Religion as Identity: The Church of Ireland’s 1932 Patrician Celebrations

Abstract

The author explores the Protestant dimension of Celtic spirituality by examining the Church of Ireland’s Patrician celebrations in 1932. He challenges the notion that southern Protestants were slow to come to terms with Irish independence, suggesting that they did so by conceptualising a sort of ‘Protestant Free State’, parallel with the official one. The fifteen hundredth anniversary of the date commonly accepted as St Patrick’s coming to Ireland (432 AD) afforded an opportunity to showcase this in celebrations that emphasised the saint’s essentially ‘Protestant’ character. A new Life of the saint, pamphlets, a major church service in Northern Ireland, a three-day conference in Dublin, and a pageant were planned and a new three-volume History of the Church of Ireland appeared (1933–4). The conference set out a prospectus for the Church of Ireland in the Free State, proclaiming a modern, contemporary ethos, and reflecting both an Irish flavour (the conference featured an Irish-language session) and a British one, through the defence of constitutional monarchy.