The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland

by Crawford Gribben

Ireland has long been regarded as a 'land of saints and scholars'. Yet the Irish experience of Christianity has never been simple or uncomplicated. The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland describes the emergence, long dominance, sudden division, and recent decline of Ireland's most importantreligion, as a way of telling the history of the island and its peoples.

Throughout its long history, Christianity in Ireland has lurched from crisis to crisis. Surviving the hostility of earlier religious cultures and the depredations of Vikings, evolving in the face of Gregorian reformation in the 11th and 12th centuries and more radical Protestant renewal from the
16th century, Christianity has shaped in foundational ways how the Irish have understood themselves and their place in the world. And the Irish have shaped Christianity, too. Their churches have staffed some of the religion's most important institutions and developed some of its most popular ideas.

But the Irish church, like the island, is divided. After 1922, a border marked out two jurisdictions with competing religious politics. The southern state turned to the Catholic church to shape its social mores, until it emerged from an experience of sudden-onset secularization to become one of the
most progressive nations in Europe. The northern state moved more slowly beyond the protestant culture of its principal institutions, but in a similar direction of travel.

In 2021, fifteen hundred years on from the birth of Saint Columba, Christian Ireland appears to be vanishing. But its critics need not relax any more than believers ought to despair. After the failure of several varieties of religious nationalism, what looks like irredeemable failure might actually
be a second chance. In the ruins of the church, new Columbas and Patricks shape the rise of another Christian Ireland.

Genres: History, Religion, Christianity, Church History, Ireland

352 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2021

About the author

A cultural and literary historian whose work concentrates on the development and dissemination of religious ideas, Crawford Gribben is Professor of History at Queen's University, Belfast.

Reviews

[Eva · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sweeping overview of the 1500 year history of Christianity Ireland. I struggled with the beginning but the pace picked up following the second chapter.

Throughly throughly enjoyed this book and the remarks of ATQ Stewart towards the end.

[ThePrill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good overview and excellent footnotes throughout. A great place to start when investigating the subject, and the reading list will take you anywhere else you might wish to investigate. Originally began reading with the intention that it might prove for undergraduate dissertation inspiration. Providentially, it has proved to be of some help for my postgraduate thesis, two years on. Chapter 1 particularly interesting in general, Chapter 4 of especial reference for the upcoming thesis. Some insightful reflections on the factors that influenced secularisation, including the Troubles, the impact of US popular culture bleeding into Europe (and particularly the historic links between the USA and Ireland that meant its culture struck hardest there), the liberalisation of Catholic social policy, and the scandals that wracked any credibility that the Catholic Church held in Ireland.

Where Gribben has a very controversial take on things is that he is glad to see the end of Christian Ireland, as it was a culture built upon influence from the Continent, manifested religion in physical structures and clerical authority, and equivocated religion with politics. Basically, his conclusion is that religious nationalism could only last for so long before it imploded, and he does not offer any real tenable solution for this. A great deal of the book was solid, but it ended upon a pietistic note.

[Joshua Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

A densely historical work, which to the student of history, sparks the mind and imagination of the magical place that is Ireland, as Christianity came to that little edge of the earth and grew into centuries of Irish Christianity. However, as Gribben details, all was not well, the war torn little island shed far too much blood and hatred than it’s size warranted. Plagued by religio-political wars for centuries, they ended up shooting themselves. The way Gribben describes the rapid decline of Christianity in Ireland pulled my spirit into deep sadness, which brought me face to face with the words of Jesus that he who lives by the sword dies by the sword. So did Christian Ireland. While the Old Ireland is lost, Christianity is not. While I don’t agree with all of Gribben’s conclusions, they are thought provoking, and he leaves us with hope for the longing you are made to feel: the Augustine and the Patrick that made the first Christian Ireland are still with us, so God can give us more Augustine’s and more Patrick’s to make a second. God save Ireland!

[Nathanael Barr · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Christianity will survive in post-Christian Ireland, but, as long as believers keep on praying and reading their Bibles, it will be radically transformed…”

The aim of this book is to chart a history of the shaping on the island of Ireland and its people since the coming of Christianity to the present day. Marking the transition from pagan to Christian, and articulating the more recent development leaving a Christian identity largely behind. This is an ambitious aim for the book, yet wonderfully Gribben provides a fairly comprehensive study. Using a variety of sources, and looking to some of the best of Irish Historians, Gribben charts a clear and intelligible course through the unfolding events. The book makes clear the nuances of division in Irish history, and provides a crucial understanding of the relationships between Catholicism and Protestantism, as well as Nationalism and Loyalism. The book then becomes essential reading for anyone interested in religious action (and to an extent its impact in politics) in Ireland, or anyone seeking to work among the communities across the island of Ireland. The final section of the conclusion provides and exciting and encouraging perspective on the future of Christianity in Ireland, though ‘Christian Ireland’ may be dead, Christianity is not. The footnotes provided a useful well of resources to support further and deeper study in particular eras within the history. Not a hard read, and absolutely worthwhile.

[Mark Loughridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading for Irish Christian leaders.

Thorough and compelling. Filled in many gaps on my knowledge. Balanced and thoughtful. Historical and analytical. Useful analysis in the conclusion.

[Susannah Poteet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have you ever seen Derry Girls and thought, “wow, what an interesting country with a fascinating religious culture and tradition- I wish I knew more about Ireland dating back to prehistory!”? Well, then I have the book for you!

This book is a terrific read, telling the complex and nuanced story of Christian Ireland. Starting with a background on Irish paganism and prehistory, Crawford Gribben offers an excellent insight and explanation of every period of Irish Christian history since the arrival of Christian history in 432.

This book is not just a history book, but a testament to the skill and research of Gribben, and also a necessary tool for anyone interested in the modern secularization of Ireland (both Northern and Southern).

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Dora · Rating 4 out of 5]

Craw knows what’s up.

[Gordon Walker · Rating 2 out of 5]

To trace 'The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland" is a vast ambition, and so it isn't surprising that Gribben seems to have been overwhelmed by it. It's a bad sign that, at the outset, he defines his goal in strangely nebulous terms. His purpose is, "to investigate the ways in which religious beliefs and behaviours have been lived out in the Irish experience of Christianity". He will investigate, not their beliefs, but the way those beliefs are "lived out", whatever that means. He pursues, not Irish Christianity: a tangible, historical, cultural thing, but the Irish 'experience' of Christianity, a vague, subjective, and ultimately impossible to recover echo of that thing.
His overview of the pre-Christian religious context is fascinating, particularly in relation to the particular challenges of evangelising a pre-literate culture, although it's hard to believe that this challenge was somehow unique to Ireland. His portrait of Patrick as an apostle extraordinary in his ordinariness rings true and his characterisation of the challenges of Gregory VII's interventions as a 'Catholic reformation' is intriguing, particularly as he contextualises it in the wake of the Great Schism of 1054AD. The degree of sometimes murderous violence among Irish monks during the Viking crisis is shocking, but raises the question of just how Christian Ireland really was in this period. In fact, defining what it means to talk about 'Christian Ireland' is something Gribben never seems to get around to, an omission which becomes very problematic when he declares 'Christian Ireland' to be over towards the end. If we don't really know what it was, then it's hard to evaluate the significance of its ending, or even whether or not it really has. Of course, even what "the Irish Church" means has been unclear. Sometimes it's the whole Christian populace, Catholic and protestant; sometimes it's the Church of Ireland; sometimes exclusively the Catholic Church; sometimes who knows what?
It's when the English show up that the story starts to get really complex and his lack of grip starts to show. He talks about how the Irish parliament was subordinated to the English by Poyning's Law without bothering to describe what that law was, or required (p85). On page 128 he mentions 'souperism' but makes no attempt to describe what that term means until page 149. On page 86 he writes "by the early sixteenth century the difference between the Irish and English colonists was finally reduced to one of blood" - which seems to have nothing to do with the context. One gets used to relying on Wikipedia sometimes just to keep following the thread.
His weakness for (what appears to be) a clever line shows up when he says that, "the protestant reformation failed to persuade the majority of Catholics - but it failed to persuade a large minority of Irish protestants" (p91). Which sounds insightful until you start thinking about it. Does he believe that the nonconformists aren't really a part of the reformation because they aren't Anglicans? Is he suggesting there was another stream of reformation? But at least the line sounds good. Again, on page 154 he says that in the 19th century, "several varieties of Catholicism were in existence", a line that is meant to be a surprising twist in response to the usual Irish stew of protestant denominations. The problem is that he never proves his claim, he offers no list of such varieties, only an apparently chronological account of how Catholicism changed, which isn't the same thing.
Sometimes it feels as if the text was subject to a severe and hurried edit to cut the word count. On page 95 he talks about how monastic land was confiscated and used for "a new university", but omits the name of that university, only mentioning six pages later that Trinity was built on such land leaving the reader to guess that they are one and the same. On p119 he describes the execution of Archbishop Plunkett of Armagh, only to follow it up by saying that, "there were no executions... in Ireland", which seems contradictory until you realise he has forgotten to mention (or edited out the explanation) that Plunkett was actually tried in England. On page 133 he says, "As early as 1711 William King, the Anglican archbishop of Dublin, recognised that the protestant strategy was not designed to achieve religious change" but is silent about when, or in what terms, or what context, he apparently confessed this. The observation is thus left open, and ultimately pointless. On page 154 he mentions the, "decision by Pope Benedict XIV (1740-1758) to reduce the number of priests in Ireland". How do you possibly drop a claim like that into the narrative without giving any hint at the context in which Benedict made the decision or the motives that might have inspired it? At the very least you would say that, after examination, there is no obvious explanation, but if anything to that effect ever existed it has been swept away for reasons unknown.
On some issues he can't even hold a consistent position. On the penal laws he says, "the Irish situation was exceptional only insofar as its persecution of religious minorities was less severe than it was elsewhere" (p137), apparently having forgotten that barely a dozen pages earlier (p124) he had made the point that the Irish situation was exceptional in that this kind of persecution was constraining, not a minority, but a majority.
Sometimes the language seems to break down entirely: on p102 the domination of the Church of Ireland by Presbyterian clergy from Scotland is called, incomprehensibly, an, "attempt at comprehension"! What does that even mean? On p110 he writes, "While the Scots remained much more committed to upholding the claims of the Covenant and Westminster Confession... they were also more effective at communicating their ideas to Irish-speaking listeners", as if the two goals were somehow contradictory.
The footnotes are an endless source of disappointment. They are copious but are useful only in an academic, box-ticking sense. Time after time he will cite, "one witness", only to offer the witnesses' words without their name, their position or any indication of why their opinion should matter and why we should listen to them, and the footnote offers nothing but the name of the book where those answers are presumably locked away.
The writing is tighter when he gets to the 20th century, which seems to be the only part of the book many online reviewers are interested in. It may explain why the earlier deficiencies went unnoted. Overall it's book that's intriguing to skim over but which become more opaque, and more frustrating, the more closely you read it. It's intensely frustrating because it should be a lot better than it is. Perhaps it was simply to big a subject for the writer.

