Presents an assessment of the religious state of Ireland between 1770 and 1850. This book aims to challenge the assumption that religious division in Ireland is inevitable, and suggests that much of the religious intolerance of the last 200 years has been the result of political and religious mistakes made during that earlier period.

Challenges many of the assumptions made about political and religious divisions in Ireland and about the internal condition of the churches there during the pre-Emancipation period
Takes an ecumenical approach
Extensive citation of primary sources
Important sections on church buildings will be of interest to architectural historians

Nigel Yates provides a major reassessment of the religious state of Ireland between 1770 and 1850. He argues that this was both a period of intense reform across all the major religious groups in Ireland and also one in which the seeds of religious tension, which were to dominate Irish politics and society for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, were sown. He examines in detail, from a wide range of primary sources, the mechanics of this reform programme and the growing tensions between religious groups in this period, showing how political and religious issues became inextricably mixed and how various measures that might have been taken to improve the situation were not politically or religiously possible.