Belief in Power: Building a National Church of Ireland, 1660-1689

This dissertation explores the ways that Church of Ireland clergymen of the Restoration era (1660-1689) used religious beliefs to construct their identity as Ireland’s national church. The episcopal Protestant church was reestablished, along with the monarchy, in 1660 following two decades of war and religious pluralism that saw the church’s leadership scattered and its services banned under puritan rule. Those who led the restored church understood themselves to be protectors of the spiritual interests of the kingdom while the king upheld its temporal interests. However, the patchwork of ethnicities and religions in Ireland meant that the “national church” in reality encompassed only a tiny fraction of the island’s population. The clergy therefore faced an uphill battle as they sought to create a space for their church in the public sphere while dealing with pressures from Protestant Dissenters, the majority Catholics, and a government more interested in peace than in religious conformity.

This dissertation draws on sources of “public theology” – published sermons, as well as personal correspondence, tracts, and manuscript sermons – from a number of clergymen to establish a broad picture of the Restoration clergy. These works are examined for common themes that the clergymen presented to the laity and government officials in order to determine the churchmen’s key concerns. Topical chapters explore the religious context of the seventeenth century, ideas of authority and episcopal church structure, pastoral ministry among the laity, the balance of variety and uniformity in theological positions among the clergy, and the theological roots of objections to supposed disorder and sedition among the Scots Presbyterians. Contested issues that have hitherto been perceived as a matter of politics and ethnic prejudice are thereby revealed as having foundations in genuine religious belief.

This dissertation argues for a recentering of religion in discussions of Restoration Ireland. From it, we see that an understanding of religious belief changes our knowledge of matters previously considered solely through social or political lenses. We can also appreciate the ways that the Church of Ireland’s minority status shaped its post-1660 development in the church of the Protestant Ascendancy of the long eighteenth century.