[Chris Wray · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an outstanding book in which Crawford Gribben shows the centrality of Christianity to Irish history and lived experience. His thoughtful analysis and critique enable contemporary Irish Christians to both understand where we stand today and learn from our past. In short, earthly power (particularly political power) and Christianity are a poisonous mix, and one in which Christianity is discounted and diluted at the expense of the power. He sets the scene wonderfully with this opening comment: "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 destroyed and 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." Inspired by his own Christian upbringing, and the diversity and complexity of social and political opinion within it, he has "written this book neither as elegy nor as eulogy...I have tried to recognize both what binds together supposed enemies and what sometimes keeps friends apart...This book may be unfashionable in its effort to put religion back at the centre of Irish history and to enquire about the meaning of Irish Christianity. It does not provide a history of the Irish church, or of its theological achievements, but sets out to investigate the ways in which religious beliefs and behaviours have been lived out in the Irish experience of Christianity."

Dr Gribben's high-level narrative provides a more than adequate framework for the detailed insights on aspects of Irish church history that inform this objective, and the result is a fascinating and thought-provoking piece of social history. Our knowledge of the earliest period of Irish Christianity is inevitably sketchy, but what we do know with certainty is that the Irish Church developed with a high degree of institutional and theological independence from Rome. One curious aspect of this, different to much of the rest of Europe, was the power of the monasteries and abbots compared to the episcopal authorities. This changed, however, in the twelfth century with the Gregorian reforms. The slow and uncertain pace of this reform in Ireland justified an English invasion to attempt the reconversion of the island: "In the aftermath of the English conquest, the structures of the Irish church were remodelled according to European norms, so that the existing system of governance that balanced the power of bishops and monastic institutions was undermined, with authority being placed more effectively in the hands of bishops, by whom the more advanced stages of the papal programme would be most effectively rolled out. In the later part of the twelfth century, the conquest pushed forward an agenda for change that had already shaped the Irish church, in what might be regarded as its Catholic reformation." One result of this was that religious differences began to be rooted in ethnicity, a theme that would echo down through the centuries in Irish Christianity. Gribben concludes that, "One thousand years after the arrival of Patrick, 600 years after the earliest Viking raids, and three centuries after the English invasion, the Christian religion dominated Irish culture...Despite the divisions in the church, the peoples of Ireland were held together not by a common culture, language, or ethnicity, but by a shared allegiance to the church."

A further development came in the early sixteenth century, when "the difference between the Irish and the English colonists was finally reduced to one of blood. This is the context for the beginnings of what would become Irish nationalism: a distinctive cultural identity may have promoted ideas of national belonging under the Anglo-Normans and an ethnic and then religious collective identity under the Tudors and Stuarts. And this may be part of the reason why the church was so successful on the eve of the reformation. It existed as a genuinely incorporating body that provided the two ethnic groups on the island with a common identity, and offered a cultural combination that would be reinforced as its institutions were threatened by a new wave of ecclesiastical reform. In shared institutions, if not in a common identity, the peoples of the island participated in a vigorously Christian Ireland." The idea of an Ireland that is diverse ethnically but united religiously is quite alien to us today. That is largely because the convulsive events of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries shattered this "distinctive sense of collective belonging," as an unfortunate by-product of the Protestant reformation and Catholic counter-reformation.

A hugely significant event in the shift towards the ethno-religious Irish nationalism that is so familiar to us today was the War of the Three Kingdoms (the English Civil War in old money). In Ireland, the war was "chaotic and confusing. By the end of the decade, there were five armies in the field, each operating with independent leadership and in a bewildering succession of alliances, in which a militia made up of planters, an army of Scottish Presbyterians, the army of the English parliament, an army of Irish royalists, and the Confederate army fought against and occasionally alongside each other, and sometimes in trans-confessional alliances that qualify any claim that, whatever its reality elsewhere, the conflict in Ireland was a religious war. The Irish conflict was fought for political ideals that were only pragmatically overlaid with religious pride and prejudice." Cromwell's invasion in 1649 simplified things greatly as he fought and defeated anyone, Protestant or Catholic, who supported the king.

Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, significant demographic changes continued to change the face of Irish Christianity. The proportion of the population who were Catholic fell, as the proportion of Protestants grew from 2% in 1600 to 27% by 1700. However, both Catholics and the significant proportion of non-Anglican Protestants had to contend with the penal laws: "dissenters-like their Catholic neighbours-found Ireland's ancien régime to be a very cold house. Introduced over five decades, and in almost haphazard fashion, penal laws excluded Catholics and dissenters from participation in the new state...Similar laws existed elsewhere in Europe, of course, where national churches clamped down on the religious practice of those minorities who refused to submit to their demands. But in Ireland the situation was reversed. In Ireland, it was the established church that represented the minority population, and its members protected their status through laws, institutions, and cultures that repressed the majority-including those large numbers of dissenters upon whose loyalty to the regime, whose hostility to Catholicism, and whose willingness to bear arms the security of the state depended. While there were certainly regional variations, the laws regarding land-owning were more vigorously pursued than were the laws against religious practice...though they could be more robustly enforced in moments of crisis...Despite their sectarian character, the penal laws were designed to uphold the privileges of the minority of Anglicans and were not intended to persuade members of other denominations to convert...The penal laws appeared to police religious difference, but they worked to protect the interests of a social and economic elite, even as a new Catholic middle class began to consolidate around interests in trade." These passages perfectly articulate the strange, and ultimately unsustainable, character both of the Irish penal laws and of the position of the Anglican Establishment. Gribben points out that the Irish establishment rested on such a narrow social base that it was perpetually vulnerable and made more so by how the laws simultaneously frustrated the Catholic middle class and encouraged conditional loyalty among dissenting Protestants. In assessing the Penal Laws, Gribben concludes quite fairly that in comparison to similar laws elsewhere in Europe they were both reasonable (in that they were designed to guard against the instability of the state, however ineffectively) and moderate (their biggest impact was to the Catholic landowning class rather than on Catholics as such).

