Gene Kerrigan: Enoch Burke and family are the clowns in their own homemade circus

Gene Kerrigan though dismissive of the Adams Burke Family drama shows his erudition by examing his books and shows that now no one is interested in this highly intelligent yet toxic family. Here is where I part company with him. I see each court appearance and spell in prison as a ratcheting up of the situation with clear examples like say the Capitol insurrectionists who under Trump’s influence found themselves doing things they never believed they would. Here we have no cult leader and as Kerrigan suggests the idea that Burke was fighting against transgenderism is laughable. So now that no one is interested anymore what will be the next steps in the radicalisation of the family? I have for a year now suggested that locking up Enoch and throwing away the key is not the answer. I believe deradicalisation and family therapy need to be tried? What do you think?

Cartoon by Tom Halliday

Letter to Dr Frank Milling the Headmaster of Wilson’s Hospital recommending deradicalisation for Enoch Burke:

Gene Kerrigan

Sun 8 Oct 2023 at 02:30

So, Enoch Burke’s in jail again. Or they’ve let him out again. Fewer of us are keeping track these days. The market in Christian martyrdom is declining, despite the efforts of the Burke family.

Silly people doing foolish things and claiming they’re being victimised because of their beliefs.

We all know that’s not true. Enoch went to jail again because he was playing silly buggers with the law.

When you mess with the courts, they — reluctantly — find you in contempt. Judges prefer not to bother, but if you insist on being a martyr, they’ll oblige you and lock you up.

Rumours are spreading about a huge drop in both major and petty crime in the Dublin area. No one wants to risk having to share a cell with Enoch.

One judge took pity on him last December and let him out of jail, even though he wouldn’t purge his contempt.

That was, I think, an unfortunate mistake. The judge, one presumes, felt sorry for the poor eejit, facing Christmas behind bars. However, I suspect it would have greatly enhanced Enoch’s happiness to spend Christ’s birthday locked up in the Joy.

Last week, perhaps in an effort to revive waning interest, Enoch’s mammy chased a government minister, Norma Foley, around a school. In Ballinrobe, I think it was. Like I said, it’s hard to keep track.

The mammy was shouting out the numbers of the minister’s licence plate.

She was also waving a large placard and shouting that the minister won’t say anything.

Now, that was simply untrue. Ms Foley says all kinds of things. I suspect she simply had nothing she wanted to say to the Burkes.

And, like almost everyone else on this planet, she had better ways to spend her time than listening to anything the Burkes had to say.

Daddy Burke was at the school too, complaining in a loud voice (but not as loud as Mammy Burke) about something or other.

“She has to answer questions,” Daddy Burke shouted, as Ms Foley hurried through a doorway into the school.

“Minister Norma Foley is trying to escape,” Daddy shouted.

When the minister went inside, Daddy Burke was disconsolate.

“Where is Norma Foley? Why is she refusing to speak or to come out to tell us what she has got to say about Enoch Burke, who is in prison for his Christian beliefs?”

Now, the claim that Enoch is in Mountjoy because of his religious beliefs is just not true.

No one cares what Enoch believes. No one disagrees enough with anything he says to bother taking him up on it. Enoch’s problem is that everyone these days is quite tolerant of other people’s religious views.

Enoch’s in jail because he very deliberately chose to act in contempt of court — and nobody cares.

It’s the painful truth at the heart of the Burke dilemma. The more the Burkes shout about their beliefs, the more people turn away in embarrassment.

Enoch has written two thin books, in which he disagrees strongly with other evangelists. The first book was The Hedonism and Homosexuality of John Piper and Sam Allberry: The Truth of Scripture (172 pages).

The second was The Pied Piper: Is John Piper and New Calvinism Destroying the Church? (120 pages).

Do you get the feeling Enoch is not Mr Piper’s biggest fan?

That’s one of the things about evangelists — they seem to really dislike one another, with a deeply Christian hostility.

​It’s all a bit Monty Python — the Judean People’s Front versus the People’s Front of Judea. To be honest, I really don’t care how many angels would fit on the head of a pin.

The first of Enoch’s books, published in January 2020, made the Amazon “bestseller” list. Well, kind of.

All books go on Amazon’s bestseller list, ranked by sales. Enoch’s book wasn’t in the top 10 — it languished at 727,728 on the “bestseller” chart. He wrote another one a few months later — again it was a contribution to petty evangelical squabbles. Just what the world needed.

As far as I can see, no one — evangelical or otherwise — has felt strongly enough about the Burkes to write a book about them.

These days, instead of writing books, Enoch spends his time trying to get sent to jail — it’s a peculiar form of self-harm.

Clowns in their homemade circus, the Burkes seem genuine in their belief that the world is out to get them.

But, truly, no one gives enough of a damn to bother victimising them. Poor Enoch had to go to extraordinary lengths before a judge punished him for contempt.

Christmas was coming, and here was this very earnest guy, academically brilliant, but too self-obsessed to notice that no one in the entire world (except maybe some brainless Twitter-mouths) wanted him in jail.

It’s a form of torture — judges who feel too much sympathy for Enoch to punish him as much as he’d apparently like them to.

Enoch still hangs around a school where no one wants him, perhaps hoping someone will send for the cops.

While he’s waiting, he tinkered with having a go at anti-transgenderism, but surely there are too many already on that bandwagon?

The sorry truth is the world has limited interest in what the Burkes have to say. Few care. Bog standard evangelical stuff is just not interesting.

We’ve all got things to do, Halloween decorations to hang, and already the Advent calendars are in the shops.

Trouble is, what the Burkes have to say is so weak that no one seems to find it interesting enough to either like it or to be offended by it.

No one finds these things controversial any more. We’ve become tolerant — to the dismay of those who like nothing better than a good evangelical row.

Poor Enoch ended up in jail not for anything to do with any beliefs about anything — he deliberately treated the courts with contempt, which means treating the law with contempt — and there’s a law against that.

It’s the awful fate of a would-be Christian martyr — walking around, carrying your own cross and your own nails, in the desperate hope you might meet someone who might care enough to crucify you, so you can suffer for your beliefs.

As the Mountjoy door closed behind Enoch, I thought I heard a plaintive whisper: “Thank you.”

Source: https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/gene-kerrigan-enoch-burke-and-family-are-the-clowns-in-their-own-homemade-circus/a1281870033.html?fbclid=IwAR3HHoZQTIN9NUrFuBCOJ9GbXHNgTeWidAoG94BLLQCtcGmbKpJfWqz60Uk