The Contemporary Irish Restoration Movement

“Throughout the nineteenth century, Ireland in particular experienced religious revivals, especially among its Protestant population. The failed rebellion of 1789 [sic] had been followed by a rise in Evangelicalism as Methodists and Presbyterians became strongly unionist and anti-liberal politically” - Cornelius Jaenen, The Apostles’ Doctrine & Fellowship, p 517.

Why did the 2×2’s happen? This question is endlessly fascinating to me. Professor Jaenen says “such initiatives originate and succeed only when the socio-political environment is compatible. Seed will not germinate unless both soil and climatic conditions are favourable” (520). In addition to the influence of the Ulster Revival of 1859 he offers 4 reasons for the growth of revivalism in Ireland in the 19th Century.

It must first be pointed out that the Irish rebellion he mentioned occurred nearly a decade later in 1798, not 1789. The most charitable explanation for such a mistake is to attribute it to typographical error. For such a scholarly work, the number of other misspellings scattered throughout is surprisingly frequent, so it is certainly possible that this error escaped the eye of the proofreader in the editing process. On the other hand, if it is a true mistake, such a fundamental error raises questions regarding the quality of research. Entire forests have been converted into the paper that has been used up examining the complexities of the conflict between Catholics vs. Protestants and Unionists vs. Nationalists in Ireland; however, I will have to mention some of the broader aspects, since they are directly relevant to his offered reasons.

Reason # 1. “There was a stable and reasonably just political order in place, not unlike the ‘just society' of the Roman Empire. New and unconventional manifestations survive when there is an over-arching regime that provides protection for social and cultural diversity.” (519)

The Just Society of the Roman Empire was the idea of a society governed by justitia (justice) and the rule of law. They envisioned a society maintained through the equitable administration of justice through law and order under the authority of the state. Although legal rights varied considerably according to political status, citizenship, gender and class, Roman law sought to preserve social stability. This concept featured most prominently during the Republic Period (509 – 27 BC), as Cicero asks in his De Republica, “Wherefore as the law is the bond of civil society, and equal rights from that of the law, by what power can a community of citizens be maintained, where their condition is not an equal one?” (Book I, xxxii). Accordingly, the great Roman thinkers celebrated justitia as a cardinal virtue.

In contrast to the ideals of Roman justitia, England’s governance of Ireland during the 19th Century appears to be unburdened by virtue. It was the 1798 Rebellion that convinced the British government that Ireland required even tighter control. Emerging amid growing sectarian tensions, the Orange Order had already been founded in 1795 to commemorate the victory of King William III of England (also known as William of Orange) at the Battle of the Boyne fought in 1690. Its purpose was to defend Protestant political and religious supremacy in Ireland and uphold loyalty to the British Crown. The Orange Order became a prominent advocate for maintaining the Protestant Ascendancy and opposing Irish Catholic political advancement. Just three years after the 1798 Rebellion, the 1801 Act of Union abolished the Irish Parliament and incorporated Ireland into the United Kingdom. Among other things it preserved the privileged legal status of the [Anglican] Church of Ireland as the established church throughout Ireland. Several Church of Ireland bishops even gained seats in the House of Lords in Parliament. Coincident with the expansion of Protestant influence the 19th Century saw a surge in evangelical activity as missionary groups, Sunday schools, and tract societies became increasingly common.

By the 1870s following centuries of oppressive British land policies, 50% of Irish land was owned by just 750 families, mostly managed by absentee landlords of the British and Anglo-Irish landowning aristocracy. In this setting, the term “Anglo-Irish” is broadly used to describe the elite ruling class of the Protestant Ascendancy. Successive crop failures in 1877 and 1879 had led to mass evictions of Irish tenant farmers who could not pay the high rent, and the resulting agrarian unrest led to the Land War (1879-1892). When one such estate agent named Charles Boycott refused to lower rent prices, the local community refused to harvest his crops, work for him, or even speak to him - this is the origin of the word “boycott” in modern language.

The 2×2 Fellowship emerged from this same volatile century that also saw the Great Famine, which was the most devastating event in Irish history. From 1845 to 1852 a fungus-like organism destroyed Ireland’s staple potato crop, leading to the death of at least one million Irish people and the emigration of another 1-2 million to countries such as the United States, Canada and Britain. It was an absolutely massive humanitarian catastrophe as the British government, based on their belief that they should not interfere economically, adopted a laissez-faire approach to “justly” govern their Irish subjects by refusing to stop the plentiful food exports from Ireland while also restricting direct food distribution and scaling back public relief. By the time it was over, the total population of Ireland was diminished by 25%.

