Presbyterianism

Presbyterianism. Irish Presbyterianism is largely the result of a movement of population from Scotland to Ireland in the 17th century. Some Presbyterian ministers followed these Scots settlers and took livings in the episcopal Church of Ireland, many subsequently being ejected during Wentworth's campaign for greater ecclesiastical uniformity. In 1642 a presbytery was constituted in Ulster by the chaplains of a Scottish army which had arrived to crush the rising of 1641. During the Cromwellian regime congregations multiplied and new presbyteries were formed. Nonconforming ministers were ejected from parishes after the Restoration, but the minority colonial administration in Ireland could not afford to alienate such a substantial proportion of the Protestant population and Presbyterianism was allowed a precarious existence, its ministers supported by the regium donum.

William III rewarded Presbyterian support against James II with an increased regium donum. From the 1690s, despite the rearguard action of the high‐church movement, Presbyterian congregations, now organized in the Synod of Ulster, enjoyed practical freedom of religion, confirmed in the Toleration Act of 1719. Yet their members remained highly conscious both of continuing disabilities and of economic hardship, most of them being tenant farmers chafing under rent increases and payment of tithes. Presbyterians consistently made up the majority of emigrants from Ulster to colonial America. Others became involved in movements for reform, culminating in the United Irish movement, in which Presbyterians played a prominent part.

Meanwhile the synod was divided by tensions between New Lights and Old Lights, often centring on the issue of subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith which the synod, following the Church of Scotland, had adopted as its statement of doctrine. The triumph of non‐subscription in the synod enabled conservative Scottish Presbyterian dissenters, Seceders and Covenanters, to establish a strong presence in Ulster.

In the 19th century awareness that some non‐subscribers were in fact Arians initiated a new phase of the conflict, ending when seventeen ministers opposed to subscription seceded with their congregations to form the Remonstrant Synod. This led to the restoration of obligatory subscription and union with the Seceders to form the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church in Ireland (1840). The united church displayed great creative energy in foreign missionary outreach and in establishing new institutions in Ireland, including two theological colleges. A revival of evangelical religion in 1859 breathed new life into dry Presbyterian bones but also sharpened traditional anti‐Catholicism.

The victory of theological conservatism did not mean the eclipse of political liberalism. In the 1820s, as in the 1790s, theological and political loyalties did not always coincide. Conservatives in theology might be liberals in politics and vice versa. Many Presbyterians continued to support the Liberal Party until Gladstone's conversion to home rule in 1886. Partition left them the largest Protestant denomination in Northern Ireland with some 390,000 members in 1926; numbers in independent Ireland, where Presbyterians had never put down strong roots, fell from 32,000 in 1926 to only 16,000 by 1971. While some Presbyterians have been prominent in recent movements for reconciliation in Ireland, Irish Presbyterianism has become increasingly exclusivist, as evidenced by withdrawal from the World Council of Churches in 1980, and refusal to join the recently formed British and Irish Council of Churches.

Bibliography

Brooke, Peter , Ulster Presbyterianism (1987)
Holmes, Finlay , Our Irish Presbyterian Heritage (1992)

R. F. G. Holmes