1. Christianity and
Identity in Ireland
Week 6: Irish Religious
Identities and the
People of God

2. I. THE STORY CONTINUES…

3. Formation of Protestant
Nation
• Sectarianism a fixture in Irish society after 1641
• Penal laws ensured wealth was concentrated in hands of a few
CoI Protestant families
• Land: 1703: 14%
1778: 5%
• Irish Parliament becomes incredibly important
• Dublin by 1710 second largest city in British Atlantic World
• Despite the grandeur and pomp of ascendency Ireland,
Protestant power is undeniably weak by English design
• 1717: Dissenting Protestantism legalised (though still
prohibitions)
• 1st, 2nd, 3rd class citizens
• CoI official church; ALL had to pay “tithes” to state church

7. Trans-Atlantic “Patriotism”
• Whig government treats Ireland as a colony
(mercantilism)
• William Molyneux, Jonathan Swift and others argue
for increased “Irish” independence
– Kingdom or colony?
• Describe themselves as “THE WHOLE IRISH
NATION” any problem with this?
• Powerful “undertakers” (Gratten and Flood) gain
prominence in Irish politics; Dublin Castle’s power
curtailed, George III tries to rectify this
• 100,000 Ulster Presbyterians emigrate to American
colonies
• 1775: American Revolutionary War begins, “no
taxation without representation”
• Networks of correspondence between American and
Irish “patriots”
• Benjamin Franklin in Ireland 1776
• Formation of “Volunteer” forces
• Appeal to Catholics
• 1778 and 1793 Catholic “relief acts”
• 1782: Irish constitution reframed
• But this raises “the Catholic question”

8. Rural Unrest
• Resistance to increasing pressures
• Catholic agrarian secret societies to
protect farmers
– Whiteboys (1760s)
– Ribbonmen (early 1800s-first
reference 1817)
– Oakboys (mid 1800s)
• Peep o’ day boys (1780s)
– Reaction to Catholic entry into linen
industry in Co. Armagh
• 21 September 1795
– Battle of Diamond
– Foundation of the Orange Order
• Originally:
– Loyalist
– Anti-Unionist

9. Rebellion to Union
• Scottish universities centre of
philosophical/scientific movement called
“The Enlightenment”
• Presbyterians split into conservative (“old
light”) and liberal (“new light”) camps
• Idea of Christian liberty abstracted to
include idea of “universal rights of man”
• 1791: Theobald Wolfe Tone publishes An
Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland
• Forms Society of United Irishmen
• Manage to attract Catholics and
Covenanters!
• Still undercurrent of sectarianism
• 1789: French Revolution
• 1798 Irish Rebellion degenerates into
sectarian massacres; 30,000 killed
• Agrarian unrest continues unabated
• Initially all groups are supportive of 1800
Act of Union

10. Catholic Emancipation
• Many campaign for repeal of Act of Union
• Urban: Young Ireland (Protestant)
– Non-sectarian
– Attracted many Catholics
– Desired Irish Republic
• Rural: Daniel O’Connell 1823
– Catholic Association
– 1 guinea subscription = six months rent for
labourer
– Sub-category ‘Catholic rent’ for 1 penny
• Popularized Catholic politicalisation
• 1820 Catholics with land over 40 shillings could
vote
– No Catholics in Parliament
• 1828 Daniel O’Connell elected as MP for Clare
• Result: Catholicism equated with nationalism;
politicisation of catholic population
(democratisation)
• Forced English Parliament to address
Emancipation
– O’Connell allowed to sit
– Obligation for tithes revoked

11. Famine & Revival
• Potato Blight strikes 1845 and 1846
• Terrible relief policy under Charles
Travelyen
• Up to 1 million died
– More from disease than starvation
– Not just Catholics—but mostly!
• Widespread evictions
• Massive emigration
– Significance of disgruntled ex-pats
• Population decreased by 20%
• 1859: “Great Awakening” begins in Connor
• Mainly a Presbyterian phenomenon
• What lessons can we learn from the Six mile
Water Revival?
• Revival helps to give sense of Protestant
solidarity
• EVANGELICALS BECOME
INTROVERTED AND LOSE SIGHT
OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY TO
CATHOLIC NEIGHBOURS

12. ‘We know nothing that can protect her from
the conspiracies and growing power of the
Papacy but a widespread revival.’
--Rev. William Magill

15. • 1922: Partition; with two essentially confessional
states religious identities and sectarian division
become entrenched
• But why did this happen?
• Is there another story which gives us more hope for the
future?

