Evangelical Protestantism In Ulster Society 1740 1890

First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Though many of its early leaders were immigrants, most histories of the Stone-Campbell Movement have focused on the unique, American-only message of the Movement. Typically, the story tells the efforts of Christians seeking to restore New Testament Christianity or to promote unity and cooperation among believers. Among the Early Evangelicals charts a new path showing convincingly that the earliest leaders of this Movement cannot be understood apart from a robust evangelical and missionary culture that traces its roots back to the eighteenth century. Leaders, including such luminaries as Thomas and Alexander Campbell, borrowed freely from the outlook, strategies, and methodologies of this transatlantic culture. More than simple Christians with a unique message shaped by frontier democratization, the adherents in the Stone-Campbell Movement were active participants in a broadly networked, uniquely evangelical enterprise.

Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster is the most influential and historically significant sector of Christianity in Northern Ireland. This innovative and controversial book explores different Evangelical responses to the declining fate of Ulster Unionism during the period from Partition in 1921 to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Focusing on how religious belief has interacted with national identity in a context of political conflict, it eschews a reductionist or purely historical approach to interpreting religion. Rather, using a combination of historical and theological material, Patrick Mitchel offers a critical assessment of how Evangelical identities in Ulster have embodied the religious beliefs and values to which they subscribe. Evangelical Protestantism is often associated only with the Orange Order and with the controversial figure of Ian Paisley. This book's fresh analysis of a spectrum of Evangelical opinion, including the frequently overlooked moderate Evangelicals, provides a more rounded picture that shows why and how Evangelical Christians in Ulster are deeply divided over politics, national identity, and the current Peace Process. Patrick Mitchel concludes with a critical assessment of the political and theological challenges facing different Evangelical identities in the context of identity conflict in Northern Ireland. This is an invaluable guide to understanding both the past and contemporary mindset of Ulster Protestantism.

This volume documents the evolution and impact of one of the most enduring sources and symbols of sectarian conflict in Ireland - Protestant millennialism. The volume explores new sources and offers new conclusions, setting a new research agenda and emphasizing the vitality of religious discourse in Irish studies.

This comprehensive investigation into the involvement of ordinary Christians in Church activities and in anti-clerical dissent, explores a phenomenon stretching from Britain and Germany to the Americas and beyond. It considers how evangelicalism, as an anti-establishmentarian and profoundly individualistic movement, has allowed the traditionally powerless to become enterprising, vocal, and influential in the religious arena and in other areas of politics and culture.

The first general survey of the history of women in early modern Ireland. Based on an impressive range of source material, it presents the results of original research into women’s lives and experiences in Ireland from 1500 to 1800. This was a time of considerable change in Ireland as English colonisation, religious reform and urbanisation transformed society on the island. Gaelic society based on dynastic lordships and Brehon Law gave way to an anglicised and centralised form of government and an English legal system.

Taking account of broader patterns of growth, the focus of this book is Methodism in the British Isles. Hempton discusses why Methodism, the most important religious movement in the English-speaking world in the 18th and 19th centuries, grew when and where it did and what was the nature of the Methodist experience for those who embraced it. He also explores the themes of law, politics and gender which lie at the heart of Methodist influence on individuals, communities and social structures.