should not accept excuses, whines, or doubletalk from the likes of Ellmers [REPUBLICAN CONGRESSWOMAN FROM NORTH CAROLINA WHO SWITCHED ON THIS LEGISLATION - HIB]. Republican politicians need to know that pro-lifers are neither gullible nor forgetful.
At the same time, pro-lifers should seek to build institutions outside the Republican party that are focused on introducing pro-life perspectives to people who mostly consume mainstream media. Money that is currently spent subsidizing Mike Huckabee’s lifestyle (by purchasing books on guns and grits or contributing to campaigns that are transparent marketing scams) [MIKE HUCKABEE IS A FORMER REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR OF ARKANSAS WHO RAN FOR THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION IN 2008, MAINLY APPEALING TO EVANGELICALS AND INVOKING ECONOMIC POPULISM. HE THEN HOSTED A CHAT SHOW ON FOX AND HAS JUST LEFT THAT CHANNEL AND ANNOUNCED ANOTHER RUN FOR THE NOMINATION. THE AUTHOR OF THIS PIECE IS ECHOING A WIDESPREAD SUSPICION THAT HE - AND SOME OTHER HIGH-PROFILE PERPETUAL CANDIDATES WHO APPEAL TO SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES FEELING ABANDONED BY THE ESTABLISHMENT - ARE MORE INTERESTED IN MAKING MONEY AND PUBLICITY THAN IN MAKING A SERIOUS ATTEMPT TO BECOME PRESIDENT - THIS IS THE AUTHOR'S VIEW, NOT NECESSARILY MINE, BUT THE PHENOMENON OF PEOPLE PUTTING THEMSELVES FORWARD AS PRO-LIFE MESSIAHS TO SERVE THEIR OWN EGOS IS NOT CONFINED TO AMERICA - HIB] would be more usefully employed showing moderate Americans the reality of the late-term fetus. The trick is in building institutions that focus outward (to people who are not already regular participants in center-right politics) but also that can assure conservative small-money donors that their money will be spent wisely. The populist right’s lack of a small donor base that is connected to effective institutions (rather than ephemeral individual candidacies) is why the GOP establishment feels like it can outlast intraparty opponents. If pro-lifers (and other conservative populists) want more respect from the GOP establishment, populist conservatives will need to build institutions that the GOP establishment respects. And fears.
END
Note the emphasis on institutions.
Here is a post, also from FIRST THINGS, by a more "palaeocon" writer (originally Methodist, ex-Catholic, now Eastern Orthodox) who argues that the battle to shape the wider culture is lost and the project must be to develop an explicitly countercultural milieu that has the seeds of growth within it, like St Benedict founding his monasteries as the Roman world disintegrated. His description of the underlying weakness of the outward cultural conservatism of his area of rural Louisiana reminds me a lot of 1980s Ireland, when it was so easy to mistake provincialism for committed countercultural witness.
Another parallel that comes to mind is that the American South was traditionally a poor rural region and its folk-religion emphasised suffering and self-sacrifice -anywhere else come to mind? It was also bound up with some horrendous social injustices (racial segregation was quite routinely defended in religious terms; Walker Percy, who was himself a Southern civil rights supporter, recalled that southern blacks, who themselves were quite religious, were startled that so many Northerners who came south to fight for civil rights, were atheists or unbelievers, while so many respectable white southern churchgoers were diehard segregationists). I don't mean to suggest that "traditional" Irish Catholic society was anything like as horrendous as the Jim Crow South, but unless we recognise that it had real evils against which present-day hedonism was a reaction, we'll never come to terms with what happened.
[ADDENDUM] I trimmed this a bit because I have scruples about reproducing a whole article. The link is there if you want to read it all]:
www.firstthings.com/article/2015/02/christian-and-counterculturalEXTRACT
Over the past decade, especially in the struggle over same-sex marriage, some of my friends and allies among social and religious conservatives have called me a defeatist for my culture-war pessimism. I believe that pessimism today is simply realism, and that it is better for us to retreat strategically to a position that we are capable of defending. The cultural battlefield has changed far more than many of us realize.
I live in a small town in rural south Louisiana. Most people go to church, and most people vote Republican; the conservatism is so gentle that even liberals feel at home. The parish council—that is to say, the county government—begins each meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance and the Our Father.
My town is the kind of place that conservatives, especially religious conservatives, think of as a haven from secular liberalism, the kind of place where, if Cardinal George’s persecution prophecy ever came true [ARCHBISHOP OF CHICAGO WHO SAID HIS SUCCESSOR MIGHT DIE IN PRISON AND HIS SUCCESSOR IN TURN DIE A MARTYR - HIB], Christians could take their stand. But here’s the thing: Culturally speaking, its conservatism is pretty much hollow. That fact has profound implications for the future of the Christian civic project.
Not long ago, a Protestant man in my town who is involved in youth education at his church contacted me. He wanted to discuss what I have written about “moralistic therapeutic deism” (MTD). Sociologist Christian Smith, who coined the term, said it is the “de facto dominant religion among contemporary teenagers in the United States.” It is a vague, vapid approach to religion, one that can be summed up as: God exists, and he wants us to be nice to each other, and to be happy and successful.