16. II. FORMATION OF RELIGIOUS
IDENTITIES: THE “CANON” OF
SECTARIANISM

17. Communal Identities
• Fredrik Barth: communities form identities by
differentiation and exclusion
• Identity is not an unalterable “essence” which can be
“passed on” be “pure” or become “diluted”
• “Constructed” by communities as they read/re-read
“their” stories and traditions (e.g. theology) in light of
particular circumstances
• There are exceptions – but I am talking about popular
religion and popular expressions of identity

18. Construction of Catholic-
Irish Identity
•Continentally trained Catholic Clergy wrote popular Gaelic
poetry
•5 sectarian poems from 1650-70 re-published and
distributed in bi-lingual versions to elites and clergy through
18th/19th centuries
•Played on Gael (Irish language speaker) and Gall (foreigner)
•10 surving manuscripts = ‘popular tradition’, 242 copies of
‘Ireland’s Dirge’ (c. 1655) survive!
•This combines in the late 17th/18th century with
developments in political philosophy to GRADUALLY
create an idea of CATHOLIC NATIONHOOD

19. Extracts from An Síogaí Rómhánach (The
Roman Vision) c. 1650
…Then none shall league with the Saxon,
Nor with the bare-faced Scot,
Then shall Erin be freed from settlers,
Then shall perish the Saxon tongue
The Gaels in arms shall triumph
Over the crafty, thieving, false sect of Calvin…
…True faith shall be uncontrolled;
The people shall be rightly taught
By friars, bishops, priests and clerics…

20. Irish = Gaelic
Irish = Catholic
Catholic = Gaelic

21. • Catholic forced to meet in illegal
mass-houses or ‘sacathlans’
• 18th century actually witnesses a
rejuvenation in Irish Catholicism
• Catholicism legalized in 1782
• This combines with the spirit of ‘On Sunday, 30th May 1784, St Mary's was
“Enlightenment” and Progress” opened in Crooked Lane (now Chapel Lane).
This was the first Catholic Church in Belfast
• St. Mary’s built in Belfast in 1784 and it was built at a time when there was a
strong ecumenical spirit within the town.
• 1782 census recorded 365 Catholics Indeed, its Protestant inhabitants contributed
living in Belfast substantially towards the cost of the building
and the 1st Belfast Volunteer Company, under
• 1866 45,000 Catholics living in the command of Captain Waddell
Cunningham, lined the Chapel yard as a guard
Belfast of honour, in full dress, and presented arms to
the priest as he passed into the Chapel.’

22. Construction of
Protestant-Irish Identity
• Fredrik Barth: communities form identities by differentiation and
exclusion
“In Ireland Protestantisn is really Protestant .. All that the members
of the Irish Protestant Church knows is that he is not a Roman
Catholic (G. B. Shaw, 1904)
• Increasingly Catholicism=Gaelicism; Royal Irish Society an
attempt to claim ownership of Gaelic culture
• Protestant identity formed by:
– anti-catholicism (differentiaiton from Catholic-Gaels)
– repressive English policies which curtailed the Irish Parliaments power
(kingdom or colony?, Patriotism)
– Minority position in Ireland, especially after Catohlic politicisation
(Protestant solidarity)

23. Construction of
Protestant-Irish Identity
•Irish historical texts were re-read and mixed with reformed
theology in Protestant Ireland to justify their anti-Catholicism
•Main argument was the degeneracy of Catholicism (an enemy of
“liberty”) and the supremacy of Protestantism (a champion of
“liberty”)
•This focused on the Bible – the Catholic church forbade the lay-
reading of the scriptures and thus deprived their people of truth;
an open Bible is still an Orange symbol
•The Catholic-Irish were therefore disloyal and dangerous because
they were Catholic
• Some proposed conversion but hindered by lack of funds,
desire and doctrine of election
•Increasingly out of touch with England but kept current by
minority status

24. Examples:
• James Ussher, 1620: “as Jehu said to Joram, “What peace can there be, as long as
the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many? So I must say
unto them: What peace can there be, as long as you suffer yourselves to be led by “the
mother of all harlots.”
• William Temple: The Irish Rebellion, 1646 – Catholics unconvertible
• 1662: Act of parliament, all people instructed to go to their place of
worship on 23rd October annually to remember the “the barbarous and
cruel plot to extirpate the Protestants.”
– Dropped from CoI calendar in 1859, not because of changing opinion but by
decree from London Parliament
• Archbishop of Armagh, 1745:
“You are to raise in your people a religious abhorrence of the Popish government and
polity, for I can never be brought to call Popery in the gross a religion… Their absurd
doctrines… their political government … make it impossible for them to give
any security of their being good governors, or good subjects in a
Protestant kingdom.”

25. • Sectarianism thrives on stereotypes, and
communal identities rooted in
differentiation from the otherness of
“others”
• The darker side of our identity usually
arises in times of crisis
– E.g. 1912
• Extremes help to normalise less-
pronounced sectarianism

26. III. RELIGIOUS IDENTITIES AND
THE PEOPLE OF GOD

27. • The fundamental problem: Constantinianism
• Problem II: Individualism
• examples from church history?
• The “Radical” reformation (Baptists, Mennonites) sought to
address the political dimension of the church
– Politics of Jesus, especially non-violence
– Distinctive communities, “not of this world”
– Prophetic responsibility to the world
– Take seriously idea of “conversion” and new identity
• Best exemplified in Ireland by Quakers and early Methodists

28. Philippians 3:20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from
there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
2 Corinthians 5:15-21 15 And he died for all, so that those who
live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died
and was raised for them. 16 From now on, therefore, we regard
no one from a human point of view;1 even though we once
knew Christ from a human point of view,2 we know him no
longer in that way. 17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new
creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has
become new! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to
himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of
reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the
world to himself,1 not counting their trespasses against them,
and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 20 So we are
ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through
us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in
him we might become the righteousness of God.