Irish Baptists and the Second Home Rule Crisis

Abstract

Irish Baptists have historically adopted the view that religion and politics should not be mixed. The Home Rule Crisis of the late nineteenth century, and the Second Home Rule Bill in particular, put this view to the test. The prospect of Home Rule and the fear of domination by the Catholic majority under the influence of the papacy forced them to respond. Baptists, who had for so long been on the fringes of religious and political life in Ireland, now found themselves drawn into a broad Protestant front in an attempt to resist Home Rule. It also revealed that despite their attempts to maintain their distinctiveness from other Protestant denominations they shared exactly the same concerns.