Irish Church Missions to Roman Catholics, c.1700-1800

Eighteenth-Century, Church of Ireland sermons are an under-studied area of Irish religious history, especially those relating to the conversion of the Catholic majority to Protestantism. Using a wide number and range of printed sermons, this article argues that the influential higher clergy were committed to conversion and used their sermons to advertise and support their view of how it should be best achieved; with the brand of conversion scheme adopted contingent upon the political and religious tastes of the individual and the political climate of the day, in particular the prevailing attitude to the Catholic 'problem'. Whatever method was adopted, whether evangelising in Irish, Protestant education or the use of penal legislation, preachers justified it to the political elite gathered before them, in terms of strident, culturally entrenched, anti-Catholicism.