The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland Hardcover – December 9, 2021 by Crawford Gribben

Description

Author: Gribben Crawford

Package Dimensions: 0x0x788

Number Of Pages: 352

Release Date: 09-12-2021

Details: Product Description

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 important

religion, 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.

Review

“A remarkable book.” — JP O’Malley, Irish Independent

“An erudite, important and detailed account of the major developments in Irish religious history from the earliest times until the present day… This is an eminently readable book, and the author has a page-turning clarity which too few academics possess.” — Alf McCreary, Belfast Telegraph

“Admirable and scholarly.” — Mary Kenny, History Ireland

“A broad, sweeping, readable and concise history of the interplay of religion, politics and society in Ireland from pre-Christian times until the present.” — David Quinn, Catholic Herald

“Crawford Gribben’s sweeping history surveys Ireland’s grand past – and its importance for Western Christianity.” — Jeremiah Rood, Foreword Reviews

“[Gribben’s] wide reading is very evident and anyone seeking a one volume survey of “Christian Ireland” will find this an admirable guide.” — Dr Fergus O’Ferrall, Methodist Recorder

“A remarkable read… Gribben covers a vast amount of ground in a relatively concise text. His achievement is to provide much needed perspective on where Irish Christianity came from and where it may be headed.” — Gladys Ganiel, Slugger O’Toole

“Crawford Gribben has produced an outstanding contribution to understanding the complex tapestry that is Ireland, and all its people, from earliest history to the present day… it’s a book that anybody interested in the evolution of the island of Ireland and all its people national and
international, should read and have on their bookshelf.” — Enda Kenny, Taoiseach, Ireland, 2011/2017

About the Author

Crawford Gribben teaches at Queen’s University Belfast, and is the author of several books on Irish, British and American religious history. He writes for newspapers and magazines including
The Wall Street Journal,
The Irish Times, and
History Today.