The Irish Presbyterian Mind: Conservative Theology, Evangelical Experience, and Modern Criticism, 1830-1930

The Irish Presbyterian Mind considers how one protestant community responded to the challenges posed to traditional understandings of Christian faith between 1830 and 1930. Andrew R. Holmes examines the attitudes of the leaders of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland to biblical criticism, modern historical method, evolutionary science, and liberal forms of protestant theology. He explores how they reacted to developments in other Christian traditions, including the so-called 'Romeward' trend in the established Churches of England and Ireland and the 'Romanisation' of Catholicism. Was their response distinctively Presbyterian and Irish? How was it shaped by Presbyterian values, intellectual first principles, international denominational networks, identity politics, the expansion of higher education, and relations with other Christian denominations? The story begins in the 1830s when evangelicalism came to dominate mainstream Presbyterianism, the largest protestant denomination in present-day Northern Ireland. It ends in the 1920s with the exoneration of J. E. Davey, a professor in the Presbyterian College, Belfast, who was tried for heresy on accusations of being a 'modernist'. Within this timeframe, Holmes describes the formation and maintenance of a religiously-conservative intellectual community. At the heart of the interpretation is the interplay between the Reformed theology of the Westminster Confession of Faith and a commitment to common evangelical principles and religious experience that drew protestants together from various denominations. The definition of conservative within the Presbyterian Church in Ireland moved between these two poles and could take on different forms depending on time, geography, social class, and whether the individual was a minister or a member of the laity.

Table of Contents:
Abbreviations Introduction: The Return of Religion and the Irish Presbyterian Mind 1: Confession, Subscription, and Revival, c.1800-1914 2: The Presbyterian Story: Church History, Church Government, and Unionist Identity Politics, 1830-1914 3: Mind and Matter: Mental and Natural Science 4: The Bible: Criticism, Hermeneutics, and Inspiration 5: Reconstruction, Revival, and the Triumph of Experience, 1914-1930 Conclusion Bibliography

About the Author :
Andrew Holmes is Lecturer in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy, and Politics at Queen's University Belfast. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2007 and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2008. He is currently a member of the Editorial Board of Irish Historical Studies and a committee member of the Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies. In 2016, he was an Eaton Fellow at the University of New Brunswick and has previously been a Visiting Scholar at Boston College (2011) and at the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh (2009, 2013). He is the author of The Shaping of Ulster Presbyterian Belief and Practice, 1770-1840 (2006).

Review :
Often only seen in stereotypical terms, Irish Presbyterians have now found a worthy expositor in Andrew R. Holmes ... It turns out there were some remarkable and unexpected things going on in the Irish Presbyterian mind. Holmes's achievement in providing this thoughtful analysis of the Presbyterian Churchs institutions and clergy in turn points toward the importance of further study to explore the varied lay cultures of Irish Presbyterians. ...this superb volume should be required reading. Throughout, the book highlights the elasticity of 'conservative evangelicalism' and the needed recovery of confessional categories. Andrew Holmes provides a much welcome historical perspective on high-level theological debates in PCI during a crucial period. . . . The Irish Presbyterian Mind is a welcome addition to scholarship that takes religion seriously as religion, and not merely a social-cultural phenomenon that it is subservient to political aspirations. This new book...will be of wide interest at a time when many in the Church are having to ask hard questions about our ambitions to play a leading role in society. The Irish Presbyterian Mind is nevertheless a significant contribution to our understanding of the making of modern Ireland, and especially of Ulster. It is a major achievement, that Holmes has completed despite the (surprising) paucity of manuscript sources and the inaccessibility of the some of the records (including much of the Davey Collection, which is important for 20th-century developments and post-Partition attitudes to social and economic - as well as theological - issues).