Crawford Gribben - The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland

Perhaps it is only now, after the collapse of Christian Ireland, that we can begin to recover its history. The rise and fall of Christian Ireland describes the slow emergence, long dominance, debilitating division and rapid decline of the communities of faith that for 1,500 years did most to shape and sustain the religious, social, and political life of this island and its people in their movements around the world. It shows how the beliefs and behaviours that sustained Christian Ireland went so long unquestioned and yet were so suddenly destroyedand how, in the aftermath of this sudden-onset secularization, while many Irish Christians have quite comfortably adapted to the new cultural landscape, and have appropriated its mores, others represent themselves as members of an increasingly powerless counter-culture, even as, in their adaption to this changing world, they have begun to evidence new signs of life.

I have written this book neither as elegy nor as eulogy. Published in the year that is both the 1500th anniversary of the birth of the islands most famous missionary, St Columba, and the one hundredth anniversary of the islands partition, this book has been, in part, a labour of love for the religious world in which I was formed. Growing up in a county Antrim family with a long history of commitment to the so-called Plymouth Brethren, in which I heard stories about fairies and accounts of charming, I grew to understand the possibility that widely held folk traditions, particularly in country areas, might point to the existence of a religious culture that in some respects includes a non-Christian supernatural and that in other respects transcends that faiths more recent divisions.

That might be an inauspicious way to begin to acknowledge my debts. This book draws upon almost three decades of conversations with friends and colleagues in literature, religion, and history at the University of Strathclyde, the University of Manchester, Trinity College Dublin, and Queens University Belfast. Over the years, those who have done most to stimulate (and, more often than not, correct) my thinking on this subject include Donald Akenson, Michael Brown, Jenny Butler, Eamon Cahill, James Cassidy, Marie Coleman, Philip Coleman, Niall Coll, Sean Connolly, Scott Dixon, Anne Dolan, John Dunne, Elaine Farrell, Maurice Fitzpatrick, Gladys Ganiel, Raymond Gillespie, Peter Gray, D. G. Hart, Gerard Howlin, Stephen Kelly, Jarlath Killeen, David Livingstone, David McKay, John Morrill, Graeme Murdock, Mary ODowd, Mchel Mainnn, Michel Siochr, Jane Ohlmeyer, Eve Patten, David Quinn, Ian Campbell Ross, Scott Spurlock, Timothy Stunt, Mark Sweetman, Mike Tardive, and Patrick Zuk. Sparky Booker, Matthew Brennan, Ian Campbell, Marie Coleman, and Elizabeth Dawson deserve special thanksif not actual canonizationfor reading and advising upon large parts of the text. I am enormously grateful to Salvador Ryan for his comments on the manuscript as a whole. And a very special thanks to Andrew Holmes, who on many happy occasions has challenged my methods, conclusions, evidence base, and almost everything else besides. The mistakes that continue to exist are entirely my own. For, as these friends will be only too aware, this book is too idiosyncratic in content; too fully organized; and too linear, perhaps even too teleological, in structure (though the title is a clue). As a short and necessarily selective survey, designed to be comprehensible rather than comprehensive, The rise and fall of Christian Ireland leaves many things unsaid.

Others have offered very practical assistance. I am extremely grateful to Matthew Cotton for commissioning this work, to the anonymous readers of the proposal, and to colleagues at Oxford University Press for guiding it through the process of production. Bill Hamilton of A.M. Heath has proved that the age of miracles has not ceased. Most of all I thank Pauline, who did more than anyone to make this project possible. I have written this book for our children, with love and in hope.

Crawford Gribben

Tulaigh na Mulln

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart

W.B. Yeats

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

Ezekiel 36:26