In this episode, Center Director Mark Movsesian interviews historian Richard Brookhiser (left) about his new documentary, “Free Exercise: America’s Story of Religious Liberty.” How have minority religions tested and shaped America’s commitment to religious freedom over the centuries–and how has America changed those religions in return? From the Flushing Remonstrance of 1657 until now, it has been a grand story. Listen in!
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Scholars frequently cite Ireland as an example of rapid secularization–how a country can go, in the space of one or two generations, from identifying strongly with a religion to viewing it with indifference and even hostility. In Ireland’s case, the collapse of Catholicism seems to have been particularly sudden and unanticipated, much like the similar “Quiet Revolution” that took place in Quebec, another overwhelmingly Catholic society, after 1968. A forthcoming collection of essays from Oxford, The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Modern Ireland, addresses this transformation, as well as other phenomena, including the rise of the Irish Nones. The editors are sociologist Gladys Ganiel and historian Andrew R. Holmes, both of Queen’s University Belfast. Here is the publisher’s description:
What does religion mean to modern Ireland and what is its recent social and political history? The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Modern Ireland provides in-depth analysis of the relationships between religion, society, politics, and everyday life on the island of Ireland from 1800 to the twenty-first century. Taking a chronological and all-island approach, it explores the complex and changing role of religion both before and after partition.
The handbook’s thirty-two chapters address long-standing historical and political debates about religion, identity, and politics, including religion’s contributions to division and violence. They also offer perspectives on how religion interacts with education, the media, law, gender and sexuality, science, literature, and memory. Whilst providing insight into how everyday religious practices have intersected with the institutional structures of Catholicism and Protestantism, the book also examines the island’s increasing religious diversity, including the rise of those with ‘no religion’.
Written by leading scholars in the field and emerging researchers with new perspectives, this is an authoritative and up-to-date volume that offers a wide-ranging and comprehensive survey of the enduring significance of religion on the island.