SEARCH Journal

Can we avoid a split in the Church of Ireland?

IN 1980 I completed a thesis , “A Divided Church? The Church of Ireland 1968-1978”. In the thesis I pointed to tensions and divisions. Now, over 40 years after ordination, it may be worth revisiting what I wrote then and posing the question: Do those tensions and divisions still exist? Or have they morphed into something different?

In the lead-up years to Irish partition, political tensions were obvious. Would they lead to a split in the Church of Ireland on the lines of partition? Conversations between Archbishop D’Arcy and Sir James Craig showed that this question was explored. A split would have seriously weakened the position of the Southern members of the Church, as approximately three quarters of the C of I members lived in the North at the time; and as R B McDowell commented, “The southern unionists (in large part Church of Ireland) naturally did not want to find themselves a small scattered minority in a divided Ireland. So, if Home Rule could not be defeated, their aims were to preserve the unity of Ireland with safeguards for the Unionist minority.”

* Full article available in printed copies.

Leslie Stevenson

Is Archdeacon of Meath and Kildare and rector of Portarlington.