My Protestant correspondent said that MTD is the religion of the kids in his church, and it grieved him because as far as he could tell, this was the religion that their parents wanted them to have. This wasn’t surprising to me. We are living in a post-Christian culture, and MTD is our new civil religion.
In conversation with Methodists and Episcopalians in my town, I’ve discovered that, to the extent that believers are aware at all of the great theological battles for the souls of their churches, they consider them little more than rumors of war. This insularity can be a blessing; it is wonderful to go to church on Sunday and not find oneself on a culture-war battlefield.
But I think this disengagement is more of a curse. You may not be interested in the culture war, but the culture war is definitely interested in you. Christian Smith’s research leads us to the indisputable conclusion that for at least two generations, American Christianity has mounted no sustained, substantive challenge to the ongoing cultural revolution now blessed by MTD.
True, the more vigorous, engaged sectors of American Christianity—Evangelicals and orthodox Roman Catholics—produced more Republican voters, at least for a while, but that’s not the same thing as standing athwart the cultural revolution yelling, “Stop!” In fact, insofar as those Christian voters allowed Republican ideas about freedom and the primacy of the individual to dominate their thinking about the relationship of Christ to culture, they have been part of the problem.
Smith’s research reveals that our Christian institutions—churches, schools, colleges—have collaborated in the death of Christian culture in our country. I do not accept the easy blame-shifting to institutions alone, though. Too many Christian clerics and educators, within churches as well as church institutions, have told me how much resistance they get from parents when they try to teach a more vigorous, theologically substantive form of the faith.
If by “Christianity” we mean the philosophical and cultural framework setting the broad terms for engagement in American public life, Christianity is dead, and we Christians have killed it. We have allowed our children to be catechized by the culture and have produced an anesthetizing religion suited for little more than being a chaplaincy to the liberal individualistic order.
As Michael Hanby recognizes, gay marriage has been a watershed in this regard, revealing how far we have fallen from any kind of recognizable Christian orthodoxy about what it means to be a person...
The point is not that these putatively Christian young people disagree with Christian orthodoxy on homosexuality. The point is that despite the radicalism of gay liberation, especially within the Christian community, they don’t even see this as a legitimate debate.
And why should they? According to the tenets of moralistic therapeutic deism, which emphasizes personal happiness and well-being, there is no reason why Christianity should object to same-sex marriage. The summum bonum of our American civil religion is maximizing the opportunities for individuals to express and satisfy their desires—a belief that orthodox Christianity by nature opposes but that Christian moralistic therapeutic deism embraces and baptizes... The civic project of American Christianity has come to an end, for how can we produce Christian civic life when we are not producing authentic Christians?
This is not to endorse quietism. I don’t think we can afford to be disengaged from public and political life. But it is to advocate for a realistic understanding of where we stand as Christians in twenty-first-century America. Our prospects for living and acting in the public square as Christians are now quite limited...
In our time, the Benedict Option does not offer a formula (at least not yet), but it does call for a radical shift in perspective among Christians, one in which we see ourselves as living in the ruins (though very comfortable ones!) of Christian civilization, and tasked with preserving the living faith through the coming Dark Ages.
In some instances, Benedict-Option Christians may seek to found new neighborhoods centered on communal worship. I think of the traditionalist Catholic community around Clear Creek Abbey in Oklahoma, or of the Orthodox community around St. John Cathedral in Eagle River, Alaska. Contrary to the claims of Benedict-Option critics, neither community is utopian and separatist, shunning the outside world.
For most of us, though, that degree of commitment isn’t possible, even if it were desirable. Our Benedict Option will express itself within institutions—churches, schools, para-church organizations, and so forth—whose purpose is to keep orthodox Christianity alive in the hearts and minds of believers living as exiles in an ever more hostile culture. These must be institutions that fulfill Flannery O’Connor’s dictum that you have to push back as hard against the world as the world pushes against you...
We need to teach ourselves and our children to desire Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, as preserved within our traditions, and to make that pursuit the focus of our moral imagination. This is not a lofty ideal, but a matter of intense practical urgency. We do not have time to waste in building our little platoons.
Here’s what I mean: People have been moving out of the cities to my town for the past twenty years because the public-school system is one of the best in the state. Yet a family I know here pulled their children out of the school and began homeschooling not because the school is educationally deficient but because the friends of their oldest son, then a fifth-grader, were giving themselves over to watching hardcore pornography on their mobile devices. This wasn’t the school’s fault—the kids weren’t doing it during school hours—but it was the fault of a community of parents that, willingly or not, does not read the signs of the times. Like [BRITISH POET] Philip Larkin’s diseased and dying rabbit in [POEM] “Myxomatosis,” perhaps they think things will come right again if they can only keep still and wait.
There are no safe places to raise Christian kids in America other than the countercultural places we make for ourselves, together. If we do not form our consciences and the consciences of our children to be distinctly Christian and distinctly countercultural, even if that means some degree of intentional separation from the mainstream, we are not going to survive.
...Christians who have a vocation to politics should exercise it, and they need our support. But Christians who believe that politics will save us should discard those illusions now. The primary focus of orthodox Christians in America should be cultural—or rather, countercultural—building the institutions and habits that will carry the faith and the faithful forward through the next Dark Age
END