Sacred And Secular Martyrdom In Britain And Ireland Since 1914

During and immediately after the First World War, there was a merging of Christian and nationalist traditions of martyrdom, expressed in the design of war cemeteries and war memorials, and the state funeral of the Unknown Warrior in 1920. John Wolffe explores the subsequent development of these traditions of 'sacred' and 'secular' martyrdom, analysing the ways in which they operated - sometimes in parallel, sometimes merged together and sometimes in conflict with each other. Particular topics explored include the Protestant commemoration of Marian and missionary martyrs, and the Roman Catholic campaign for the canonization of the 'saints and martyrs of England'. Secular martyrdom is discussed in relation to military conflicts especially the Second World War and the Falklands. In Ireland there was a particularly persistent merging of sacred and secular martyrdom in the wake of the Easter Rising of 1916 although by the time of the Northern Ireland 'Troubles' in the later twentieth-century these traditions diverged. In covering these themes, the book also offers historical and comparative context for understanding present-day acts of martyrdom in the form of suicide attacks.

This edited collection examines the concept and nature of the ‘people’s martyrology’, raising issues of class, community, religion and authority. It examines modern martyrdom through studies of Peterloo; Tolpuddle; Featherstone; Tonypandy; Emily Davison, fatally injured by the King’s horse on Derby Day, 1913; the 1916 Easter Rising; Jarrow, ‘the town that was murdered, and martyred in the 1930s’; David Oluwale, a Nigerian killed in Leeds in 1965; and Bobby Sands, the IRA hunger striker who died in 1981. It engages with the burgeoning historiography of memory to try to understand why some events, such as Peterloo, Tonypandy and the Easter Rising, have become household names whilst others, most notably Featherstone and Oluwale, are barely known. It will appeal to those interested in British and Irish labour history, as well as the study of memory and memorialization.

After 1830 Catholicism in Britain and Ireland was practised and experienced within an increasingly secure Church that was able to build a national presence and public identity. With the passage of the Catholic Relief Act (Catholic Emancipation) in 1829 came civil rights for the United Kingdom's Catholics, which in turn gave Catholic organisations the opportunity to carve out a place in civil society within Britain and its empire. This Catholic revival saw both a strengthening of central authority structures in Rome, (creating a more unified transnational spiritual empire with the person of the Pope as its centre), and a reinvigoration at the local and popular level through intensified sacramental, devotional, and communal practices. After the 1840s, Catholics in Britain and Ireland not only had much in common as a consequence of the Church's global drive for renewal, but the development of a shared Catholic culture across the two islands was deepened by the large-scale migration from Ireland to many parts of Britain following the Great Famine of 1845. Yet at the same time as this push towards a degree of unity and uniformity occurred, there were forces which powerfully differentiated Catholicism on either side of the Irish Sea. Four very different religious configurations of religious majorities and minorities had evolved since the sixteenth-century Reformation in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Each had its own dynamic of faith and national identity and Catholicism had played a vital role in all of them, either as 'other' or, (in the case of Ireland), as the majority's 'self'. Identities of religion, nation, and empire, and the intersection between them, lie at the heart of this volume. They are unpacked in detail in thematic chapters which explore the shared Catholic identity that was built between 1830 and 1913 and the ways in which that identity was differentiated by social class, gender and, above all, nation. Taken together, these chapters show how Catholicism was integral to the history of the United Kingdom in this period.

This is a study of the relationship between Anglicans and the armed forces, of the military heritage and history of the Anglican Communion, and the changing nature of this relationship between the mid-Victorian period and the 1970s. This era spanned a period of imperial expansion and colonial conflict round the turn of the twentieth century, the two World Wars, the Cold War, wars of decolonisation, and Vietnam. In terms of armed conflict, it was the bloodiest period in the history of humanity and marked the advent of weaponry that had the capacity to extinguish human civilization. This book assesses the contribution of an expansive Anglican Communion to the armed forces of the English-speaking world, examines the ways in which this has been remembered, and explores its challenging legacy for the twenty-first century Church of England.

What does religion mean to modern Ireland and what is its recent social and political history? The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Modern Ireland provides in-depth analysis of the relationships between religion, society, politics, and everyday life on the island of Ireland from 1800 to the twenty-first century. Taking a chronological and all-island approach, it explores the complex and changing role of religion both before and after partition. The handbook's thirty-two chapters address long-standing historical and political debates about religion, identity, and politics, including religion's contributions to division and violence. They also offer perspectives on how religion interacts with education, the media, law, gender and sexuality, science, literature, and memory. Whilst providing insight into how everyday religious practices have intersected with the institutional structures of Catholicism and Protestantism, the book also examines the island's increasing religious diversity, including the rise of those with 'no religion'. Written by leading scholars in the field and emerging researchers with new perspectives, this is an authoritative and up-to-date volume that offers a wide-ranging and comprehensive survey of the enduring significance of religion on the island.

Examines the role of Christianity in British statecraft, politics, media, the armed forces and in the education and socialization of the young during the Second World War. This volume presents a major reappraisal of the role of Christianity in Great Britain between 1939 and 1945, examining the influence of Christianity on British society, statecraft, politics, the media, the armed forces, and on the education and socialization of the young. Its chapters address themes such as the spiritual mobilization of nation and empire; the limitations of Mass Observation's commentary on wartime religious life; Catholic responses to strategic bombing; servicemen and the dilemma of killing; the development of Christian-Jewish relations, and the predicament of British military chaplains in Germany in the summer of 1945. By demonstrating the enduring -even renewed- importance of Christianity in British national life, British Christianity and the Second World War also sets the scene for some major post-war developments. Though the war years triggered a 'resacralization' of British society and culture, inherent racism meant that the exalted self-image of Christian Britain proved sadly deceptive for post-war immigrants from the Caribbean. Wartime confidence in the prospective role of the state in religious education soon transpired to be ill-founded, while the profound upheavals of war -and even the bromides of 'BBC Religion'- were, in the longer term, corrosive of conventional religious practice and traditional denominational loyalties. This volume will be of interest to historians of British society and the Second World War, twentieth-century British religion, and the perennial interplay of religion and conflict.

The phenomenon of martyrdom is more than 2000 years old but, as contemporary events show, still very much alive. Martyrdom: Canonisation, Contestation and Afterlives examines the canonisation, contestation and afterlives of martyrdom and connects these with cross-cultural acts and practices of remembrance. Martyrdom appeals to the imagination of many because it is a highly ambiguous spectacle with thrilling deadly consequences. Imagination is thus a vital catalyst for martyrdom, for martyrs become martyrs only because others remember and honour them as such. This memorialisation occurs through rituals and documents that incorporate and re-interpret traditions deriving from canonical texts. The canonisation of martyrdom generally occurs in one of two ways: First, through ritual commemoration by communities of inside readers, listeners, viewers and participants, who create and recycle texts, re-interpreting them until the martyrs ultimately receive a canonical status, or second, through commemoration as a means of contestation by competing communities who perceive these same people as traitors or terrorists. By adopting an interdisciplinary orientation and a cross-cultural approach, this book goes beyond both the insider admiration of martyrs and the partisan rejection of martyrdoms and concisely synthesises key interpretive questions and themes that broach the canonised, unstable and contested representations of martyrdom as well as their analytical connections, divergences and afterlives in the present.