Opinion: What the Burke family really need from us

The Burke family from Castlebar have been in our news for some time now. In fact, for so long, many of us may have difficulty remembering a time when one or more of them were not making either a local, or national media splash. Whether it was Jemima Burke berating former chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan during Covid-19; Ammi Burke (with her mother Martina) creating mayhem at a Workplace Relations Commission hearing and, more recently, appearing at the Labour Court; Simeon Burke demanding equal rights for Cambridge educated lawyers at the Irish Bar; or any number of the family getting dragged out of various courts, their ability to attract media attention has had few rivals. The star attraction for those who adore this family circus, has, however, been Enoch Burke who, when not commuting to Co Westmeath from Castlebar every day to walk around a school and go home again, has been walking in and out of Mountjoy Prison, with one detour to Castlerea Prison along the way, and now back again to prison. Frankly it’s all a bit exhausting and surely no one can be feeling more tired than the Burke family themselves. READ MORETrue, there are some recent subtle indications that the air may be slowly releasing from their ultimo evangelical tyres. Although Northern Ireland’s Free Presbyterians in particular have continued to feel the ire of the Burkes, the family’s attention has recently turned to more mundane, somewhat bizarre concerns; not least the proliferation of nail bars in their home town. [ Martina and Ammi Burke lose appeals over two-week jailing for criminal contemptOpens in new window ]Regardless, the Burke family behaviours are as old as man himself. After all, we all have axes to grind – this family just seem to bury theirs deeper into their targets. They do appear remarkably disinhibited. The family’s ability to be wholly unembarrassed at the possibility, or indeed the certainty of being publicly called out and ridiculed, is worthy of inquisition and yet the answer may be much more mundane than we think. The Burkes are not trying to impress or convert the general public, or any of the people they may meet in the criminal justice system. Indeed, they are not trying to be heard by anyone – anyone, that is of course, outside the family unit. Ammi Burke’s seven-year battle to get her job backIf there is a person who the Burke children, for example, wish to hear them, it is surely the matriarch of the family, Martina Burke. It is reasonable to assume they are essentially preaching to an audience of one – who also happens to be their former teacher. All families are of course complex units at the best of times. Children can seem on the outside to have everything – good parents, income, education and advantage, and yet the reality can be something different. The hardest lesson for children later in life is realising that their childhood was really about living the unlived lives of their parents. Yet children want for only one thing and that is to rest – not to have to earn parental approval based on the success or otherwise of a CAO application, or having an uncanny ability with an obscure musical instrument. Nor can the issue of the Burke parents’ “born-again” version of their faith, from Roman Catholic to turbocharged Christian Evangelical, be ignored. Black and white thinking has become the new normal. Nuance is for the little people and certainty is craved in an uncertain world, a world that the Burkes inhabit just as much as the rest of us. The Burkes want the same as we all do – to be relevant, to have personal significance and to have, as the psychologists advise, “cognitive closure”. The military wing of “born-again” Christianity can often appear to facilitate these concerns by hitching a lift on any number of contemporary social issues, not least matters concerning non-traditional sexuality. “Gay/transgender = bad, straight/heterosexual = good, and if you don’t believe us, it’s in the Bible.”So the Burke family performances have never truly been about pronoun use or misuse, the LGBTQIA+ discussion, or indeed the inexplicable expansion of nail bars in Co Mayo. These were and are just the window dressing and capricious news pegs for something far deeper and something that we can all relate to – the problem of being a fearful human. [ Jemima Burke’s public order conviction quashed after she wins High Court reviewOpens in new window ]The Burke family were not and never will be “the problem”. The problem is the rest of us and how we feel zero inhibition about “othering”, eviscerating and parking those who don’t conform to our model or behaviours or beliefs – to make us appear better than them. Sorry to disappoint – there is no evidence that Christ gave us any such instructions in Scripture. In truth, what the Burke family really deserve is our authentic compassion and our kindness. Not because we may necessarily agree with any issue they may espouse, or any illegal or uncivilised behaviour they may indulge in – but for the very reason that we don’t. No one ever said this Christian thing was easy. Rev John Deane-O’Keeffe is a minister in the Reformed Episcopal Church and a departmental tutor in forensic criminology and theology at the University of Oxford.