God and Greater Britain. Religion and National Life in Britain and Ireland, 1843-1945 by John Wolffe (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 265 cal. The effort is not flawless—for example,John Edgar (p. 102) was a Seceder, not a Remonstrant—but it is to be applauded nevertheless. It raises the question , however, whether any of us who write Irish church history can really empathize with figures on the "other side" of the Irish sectarian divide. Ironically, the Presbyterian figures which Catholics found most appealing were the Arians . The orthodox Presbyterians, who would have agreed with Crolly and even MacHale on more points of Christian doctrine, seemed far more alien to contemporary Catholics because of political differences, and Macaulay does not manage much more empathy than they did. It seems to me that the key to achieving such empathy is to take more seriously the social context of pre-Famine Irish religion—in particular the existence of a huge agrarian underclass, many of whom were far less observant of their canonical obligations than were Irish Catholics a century later. Macaulay grapples with the principal source on which this generalization is based, the 1834 religious census, but he does so more as a pastor than as an historian: he is more concerned with whether folk had a valid excuse for failing to attend Mass than with the causes or meaning of that failure. The matter is important for Catholic-Presbyterian relations, because this is just the moment in Irish history when some Presbyterians, for a couple of decades, took seriously the effort to try to convert the Catholics. And those who did—John Edgar, for example— often believed that many of the objects of their mission were essentially unchurched. In order really to understand the Catholic-Presbyterian nexus in the Famine era it is essential to face squarely the fact that that belief, while exaggerated , was not preposterous. David W. Miller Carnegie Mellon University God and Greater Britain. Religion and National Life in Britain and Ireland, 1843-1945. By John Wolffe. (New York: Routledge. 1994. Pp. xii, 324. $69.95.) This book asserts the place of religion in an allegedly secular age and cogently argues that historians who are unable to take the influence of religion seriously will misunderstand the development of modern society. Having established this guiding principle, Dr. Wolffe provides a well-written and broadly researched study of two parallel themes: the role ofreligion in the making of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; and its role in establishing the separate identities of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. In so doing he questions the basis of certain nationalist myths, including some held dear by American Irish, about when Irish Catholic nationalism overtook alternative forms of British nationalism. The book is part textbook and part research monograph. As such it is easily accessible to the general reader whilst at the same time adding new insights. 266 BOOK REVIEWS As a survey of nineteenth-century British religion it is masterful, covering not only institutional religion but also those vaguer areas of folk religion that developed into a kind of diffusive Christianity. So diffusive, indeed, did religion become from the latter decades of the nineteenth century that it is sometimes hard to see why it should be called religion at all. Dr. Wolffe increasingly —and perhaps too frequently—is driven to that dubious concept, "quasi religion." The development of British and Irish politics and nationalism are mapped on to this survey. The now well-explored relationship between the Church of England, Englishness, and the making of Britain is discussed alongside the paradox of what the Church of England meant in Wales or Scotland, and in what senses to be Protestant was more important than to be Church of England. The argument is then advanced to consider the unifying and "quasi-religious" role of monarchy in the forging of identity, and the meaning of England's British Empire, made by willing Scots, Irish, andWelsh as well as Englishmen. The twentieth century is dominated by considerations of war. World War I was fought with certainty in the name of Christianity, as churchmen rushed to bless the righteous cause. Nationhood, religion, and war were then caught up in war memorials and the elevation of the dead to martyr status. Though World War II...