Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 28:3 (Fall 2024)
Article: The Impact Of Revivals On Irish Baptist Life From The Rise Of Evangelicalism To The Twentieth Century
Author: David Luke

The Impact Of Revivals On Irish Baptist Life From The Rise Of Evangelicalism To The Twentieth Century

David Luke

David Luke is Lecturer in Historical Theology and the Director of Postgraduate Studies at the Irish Baptist College, Moira, Craigavon, Northern Ireland. Dr. Luke served as pastor of Gilnahirk Baptist Church, Belfast, Northern Ireland for fifteen years. He has contributed to Treasures of Irish Christianity (Veritas, 2015), A Collection of Essays on Jonathan Edwards ( JE Society Press, 2016), A Jonathan Edwards Encyclopedia (Eerdmans, 2017), and The Miscellanies Companion ( JE Society Press, 2018). He has also published in the Journal of the Irish Baptist Historical Society, Reformed Theological Journal, Semanatorul, and the Journal of European Baptist Studies.

By the eighteenth-century Ireland was enjoying a period of comparative political stability and economic prosperity under the Hanoverians that stood in stark contrast to the social and political upheaval of the previous century. Even the religious conflict that stood behind much of the turmoil in the seventeenth century had receded as “each of the major religious denominations ministered to pre-assigned communities and only occasionally attempted any kind of controversial proselytism.”1 Around eighty percent of the population of Ireland was Roman Catholic, with the rest made up of the established Church of Ireland and the dissenting churches, of which the Presbyterians, who were largely located in the northern province of Ulster, were by far the most numerically significant. In Dublin, the nation’s capital, “a lively religious subculture developed during the first half of the eighteenth century with at least twenty-five Dissenting places of worship, some of which had only a fleeting existence.”2 This vibrant scene did not mean, however, that it was marked by spiritual vitality. Instead,

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“liberalizing theology, along with widespread interest in property and propriety, seemed more powerful in the churches as a whole.”3 The small, struggling Irish Baptist community succumbed to the temptations of this “gay and flattering world.”4 As a result “By the late eighteenth century their piety and perception was so introspective that they were easily dismissed, marginalised and ill-defined by those outside their community.”5

Irish Baptists And The Evangelical Revival

In 1744 two young men from Dublin, Antisel Taylor and John Hy...