A Short History of the Church of Ireland

by Kenneth Milne

The Church of Ireland traces its history back to the coming of Christianity to Ireland in the fifth century. Kenneth Milne here outlines briefly and simply that history from the beginning, down... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1788125363
• ISBN13: 9781788125369
• Release Date: May 2022
• Publisher: Messenger Publications
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

The other church...

Kenneth Milne's short book, 'A Short History of the Church of Ireland,' is a brief introduction to a complex subject. The 'Church of Ireland' referred to in the title is actually, at present, the Anglican descendent of the church in Ireland. Of course, this shows the difficulty of church history - for the first few chapters, the history of the church in Ireland is in fact that of the undivided church; there was no such division of Catholic and Protestant until the reformation. In continuing into and past the Reformation period, care must be given to the language of Milne's text not to confuse the Roman Catholic establishment in Ireland and the Anglican establishment in Ireland.Milne gives a good if necessarily somewhat confusing overview of the influence and imposition of the Reformation upon the church in Ireland. As English hegemony varied widely throughout the country geographically and historically, the Reformation made small headway in areas beyond the Pale, and often had difficulty even within the Pale. The flip-flopping during the Tudor period did not help matters, nor did the fact that newly-instituted Book of Common Prayer was never produced in the Irish language.Later difficulties included the problems of establishment/disestablishment, and the situations of changing political realities in Ireland, as the southern portion achieved independence from Britain while the northern portion remained part of the United Kingdom, yet the Church of Ireland served both sections as one institution. Today, the Church of Ireland (Anglican) constitutes a small minority within the larger Irish society. New issues such as the ordination of women continue to challenge relationships with the Roman Catholic parallel church, yet the Church of Ireland continues apace in ecumenical action around the world, as well as service to parishes throughout Ireland. This brief text (a mere 80 pages) give a good overview of the history of this church, often overlooked in favour of the larger Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland histories. Columba Press (name for St. Columba, 'the dove of the church') is a growing press based in Ireland, begun in 1985 with three titles relating to religious and spiritual themes. Since then, they have grown substantially and now publish across a broad range of areas, including pastoral resources, spirituality, theology, the arts, and history. With over 200 books in print, they add another 30 or so each year. Additionally, they are the British/Irish/European distributors for many other titles in the same fields.