The instability that resulted from the creation of two distinct communities on the island (the minority who were members of the Anglican ascendancy, and the majority who were not) spilt over into violent uprising in 1798, in what one historian described as "probably the most concentrated episode of violence in Irish history." As Gribben comments, "The reign of terror that followed upon the French Revolution offers a telling comparison: it lasted three years, in a population six times larger than that of Ireland, and led to 15,000 deaths. The United Irish rebellion lasted three months, and left 30,000 dead. None of the movement's aims were achieved, for instead of becoming an independent, democratic republic, Ireland was incorporated into the United Kingdom...instead of bringing Protestants and Catholics together, the revolutionary movement had driven them even further apart...The rebellion provoked yet another reconfiguration of religious politics. A group that inclined towards republicanism retained the movement's hopes of revolutionary change, realizing that the doing away with the Irish establishment required doing away with monarchy too. As they did so, those dissenters who feared that the rising had unleashed terrible atavistic violence lined up to support the union." The resulting binary Catholic/Protestant and Nationalist/Unionist divide has defined Irish political history since.

The divide between Catholics and Protestants was further increased by the mid-nineteenth-century Evangelical revival, and Gribben's commentary on this is fascinating: "Promoting an intense but generic spirituality, and largely avoiding questions of denominational difference, the revival united northern protestants. In its aftermath, evangelicals nevertheless understood themselves as a distinct community, which reaffirmed denominational identities while also transcending them. Evangelicals prized religious ideas such as justification by faith alone above the political doctrines by which their ancestors had been drawn into common cause with Catholics. This triumph of religious over political identities consolidated a new set of social and electoral divisions that survived the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. The effect of the 1859 revival was that the communities of Irish protestants became both more denominationally diverse and more politically united." So, a shared evangelical faith and a shared fear of Home Rule (and the perceived likelihood of consequent 'Rome Rule') succeeded in uniting Protestants where the Penal Laws had failed to do so.

He also comments very insightfully on the efforts of the Catholic Church, and especially under Archbishop (later Cardinal) Cullen to revitalise Catholic devotional life in the lead up to the establishment of the Irish Free State: "in creating this disciplined Catholic community, the devotional revolution that he sponsored made a powerful contribution to the sense of nationhood that would underlie the achievements of cultural and political nationalists, and so would determine much of the religious, political, and cultural experience of twentieth-century Ireland...The island's principal religious communities would be brought together in a single jurisdiction under the moral and social oversight of the Catholic Church." Furthermore, "For all that partition offered new opportunities for the implementation of Catholic social theory, it was, in many respects, a disaster for the communities that it divided. The southern jurisdiction was stabilized by the fact that its religious minority was privileged, if also having gone through a period of rapid decline in the early 1920s, with few substantial links to protestant communities in the north apart from those provided by the island-wide infrastructures of the larger protestant denominations. In the decades after partition, southern protestants made their peace with the new political realities and developed an identity apart from that of their co-religionists in the north. But the northern jurisdiction was destabilized by the fact that its religious minority was large, growing, well-connected with a cultural hinterland on the other side of a porous and fairly arbitrary border, and increasingly resentful of being stuck in second place. While the Free State consolidated around the almost hegemonic power of the Catholic Church, the government of Northern Ireland had to come to terms with the fact that around one-third of its population remained unreconciled to the values and institutions of the state and were (mostly) determined to see it replaced." This is razor-sharp analysis, and does much to make sense both of the onset of the Troubles and the cultural differences between Protestant communities on either side of the border.

Then, as the book reaches its close, Christian Ireland collapses: "The Irish experience of secularization was sudden, shocking, and decisive." Gribben identifies the likely tipping point as the mid-1990s, as the peace process in the North sought to de-politicise religious identity and in the Republic a series of horrific scandals shattered the moral authority of the Catholic Church. Looking back over the history of Christian Ireland, Gribben's conclusions are devastating: "With this record of division, sorrow, and exploitation, almost all the criticisms of the Irish churches are warranted - but I will add one more. To the extent that the Catholic and protestant churches attempted to dominate and control the peoples of the island, they undermined the Christian faith...Again and again, throughout 1,500 years of history, the community of believers that Jesus described as being 'not of this world' committed themselves to competing struggles for power. Of course, this history contains inspiring examples of faith and self-sacrifice. Yet, in many respects, as discoveries of abuse and violence attest, cultures that were built up in the name of Jesus Christ turned out to be doing the 'works of the devil'...What passed as Christian Ireland is finally over and Christians should be glad."

