Early Christianity in Ireland (400-1000)We know that there were Christians in Ireland before the arrival of Saint Patrick because Pope Celestine sent a man called Palladios to be a bishop in Ireland in A.D. 431. Christianity may have come to Ireland through the capture of English Christians by Irish pirates who brought them as slaves to this island.
Druidism, including the worship of the sun, was the main religion of the time.
Patrick
Patrick was born Maeymn Soccat around 386 B.C.. He was born in Bannauem Tabumiae which was in Roman Britain. This was probably somewhere between modern Carlisle and Bristol.
His father was some sort of Christian minister, however, like many young people who grow up in Christian homes, he did not inherit the belief of his parents.
When he was sixteen years old his world was turned upside down. He was captured by Irish pirates and taken to Ireland as a slave. He looked after animals here for six years.
There are many myths about Patrick, but we can learn about the real Patrick from two of his Latin works that survive. One of these is his Confession (a spiritual autobiography). In this Confession he talks of how God brought him to faith: 'the Lord opened the sense of my unbelief that I might at last remember my sins and be converted with all my heart to the Lord my God.'
From that time on he spent his time praying as he tended the animals.
One night, in a dream, Patrick was told that he would return home. This prompted him to walk a long distance until he found a ship. Initially he was turned away from the ship. However as he walked from the ship one of the sailors cried out to him, 'come, hurry, we shall take you on good faith; make friends with us in whatever way you like.'
After three days they reached land. Then for twenty-eight days they travelled through deserted countryside. Hunger began to overcome them. The captain looked at Patrick and said: 'Tell me, Christian, you say your God is grand and powerful, why then do you not pray for us? As you can see, we are starving from hunger, it is unlikely indeed that we will ever see a human being again?'
Patrick replied, 'be truly converted with all your heart to the Lord my God, because nothing is impossible for him, that this day he may send you food on your way until you be satisfied, for his abundance is everywhere.'
Suddenly a herd of pigs appeared on the road before them and they ate and were satisfied.
A number of years later, back in Britain, he had a vision in which a man named Victorius gave him a letter. The letter began, 'the voice of the Irish.' At the same time the vision brought him to the west coast of Ireland where people were crying out, 'we ask thee, boy, come work among us once more.'
Patrick then came to Ireland as a missionary. He would encourage us to continue in his missionary work writing, 'I came to Ireland to preach the gospel' and we 'ought to fish well and diligently.'
The Land of Saints and Scholars
Ireland in the early medieval period was later referred to as the land of saints and scholars. It was a time of monasteries. Christianity had spread quickly. By the seventh century it was a hub of learning and scholarship. Illustrated manuscripts (like the boom of Kells, above), sculpture and metalwork all flourished at this time.
Irish Christianity from 1101-the Reformation
The early Irish Christian were somewhat independent from the Catholic church. However, in 1101 A.D. the only ever English pope, Adrian IV, ordered the Synod of Cashel (above). This synod brought the Irish church firmly under the control of the English Catholic church.
The Gaelic Irish resented control by the Normans. In 1169 the Normans (English) invaded. These Normans originally maintained their own culture, but soon they assimilated. Names beginning with 'Fitz' (meaning 'son of') are Norman in origin.
For centuries the popes threated an anathema on anyone helping the Gaelic Irish rebel against English rule.
Protestant Domination
In 1534, Henry VIII (above) declared himself to be the supreme head of the church of England (and as a result the head of the Church of Ireland).
During the plantations (1550s - 1620s) there was an influx of English Anglicans and Scottish Presbyterians (in Ulster). The lands of Gaelic lords were transferred to these new residents.
Cromwell (above) was a highly religious Protestant who saw the pope as the antichrist and Catholics as being followers of the antichrist. Amongst his troops, who caused such carnage in Ireland in 1649, were Baptists and Congregationalists.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries various Penal Laws were passed in Britain and Ireland that restricted the rights of Roman Catholics (and to a lesser extent dissenting Protestants). Catholic Emancipation was the process in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries of removing many of these restrictions.
John Wesley's visits to Ireland
John Wesley was a Church of England minister who came to an evangelical understanding and experience of the faith. He travelled widely on horseback and preached in public places. He preached in the graveyard in Adare.
In 1747 he visited Ireland for the first of twenty-one visits. He preached in every county in Ireland except Kerry and Roscommon. The Archbishop of Dublin was not happy with having a 'field preacher' speaking from any pulpit in Dublin.
In 1749 he visited Limerick for the first time.
Much of the opposition to Methodism in Ireland at that time was from the pulpits of Church of Ireland churches, where angry clergy condemned the 'enthusiasts'. They also opposed Methodism through the production of pamphlets against the movement.
Sometimes the local magistrates blamed Methodist preachers when they were disturbances at their preaching. In Clonakilty in 1752 the local magistrate, who happened to be a Church of Ireland clergyman, ordered a Methodist preacher, Thomas Walsh, to cease preaching. When Walsh declined, he was put in prison. A sympathetic crowd gathered outside the prison, and Walsh preached through the grated windows.
Other evangelicals
In 1746 the famous Moravian preacher, John Cennick, attracted large crowds at the former Baptist chapel in the Dublin Liberties. Windows had to be removed from that building so that he could be carried to the pulpit over the heads of the expectant hearers.
There was, and is, a movement of evangelicals in the Church of Ireland.
In 1820s, Lady Powerscourt in Wicklow caused a scandal by leaving the Church of Ireland. A curate called John Nelson Darby also left the church. The meetings that were held in Powerscourt focused on unfulfilled Bible prophesies and eventually led to the formation of the Plymouth Brethren.
The Merrion Hall (above, now the Davenport Hotel) was a 2,800 seater Brethren Auditorium.
In Antrim, in 1859, a revival begun from a prayer meeting in a farm house. It is said that over 100,000 people came to a personal conversion experience.
Henry Grattan Guinness (of the Guinness brewing family) preached to great crowds in Dublin. Doctor Thomas Barnardo (founder of Barnardo's charity) was baptised as a young adult in the Baptist on Abbey Street in Dublin.
Modern Evangelicalism
In 1922 the Irish Free State was established. After this there was a decline in the Protestant population, and evangelicals associated themselves with this community. In the proceeding decades evangelism consisted mainly in open air meetings, door to door work, special meetings and the handing out of tracts. By the 1970s there were few evangelicals in Ireland.
In the 1970s there was the charismatic renewal in Ireland. This renewal lead to the formation of independent charismatic churches.
Economic growth in recent years has led to a rise in Immigration. Some of these new residents are evangelicals, and we have seen a rise in the number of African churches. There has been a significant work in Dublin by Romanian Christians to their fellow Romanians.
One thing that has benefitted the growth in evangelicalism is the willingness to see itself as not simply being a Protestant expression of Christianity, as unfortunately the term Protestant is loaded with baggage in our land.
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