David Hempton

Religion and Political Culture in Britain and Ireland

It is widely acknowledged that religion has been at the heart of the shaping of political culture in the British Isles since the Reformation; but what were the central components of that culture, how did they change over time, and how should one characterize the relationship between religion and political culture in modern Britain and Ireland at the beginning of a new century? At stake here is no mere exercise in the by-ways of cultural history, but rather the analysis of a vital ingredient of national identity in Britain and Ireland which has done much to shape their interaction with each other, with Europe and the wider world. This chapter will aim to explore some of the historical roots of religion and political culture in the British Isles before investigating three of its thorniest contemporary problems — the continuing conflict in Northern Ireland, the rise of new religious traditions in Britain as a result of population migrations from parts of the former British Empire, and the rapid decline of the old Christian denominations as part of the wider secularization of British culture.

Methodism in Irish Society, 1770–1830

JOHN WALKER, sometime fellow of Trinity College Dublin and arch-critic of everyones religious opinions but his own, wrote his Expostulatory Address to the Methodists in Ireland during one of the most remarkable outbreaks of rural revivalism in Irish history. Walker, who inevitably founded the Walkerites, not only condemned Methodist acquisitiveness, but also drew up a list of its Arminian sins after the style of the eighteenth-century Calvinistic polemicists. He alleged that Methodists were idolatrous in their veneration of Wesley, hypocritical in their class-meeting confessions, irrational in their pursuit of religious experience, arrogant in their supposed claims of Christian perfection and heretical in their interpretation of the doctrines of justification and sanctification. The chief importance of Walkers pamphlet was the reply it provoked from Alexander Knox, Lord Castlereaghs private secretary. As an admirer of Wesleys transparent piety and of the beneficial influence of Methodism on the labouring classes, Knox wrote a sensitive and sympathetic riposte.

Methodism and Politics in British Society, 1750-1850

1. Introduction 2. The Wesleyan Heritage 3. The 1790s: A Decade of Crises 4. Conservatism Through Conflict, 1800-20 5. Roman Catholic Emancipation, 1790-1830 6. Educational Politics