FOR MOST of the 20th century, the political contest in the north of Ireland was organised around a single division: broadly, between Protestant Unionists who wanted to remain linked to Britain and Catholic nationalists who favoured unity with the rest of Ireland. Just in the last few weeks, a new sort of politico-religious fault line has come into view more clearly, cutting across the old one in bizarre ways. Northern Ireland is beginning to see American-style culture wars, in which some Protestants and some Catholics bury their theological differences in a common conservative cause. On April 29th, a motion to legalise same-sex marriage was defeated in the Northern Irish assembly by 53 votes to 42. Both the Catholic and Presbyterian churches had urged members to vote "no"—but on that question, at least, politicians of Catholic heritage were less obedient to their church than their Protestant counterparts. Sinn Fein, the standard-bearer of militant Irish nationalism, proposed the motion, and one of its members lamented afterwards that the legislators had "missed an opportunity to bring equality to the LGBT community." Father Tim Bartlett, a Catholic spokesman, said the Democratic Unionist Party (the main "Protestant" party, established by the firebrand preacher Ian Paisley) was doing a better job of defending traditional values than any other political group. Think about that: the Catholic church praising a party whose founder's trademark was denouncing the pope as the Antichrist.

Meanwhile a respected middle-of-the-road politican, Justice Minister David Ford, was virtually forced to stand down as an elder of his local Presbyterian church because he supported the gay-marriage move, albeit with an amendment guaranteeing the right of churches to define marriage as they chose.

On the question of abortion, things are even more confusing. An "all-party pro-Life group" in the assembly includes DUP members, moderate Catholic nationalists and one member of Mr Ford's Alliance party. Here again, Sinn Fein has carved out the liberal ground, although most of its voters are more-or-less practising Catholics. On March 12th, Sinn Fein successfully blocked a move that would have banned abortions (only available in Northern Ireland in very limited circumstances) from being performed by private clinics. Some 53 assembly members were willing to back the move (which would have forced the closure of a newly-opened abortion clinic in Belfast) while 40 were against; but Sinn Fein used a procedural device, designed to stop one Northern Irish community imposing its will on the other.

In the Republic of Ireland, too, Sinn Fein is using party discipline to impose a liberal line on its representatives (whose personal views range from secular to devout) over abortion. A revision of the republic's ultra-strict abortion laws is on the cards after the death of an Indian woman who was refused a termination at a hospital in Galway. However Sinn Fein is still careful to present its position in technical and legalistic terms; its leaders have stressed that they are not a "pro-abortion" party. They may be indifferent to the Catholic hierarchy but still feel some sensitivity to Catholic voters.

On both sides of Ireland's sectarian divide, there has always been a blurring between religion and politics, with politicians using pious slogans and preachers plunging into the electoral arena. But right now, clerical influence over politics seems much stronger on the Protestant side than on the Catholic side. For example, some Protestant members of Northern Ireland's administration subscribe to a fundamentalist reading of the Creation story and believe that museums should incorporate "Creationist" ideas in presenting the history of the planet. That too is an argument that is much more familiar to Americans than it is to most people in relatively secular Europe.

Social and political connections between America and Ireland have been reinforced by many waves of migration: the Presbyterians who became Founding Fathers in the 18th century, the Catholics who fled the famine in the 19th century, and the economic migrants of the 20th and early 21st century. Ireland exported its own sectarian divisions to the New World; and the softening of Protestant-Catholic divisions in America, since the Kennedy era, has on balance had a benign effect on Ireland. In some ways, the advent of cultural strife on this side of the Atlantic feels like a sign that normal politics have replaced a weird time warp. But new culture wars have something in common with old sectarian wars; they can both provide a way for politicians to denounce their adversaries as not merely mistaken, but wicked.