Abstract
This chapter focuses on the tensions between the Catholic and Protestant communities in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Birmingham and Liverpool. It complements Andrew Holmes’s chapter which questions the unique position of Ulster with regard to its perceived bi-polarized society and ubiquitous sectarianism. It considers similar manifestations in the context of English cities and attempts to establish the extent to which religion, specifically evangelicalism, was responsible for sectarian conflict. Central to the argument is the recognition that, in the past as in the present, evangelicalism reflected a range of religious and religio-political stances contained within an overarching worldview. On the one hand were more theologically liberal and politically Liberal outlooks. At the other end of the spectrum was covenantal evangelicalism which triggered reactions when Protestant national identity was perceived to be in danger, in response to the supposed level of threat from ultramontane Catholicism.1 It will also be argued that an increasingly confident Catholic Church, while attempting to minimize conflict, compounded the problem by encouraging inward- looking Irish communities that were not readily absorbed into English society.
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Notes
D.W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s. (London: Unwin Hyman 1989), pp. 2–17.
P. Mitchel, Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster, 1921–1998 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 107
D. Hempton and M. Hill, Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster society 1740–1890 (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 14–16.
J. Wolffe, Evangelicals, Women and Community in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Open University Study Guide (Milton Keynes: Open University, 1994), p. 22.
A. Bryson, ‘Riotous Liverpool, 1815–1860’, in J. Belchem, ed., Popular Politics, Riot and Labour: Essays in Liverpool History 1790–1940 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1992), pp. 98–134.
J. Wolffe, The Protestant Crusade in Great Britain, 1829–1860 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 29–31.
Bryson, ‘Popular Politics, Riot and Labour’, pp. 98–134; R Neal, Sectarian Violence: The Liverpool Experience, 1819–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), pp. 37–72.
J. Belchem, Irish, Catholic and Scouse (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007), p. 8.
P.J. Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism: A Political and Social History of Liverpool 1868–1939 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1981), pp. 1
A. O’Day, ‘Varieties of anti-Irish behaviour in Britain, 1846–1922’, in P. Panayi, ed., Racial Violence in Britain in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: Leicester University Press, 1996), p. 31.
D.E.H. Mole, ‘John Cale Miller: a Victorian Rector of Birmingham’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 17 (1966), p. 96.
J. Moran, Irish Birmingham: A History (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010), p. 12.
J. Champ, ‘Priesthood and Politics in the Nineteenth Century: The Turbulent Career of Thomas McDonnell’, Recusant History, 18:3 (1987), 291
P. Davis, ‘Birmingham’s Irish Community and the Murphy Riots’, Midland History, 31 (2006), 38.
J. Belchem, ed., Popular Politics, Riot and Labour: Essays in Liverpool History 1790–1940 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1992), p. 9.
J. Smith, ‘Class, Skill and Sectarianism in Glasgow and Liverpool’ in R.J. Morris, ed., Class, Power and Social Structure in British Nineteenth-Century Towns (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1986), pp. 158–215
J. Murphy, The Religious Problem in English Education: The Crucial Experiment (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1959), p. 51.
W.L. Arnstein, ‘The Murphy Riots: A Victorian Dilemma’, Victorian Studies, 19:1 (1975), 53.
C. Chinn, Birmingham Irish: Making our Mark (Birmingham: Birmingham Libraries, 2003), p. 72.
Quoted W.L. Arnstein, Protestant Versus Catholic in Mid-Victorian England (Columbia: University ol Missouri Press, 1982), p. 90.
A.W.W. Dale, Life ofR.W. Dale of Birmingham by his Son (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1899), p. 263.
E.D. Steele, ‘Cardinal Cullen and Irish Nationality’, Irish Historical Studies, 19 (1975), 239–260.
R. Hobson, Richard Hobson of Liverpool: A Faithful Pastor (Edinburgh: Banner ol Truth Trust, 2003), p. 78.
G. Jenkins, ‘Nationalism and Sectarian Violence in Liverpool and Belfast, 1880s-1920s’, International Labor and Working-Class History, 78 (2010), 164–80.
Tom Gallagher, ‘Tale of Two Cities: Communal Strife in Glasgow and Liverpool Before 1914’, in S. Gilley and R. Swift, eds, The Irish in the Victorian City (London: CroomHelm, 1985), p. 123
D. Sheppard, Steps along Hope Street: My Life in Cricket, the Church and the Inner City (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2002), p. 175.
Cf Andrew Holmes, Chapter 5 above; A.R. Holmes, ‘The Uses and Interpretation of Prophecy in Irish Presbyterianism, 1850–1930’ in Crawford Gribben and A.R. Holmes, eds, Protestant Millennialism, Evangelicalism, and Irish Society, 1790–2005 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006), p. 153
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© 2013 Philomena Sutherland
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Sutherland, P. (2013). Sectarianism and Evangelicalism in Birmingham and Liverpool, 1850–2010. In: Wolffe, J. (eds) Protestant-Catholic Conflict from the Reformation to the Twenty-first Century. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137289735_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137289735_6
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