The Irish Protestant Churches in the Twentieth Century.

Thompson, David M.

The Irish Protestant Churches in the Twentieth Century. By Alan Megahey. New York: St Martin's, 2000. x + 239 pp. $65.00 cloth.

Historians have neglected the Irish Protestant churches as distinct from Northern Irish Protestants. More strikingly, in a century dominated by partition, they have also neglected the fact that all Irish churches ignore the border; Megahey notes this neglect but does not analyze its significance in detail. The first three chapters cover the period before 1922, and another chapter discusses the period between 1922 and 1965. Two chapters consider the worship life of the churches and missionary activity, emigration, and ecumenism. The last two chapters discuss the period since 1960.

Megahey avoids the institutional history of the churches and focuses upon the lives of their members. The opening chapter on the "anatomy" of the churches in 1900 sets the scene well; a similar chapter at the end of the century would have been useful. The author carefully traces attitudes to politics and society in general and education in particular. He could have developed the effect of religious divisions on the position of trade unionism and socialism. Megahey acknowledges that he has omitted some important themes, such as women and the gospel halls, but an examination of how far changing patterns of clerical recruitment have affected the Protestant churches in general, and the relationship of the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian Church in Ireland in particular would have been interesting. Nevertheless, this is an excellent introduction.

David M. Thompson Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge