Ireland - (Europe)
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Informations sur Ireland

The great missionary apostle of Ireland was the fifth-century St. Patrick. The church which he established had its ecclesiastical capital at Armagh, and churches and monasteries of the distinctive Celtic tradition soon spread all over the island. It was largely through the Irish monastic schools, famous for their learning and missionary zeal, that the Christian faith was reestablished in a Europe which had been overrun by Germanic tribes. With the 12th-century Norman invasion of Ireland, the fortunes of England and Ireland became intertwined. The church also developed a diocesan structure and hierarchy. With the establishing of the Church of England in the 16th century, the government of Ireland passed into the hands of Angl in a manner similar to England. The church was reinforced by the “planting” of English people faithful to the government in England. For the first century of its life, this church was dominated by prelates and professors who belonged to the Calvinist tradition. Indeed, the Irish Articles of Religion, developed by Bishop Ussher, became the foundation for the Westminster Confession of Faith.
Presb began to settle in Ireland, particularly in Northern Ireland, through a succession of “plantations” by the government and through the military campaigns of Oliver Cromwell. Unfortunately the continued close links with Scotland, where university education was a possibility for members of the Ref tradition, also meant that the numerous divisions in Scottish Presbyterianism were transposed to Irish soil. Under pressure of penal laws, many Scots-Irish Presb emigrated to the United States, where they had a profound influence on the institutions of church, state, and university.
At the beginning of the 18th century, Presb became known as Dissenters (from the Angl government in Ireland) and began to champion RCath emancipation and movements for Home Rule. The Penal Laws also created an atmosphere in which numbers of important Presb responded enthusiastically at the end of the 18th century to the writings of Thomas Paine and Wolfe Tone on human rights and on civil liberties. These impulses, however, were largely reversed by the middle of the 19th century.
Although in 1922 the island was divided into Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, and the South, which became the Republic of Ireland, the churches have remained organized on an all-island basis. The majority of the Ref family live in Northern Ireland, where they are seen to be Ulster-Scots in cultural and social terms. The Ref churches have maintained a strong missionary tradition.
Throughout this century, the Ref churches have on the whole supported the Union with Great Britain, rather than the aspirations of Irish nationalists for “united” or “agreed” Ireland. Statements from these churches have been critical of nationalists and of the British and Irish governments for initiatives which seem to bring the two countries into a relationship which allows for discussion and cooperation in Northern Ireland. There has been a Ref anxiety about the influence of the RCath Church on the government and educational institutions in Ireland. The Ref churches have increasingly felt isolated within Ireland and Great Britain. While they have welcomed the recent ceasefire in the hostilities of the para-military groups groups and have done much to foster cross-community projects and reconciliation, the next atrocity could lead to a return to an ethos of suspicion and noncooperation between the communities.

Église

• Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland
  RPCI

• Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin