Religion and Greater Ireland, 1788-1922

3 – 4 December 2012, Newcastle City Hall, NSW  Australia

Keynotes:  Vincent Comerford, NUI Maynooth, Barry Crosbie, University of Macau, Myrtle Hill, Queen’s University of Belfast, Mark McGowan, University of Toronto, Erik Richards, Flinders University of South Australia, John Stenhouse, University of Otago

Image: Bishops' Library, Cultural Collections, Auchmuty Library, University of Newcastle, NSW

The new visibility of religion in world affairs has encouraged historians to reassess the role of religion in the age of empires and in post-colonial times. The Irish are an important focus for this revisionist debate about the imperial past. In the course of the nineteenth century, economic, political and religious forces combined to transform the Irish into a global people who actively participated in British imperial expansion and colonial nation building in Australia, Canada, India, South Africa, South America, New Zealand and the United States. The religious impact of the Irish on the English-speaking world has long been obvious, not least in religious terms: think of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, but also in Melbourne, Auckland, Grahamstown, and Thunder Bay, Ontario.  It has also largely been considered a Roman Catholic phenomenon.  Although this is to a great extent true, it is not the whole story: all of the Irish denominations, Anglicans, Catholics, Jews, Methodists, Moravians, Quakers, Presbyterians, and others engaged with, settled, and evangelized the Anglo-World. Together, they created a religious ‘Greater Ireland’ within the British Empire and United States.  Irish men and women – clerics, religious, missionaries, and laity – and Irish churches, missions, and parishes founded institutions from schools to hospitals, and often came to dominate the institutional structures of their respective communions.  This was a distinctly transnational phenomenon, with personnel, institutions, and networks that crossed the Anglo-World, and helped form recognizably Irish and British colonial cultures.  ‘Religion and Greater Ireland’ will examine this Irish spiritual empire in all its aspects, national and transnational, ecclesiastical, political, educational and social, and with reference to all the Irish denominations in the British Empire and United States from 1788-1922.

Proposals for papers on any aspect of the Irish spiritual empire are welcome, including papers that consider only one denomination, institution, or region, or those that have a more transnational or thematic focus.  Abstracts of no more than 200 words should be submitted to either of the organizers by 3 September 2012.  Those unable to travel to Australia are still encouraged to submit abstracts as the organizers envisage producing a volume of essays on the conference theme.

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