Andrew Holmes's deeply learned and important study takes as its central theme the spiritual and intellectual constitution of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland in the century between Catholic emancipation and the Davey trial. On the basis that (unlike the Church of Scotland) there was relative unity and unanimity within the church in this period, Dr Holmes focuses on the intellectual leadership – ‘ministers, writers and professors’ (p. 36) – together with their associated institutions, rather than (say) church sessions or the wider laity. His concerns are fundamentally with the ways in which this leadership responded to the waves of challenge represented by biblical criticism, modern historical method, and Darwinian evolution, as well as external forms of liberal theological influence. In documenting these concerns, he deploys a truly prodigious array of (largely) printed primary sources, together with some manuscript materials in Ireland and the U.S.A.
The picture that emerges fundamentally alters received wisdom – not just about the centre of intellectual gravity within the church, but also about the established metanarrative of its development across these years. In the first instance Dr Holmes wants us to take seriously the (otherwise neglected) theological thought of mainstream conservative Presbyterianism in Ireland – and to treat it in its own terms. He argues that Irish Presbyterians, communicating across a formidable set of transnational networks (including – of course – Princeton and its seminary), consolidated a conservative theological outlook which was defined by (and operated flexibly between) the twin poles of the Westminster Confession of Faith and evangelical spirituality and sensibility. Its distinctiveness, or – in Dr Holmes's terms, its ‘Irishness’ – arose from ministers’ particular secular and theological education in the north of Ireland, their emphasis upon the historic identity of Presbyterianism within Ireland, and from their communication with both transatlantic evangelicalism and Princeton theology. It is this recovery of an intellectually self-confident and engaged theological conservatism which (in part) distinguishes Dr Holmes's study – as well as his revision of those interpretations of Irish Presbyterianism which have either over-emphasised Enlightenment or, indeed, modernist influences – or which (alternatively) have treated it as a subset of political unionism or (even) of Paisleyism.
More generally, the high distinction of this work stems in part from Holmes's palpable dissatisfaction with the existing analytical frameworks applied, not just to Presbyterianism in Ireland, but to the history of religious faith in Ireland more generally. He convincingly identifies a particular deficit within modern Irish historiography, whose practitioners (he says) ‘have paid little sustained attention to the beliefs and practices of Christians, especially theological thought. Religion for most historians of Ireland is about the politics of identity’ (p. 12). Irish history, he argues, needs to be more cognisant of new emphases within the history of religion, rather than obsessed with its own tired and immutable agenda.
This, then, is a work which is partly focused on the task of excavating and restoring not only an intellectually serious conservative tradition within Presbyterianism, but also – more widely – the importance of theological debate and distinction within the church. The alternative, as he makes clear, has been a historiography which has traded often either in context or in caricature – as with the famous Davey trial, which (for Holmes) was far from being an uncomplicated clash between modernism and its opponents (p. 234). Indeed Holmes's analysis of the episode and its protagonists underlines his general dissatisfaction at (what he sees as) the crudity of the vocabulary and categorisation which has been hitherto applied: Davey himself, for example, was both the author of the ‘modernist’ text, The changing vesture of the faith (1923), as well as being deeply rooted within conservative evangelical cultures (he was ‘born again’ through an experience of personal conversion at Keswick). For Holmes, this complex tension between a thoughtful confessional theology and evangelical experience embodied the very essence of the contemporary ‘Irish Presbyterian’ mind.
It should be said immediately that Dr Holmes has not rescued his conservative church community from the condescension of liberal or secular interpretation, only to reinstate an older form of (generally denominational) celebration. As it happens, these in-house histories of Irish Presbyterianism tended to focus on institutions and personalities, and (more generally) denominational identity rather than upon the history of theological ideas. But perhaps the defining strength of this volume is that Holmes not only recreates his Victorian Irish Calvinist international – he also in a sense mimics the intellectual achievements and strengths of his subject matter. For, just as these Presbyterian leaders were strong on ideas and a global intellectual engagement, so Holmes himself confidently situates the specifics of their story in an impressively rich and layered set of theological, philosophical and historiographical contexts. In short, this is not merely a distinguished contribution to the study of Irish Presbyterianism, it is also a vital contribution to the wider intellectual ‘turn’ within modern Irish historiography.
There is an elegiac quality to his final paragraphs, where he observes that ‘what has been lost [within contemporary Presbyterianism] is a distinctively Irish and Presbyterian intellectual culture in which conservative religious ideas mattered and were often articulated with dignity and ability’ (p. 239). It is entirely in keeping with his uniformly calm, restrained and judicious approaches that Dr Holmes otherwise resists the temptation to pursue any overt comparison between the sophisticated leadership community which he anatomises so skilfully and its latter-day successors. For them in particular this superb volume should be required reading.
