Recent debates about the definition of national identities in Britain, along with discussions on the secularisation of Western societies, have brought to light the importance of a historical approach to the notion of Britishness and religion. This book explores anti-Catholicism in Britain and its Dominions, and forms part of a notable revival over the last decade in the critical historical analysis of anti-Catholicism. It employs transnational and comparative historical approaches throughout, thanks to the exploration of relevant original sources both in the United Kingdom and in Australia and Canada, several of them untapped by other scholars. It applies a 'four nations' approach to British history, thus avoiding an Anglocentric viewpoint.

Nationalism, Religious Violence, and Hate Speech in Nineteenth-Century Western Europe critically analyses the role played by different memories of past religious violence in public debates in nineteenth-century Europe. Looking back, European societies often did not seek to overcome their differences and create a framework of peaceful coexistence among various religions and denominations, but rather, more frequently, to fuel intra- and inter-religious hatred. Moreover, various violent pasts were mobilised to define what and who was intolerant, in order to mark the "other" as intolerant and therefore incompatible with societal values. To examine conflicting memories of violence and hatred, this book focuses on commemorations, statues, publications, and public polemics surrounding past religious violence. Three elements serve as a framework to explain the conflictive nature of these memories of intolerance: the age of commemorations, the culture wars, and the second confessional age. The authors explore cases in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the Low Countries, covering Catholicism, Protestantism, Anglicanism, Islam, and Judaism. The book focuses on iconic victims such as Giordano Bruno and Michael Servetus, collective massacres, and discourses surrounding religious hatred in events such as the Crusades. The cases of religious violence remembered in the nineteenth century span the Middle Ages and the intense period of religious violence known as the confessional age. This book will appeal to students and scholars of politics, religious tolerance and freedom, hate speech, nationalism, religious history, and European history.

This edited collection brings together varying angles and approaches to tackle the multi-dimensional issue of anti-Catholicism since the Protestant Reformation in Britain and Ireland. It is of course difficult to infer from such geographically and historically diverse studies one single contention, but what the book as a whole suggests is that there can be no teleological narration of anti-Catholicism – its manifestations were episodic, more or less rooted in common worldviews, and its history does not end today.

Challenges preconceptions of convict transportation from Britain and Ireland, penal colonies and religion.

"The Spiritual Lives series features biographies of prominent men and women whose eminence is not primarily based on a specifically religious contribution. Each volume provides a general account of the figure's life and thought, while giving special attention to his or her religious contexts, convictions, doubts, objections, ideas, and actions. Many leading politicians, writers, musicians, philosophers, and scientists have engaged deeply with religion in significant and resonant ways that have often been overlooked or underexplored. Some of the volumes will even focus on men and women who were lifelong unbelievers, attending to how they navigated and resisted religious questions, assumptions, and settings. The books in this series will therefore recast important figures in fresh and thought-provoking ways"--

European settlers in Canada, Australia and South Africa said they were building ‘better Britains’ overseas. But their new societies were frequently threatened by devastating wars, rebellions, epidemics and natural disasters. It is striking that settlers turned to old traditions of collective prayer and worship to make sense of these calamities. At times of trauma, colonial governments set aside whole days for prayer so that entire populations could join together to implore God’s intervention, assistance or guidance. And at moments of celebration, such as the coming of peace, everyone in the empire might participate in synchronized acts of thanksgiving. Prayer, providence and empire asks why occasions with origins in the sixteenth century became numerous in the democratic, pluralistic and secularised conditions of the ‘British world’.

From 1800 to 1922 the Irish Question was the most emotional and divisive issue in British politics. It pitted Westminster politicians, anti-Catholic British public opinion, and Irish Protestant and Presbyterian champions of the Union against the determination of Ireland's large Catholic majority to obtain civil rights, economic justice, and cultural and political independence. In this completely revised and updated edition of The Irish Question, Lawrence J. McCaffrey extends his classic analysis of Irish nationalism to the present day. He makes clear the tortured history of British-Irish relations and offers insight into the difficulties now facing those who hope to create a permanent peace in Northern Ireland.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Origins of Political Order offers a provocative examination of modern identity politics: its origins, its effects, and what it means for domestic and international affairs of state In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American institutions were in decay, as the state was progressively captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatened to destabilize the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to “the people,” who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole. Demand for recognition of one’s identity is a master concept that unifies much of what is going on in world politics today. The universal recognition on which liberal democracy is based has been increasingly challenged by narrower forms of recognition based on nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, or gender, which have resulted in anti-immigrant populism, the upsurge of politicized Islam, the fractious “identity liberalism” of college campuses, and the emergence of white nationalism. Populist nationalism, said to be rooted in economic motivation, actually springs from the demand for recognition and therefore cannot simply be satisfied by economic means. The demand for identity cannot be transcended; we must begin to shape identity in a way that supports rather than undermines democracy. Identity is an urgent and necessary book—a sharp warning that unless we forge a universal understanding of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continuing conflict.

Michael P. Carroll argues that the academic study of religion in the United States continues to be shaped by a "Protestant imagination" that has warped our perception of the American religious experience and its written history and analysis. In this provocative study, Carroll explores a number of historiographical puzzles that emerge from the American Catholic story as it has been understood through the Protestant tradition. Reexamining the experience of Catholicism among Irish immigrants, Italian Americans, Acadians and Cajuns, and Hispanics, Carroll debunks the myths that have informed much of this history. Shedding new light on lived religion in America, Carroll moves an entire academic field in new, exciting directions and challenges his fellow scholars to open their minds and eyes to develop fresh interpretations of American religious history.

Written in a detailed and fascinating manner, this book is ideal for general readers interested in the English language.