In the attempt to build a Christian nation and society, we lost sight of our call to be salt and light, to self-sacrificial neighbour love, and to the radical distinctiveness that should mark a lively and genuine Christian faith. As he noted in his introduction, what comes next should be neither elegy nor eulogy, but a return to being the kind of counter-cultural community we always should have been.

[Frank Peters · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book, whose title accurately describes the content. The author recognises that everyone has a background and bias and starts by describing his. From there he does a brilliant job of writing as a neutral. This was all the more impressive given the amount of conflict that Ireland has experienced over the centuries, much of it related to religion. It was only in the concluding chapter where the author started to no longer write from a neutral perspective, and in his conclusion had some very useful insights. My favourite was his assertion (based on someone else’s work) that the form of Christianity that was introduced to Ireland (based on power and control) was already failed, since this was far from Jesus’ teaching. This unfortunately remained true in the protestant north and Catholic south and led to the demise of that form of Christianity in both locations. The book concludes with suggestions on how to move forward in a society that has lost its foundations.

[Simon O'Mahony · Rating 5 out of 5]

An honest (and sometimes depressingly so) overview of the religious history of Christian Ireland. Gribben objectively sets before the reader the failures of both the Roman Catholic Church and Protestantism in Ireland, as well as the factors that led to the decline of Christianity.

In his conclusion Gribben suggests that failure is essentially due to a confusion of Christ and culture. He mentions Rob Dreher's, The Benedict Option. I would agree with Gribben's conclusions, but would instead recommend David Van Drunen's, Politics after Christendom: Political Theology in a Fractured World, which thoroughly deals the question of what the church is to be post-Christendom.

[Annarella · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating, thought provoking and well researched book.
We know about Ireland as country where Catholicism impacted the development, where people was persecuted, and is disappearing now.
The book cover a very long timeframe and there's a lot of discussions about the relationship between christianity and political power.
I appreciated the whole book but I think that the last chapter is the most interesting as it talks about future.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

[Landon Coleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland is an interesting work of history. Gribben traces the introduction and of Christianity in Ireland, through periods of Catholic and Protestant and again Catholic power in the realm of government. Gribben covers thousands of years of history in this book - to an outsider like myself, the names, dates, and geography can feel a bit overwhelming. On the whole, the story he traces is remarkable. Christianity transformed a pagan culture, and paganism has recently reasserted it's power and place. Maybe it never left? Maybe Christianity will return?

[Noah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was originally searching to learn more about the Methodist Church in Ireland, hoping to understand more about the social and cultural dynamics that affected our family (poor Protestants in the south of Ireland). None of the bookshops in town had anything with this level of specificity, so I decided to go broad instead.

This book was pretty much what I hoped it would be: an entry into thousands of years of Irish history, through the angle of religion and spirituality.

[Emmet Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

A grand telling of Ireland's history with a focus on Christianity (indeed what else could you focus on?). The final chapters, carefully wondering where next for Ireland, what could replace our Christian sensibilities, lead me to wonder - as absolute as our secularistaion has been - is there even an Ireland left in any sense of the word? I highly recommend this carefully researched and thoughtful book.

[Jim Chambers · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t fancy this book to much and found it very boring picking up somewhat in the second half as it moved into more modern times. It could just as easily have been called The Rise and Fall of Catholic Ireland.

[Shaun Lyons]

Didn’t finish. I read 78 pages, but found it dull

[Emma Stephens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had to read this for uni seminars & actually didn’t hate it. really enjoyed the way the author wrote and described certain situations. if you like irish history you should read this

[Charlotte]

A bunch of old white guys fighting over nothing. Yay Ireland!!! 🇮🇪🇮🇪

[Elijah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I throughly enjoyed this book, because it increased my love for the Island I live on, its history and its people.

Gribben rightly articulates the dissonance between Jesus Christ and the history of many of the institutions in Christian Ireland. His criticisms of the established churches are pertinent. It is really sad that the faith of the Irish island has often been used against her, often by the sword and duress for worldly reasons. Christian’s should never kill to advance or defend the Christian religion.