The desperate dissatisfaction and conflict over Home Rule spilled over into 5 rebellions under this “just society” from 1798 to 1916, as the Catholic majority struggled for basic rights among such “social and cultural diversity”. Not only did these rebellions not result in political and societal stability, the British government actually increased their stranglehold of control which reinforced Protestant institutional dominance. Given these examples, I am left to wonder what Professor Jaenen would consider to be an “unreasonable” political order. Contrary to his first explanation, it is more likely that the revival movements such as the Ulster Revival of 1859 and groups like the [Anglican] Irish Evangelical Society and the Faith Mission emerged due to the collective weltschmerz as the result of the turbulence of the time. Either way, the reinforcement of English and Protestant dominance is certainly neither “reasonably just” nor supportive of “social and cultural diversity”.

Reason # 2. “Ireland was at the centre of contact and conflict of two Western religious movements - the apostolic ministry and sacramentalism of Catholicism and the biblicism and evangelism of Protestantism” (520).

Professor Jaenen’s assumption of social protections can only be applied to the Protestant population, even though Catholics in Ireland made up the overwhelming majority (80%) of the population. In fact, the very rebellion he referenced was caused by years of Irish [mostly Catholic] oppression and subjugation. For example, under the Penal Laws Irish Catholics were not allowed to purchase land or own weapons. The estate of a Catholic man who died had to be divided continuously among his sons, resulting in ever-shrinking land ownership and generational wealth. They were banned from holding public office, military commissions, sitting in Parliament or practicing law. All Catholic bishops and religious orders were banished from the country and public celebration of mass was forbidden. They were also heavily taxed to support the Anglican Church of Ireland. They were prohibited from operating schools, teaching or even sending their children abroad for Catholic education which led to the formation of secret “hedge schools” hidden outdoors between tall hedge rows in the countryside. They were not even allowed to own a horse worth more than $5. It wasn’t until the final Catholic Relief Act of 1829 that the last of these onerous laws was repealed. Over this time period the political order was most certainly “stable”, but if fails to rise to the level of “just”.

Reason # 3. “The country was experiencing an economic crisis, social unrest and external political domination.” (520)

The statement directly contradicts his first reason. He does not construct any argument explaining how a country experiencing so much social and religious upheaval including one of the most devastating famines in human history could simultaneously also be under a “stable and reasonably just political order” that provided “protection for social and cultural diversity”. On the contrary, in addition to the 1798 Rebellion, there was the 1803 Rebellion, the Young Islander Rebellion of 1848, the Fenian Rising of 1867 and the Easter Rising of 1916. So great was the lack of protections that the sectarian and political strife continued even into the 20th Century, such as the period between 1968 to 1998 which were called The Troubles.

Reason # 4. “a precedent of anti-establishment unconventional response to the status quo existed throughout the Irish countryside” (520)

The restorationist movement was primarily a reform movement within Protestantism, since the overwhelming majority of Christian believers who formed these primitivist movements came from existing Protestant churches. They were already Protestant but were dissatisfied with the established denominations. Professor Jaenen also says “those involved intimately in the restoration events of 1897-1904 would attribute it to Divine intervention” (520). Which is it? Was it an anti-establishment attitude or divine intervention? Or, in this case, was it Divine intervention’s plan that a multitude of Protestant denominations and movements would emerge from the restorationist sentiments of the 19th Century including the Plymouth Brethren, Christadelphians, Churches of Christ, catholic Apostolic Church, Seventh Day Adventist Church, Keswick Conventions, Faith Mission, Stone Campbell Movement, Free Church of England, the Open Brethren, the Exclusive Brethren, the Peculiar People and of course the 2×2 Fellowship?

When viewed within the broader historical context provided above, the emergence of 19th-Century Irish Protestant Restorationist movements appears more plausibly explained by the profound sociopolitical and religious upheavals of the era than rather than divine intervention. The cumulative effects over a hundred years of social disorder deliver a natural rather than a supernatural explanation. The Great Famine, repeated rebellions, agrarian unrest, entrenched sectarian conflict and longstanding grievances arising from vindictively negligent British governance created a pervading sense of dystopian pessimism. In this environment in which even established religious institutions were widely questioned, the Restorationist movements provided an alternative for religious expression through a return to primitive Christianity which promised certainty and safety amid social instability. Rather than being God’s providence, these Restorationist responses could be considered to be more of an indictment of the failures of the contemporary Irish sociopolitical and religious institutions.

Jaenan, C.J. The apostles’ doctrine and fellowship: a documentary history of the early church and restorationist movements. Legas Publishing. 2003.