Faiths in Ireland

CollardGreens

Just curious, is everybody in Ireland Catholic or are there any Baptist? Where I live in the States (South-East), there are as many Baptist as there are Catholic's in the northern parts of the States. Not sure why, but it got me wondering if there are any Baptist in Ireland, from reading it only seems there are Catholics?

Morbert

CollardGreens wrote: »

Just curious, is everybody in Ireland Catholic or are there any Baptist? Where I live in the States (South-East), there are as many Baptist as there are Catholic's in the northern parts of the States. Not sure why, but it got me wondering if there are any Baptist in Ireland, from reading it only seems there are Catholics?

There are a lot of "Catholics" in Ireland. But if you are looking for Catholics who are as involved in their faith as Baptists are, then there aren't many.

Baptists are very very rare compared to the states.

im invisible

http://www.thejournal.ie/census-2011-surge-in-non-religious-but-84-per-cent-remain-catholic-400443-Mar2012/

the last census results (2011) if thats any help

CollardGreens

Yes, pentecostal would be correct. The don't do the "speaking in tongue" like the Church of God or other faiths though. Several pentecostal faiths speak in tongue. A Baptist service is (to me) not as reserved as a Catholic service (my ex husband was Catholic and I visited his church) but not as laid back as some here. We for the most part dress nice, my grandma called it the "Sunday-go-to-meeting" clothes. Baptist are immersed under water when we are baptized. Anybody can partake of the bread/juice when we have communion, even a stranger visiting for the first time.

Food is a big thing in the Baptist church, Wednesday night services always start with food in the dining hall and cooked by the members.

These are just a few of the differences about the Baptist I can think of. Same God as the Catholics worship!

Peregrinus

The Baptists are a small denomination in Ireland, and their main presence is in Northern Ireland. Their headquarters, their seminary and 94 out of 115 churches are in Northern Ireland, but they do have a presence in the Republic with, I think, six churches in Dublin and about fifteen in other towns.

Association of Baptist Churches in Ireland (formerly the Baptist Union of Ireland).

Most of the Irish Baptist churches come out of the British, rather than the US, Baptist tradition, so a visitor from the US might find some things done a bit differently. But I have no doubt they would be made very welcome.

Manach

On visiting Ireland, and we do need the tourist numbers, there are many fine examples of Catholic communities and historical churches around the island, with the quiet and reserved faith of traditional worship.

Peregrinus

CollardGreens wrote: »

Just curious, is everybody in Ireland Catholic or are there any Baptist? Where I live in the States (South-East), there are as many Baptist as there are Catholic's in the northern parts of the States. Not sure why, but it got me wondering if there are any Baptist in Ireland, from reading it only seems there are Catholics?

(Probably worth pointing out that, in addition to Baptists, there are a very large number of Christians in Ireland who are neither Catholic nor Baptist but who belong to other Christian traditions. Anglicanism and Presbyterianism would be the big ones, but you've also got your Orthodox Christians, your Methodists, your Congregationalists, your Pentecostalists and more besides. Baptists may be comparatively few in Ireland, but there are lots of non-Catholics.)

getz

in the UK both the baptist and the methodists are now together,the problem is the non catholic churches have in ireland is that the irish catholic church is very much against any mixed marriage,so many of the young people from the church of ireland,baptist ect,have had to leave ireland over the years to meet suitable partners, this is why the protestant population in the republic has dropped so much,

Peregrinus

Other way around. Intermarriage is generally bad for minority communities, because it leads to their eclipse. Which is why, e.g., Methodists in the Republic have all but disappeared. Methodist-Anglican marriages are common, and the children are almost invariably raised as Anglicans, and very often the Methodist partner worships at an Anglican church as well, and so doesn't form part of a Methodist congregation.

Minorities survive best when intermarriage with the majority is avoided - just look at the the Jews. This works equally well whether they themselves choose to avoid intermarriage, or whether the majority community makes that choice.

It's true that in the past the Catholic church strongly discouraged intermarriage between Catholics and Protestants (though that hasn't been the case for a generation or more) but it's quite wrong to suggest that this is what led to the decline of the Protestant community in the Republic. A lot of commentators see it as something which in fact helped to sustain the Protestant community, especially in rural areas.

martinedwards

there are even a few Anglican/methodist united churches.

Church of the Good shepherd in Monkstown (co Antrim) is the first in Ireland, united now (1 set of accounts!) for 10 years now.

and has been said before, there are many more non RC denominations than Baptists, and like everywhere else in the world there is a wide range of styles within each denomination.

MOST Eire church are RC, MOST NI churches are of the dozens of Protestant denominations.

getz

Peregrinus wrote: »

Other way around. Intermarriage is generally bad for minority communities, because it leads to their eclipse. Which is why, e.g., Methodists in the Republic have all but disappeared. Methodist-Anglican marriages are common, and the children are almost invariably raised as Anglicans, and very often the Methodist partner worships at an Anglican church as well, and so doesn't form part of a Methodist congregation.

Minorities survive best when intermarriage with the majority is avoided - just look at the the Jews. This works equally well whether they themselves choose to avoid intermarriage, or whether the majority community makes that choice.

It's true that in the past the Catholic church strongly discouraged intermarriage between Catholics and Protestants (though that hasn't been the case for a generation or more) but it's quite wrong to suggest that this is what led to the decline of the Protestant community in the Republic. A lot of commentators see it as something which in fact helped to sustain the Protestant community, especially in rural areas.

inter faith marriage in ireland at one time was common,the sons would take the fathers faith and the daughters the mothers,[it was known as a irish thing,] since that was stopped by the catholic church,the protestant population has declined by 70%,by saying it was dicouraged is being kind to the church,in fact it was banned unless the children were brought up as catholic,i should know as i was one of those children,

According to the 2011 census from the link above: (sorted by size)
Roman Catholic: 3,861,000
No religion: 269,000
Church of Ireland: 129,000
Other: 81,000
Not stated: 72,900
Muslim: 49,200
Orthodox: 45,200
Other christian: 41,299
Presbyterian: 24,600
Apostolic or Pentecostal: 14,000

CollardGreens

Thank you all so much for the education you have given me! I have been curious. On the mixing of faiths, my Fathers family is Seventh-day Adventist and I went to their schools when I was young. The SDA are very much against mixing with any other faiths. I later became a Baptist largely because of my Mothers Mother, watching the things she did for others and the giving to the needy and sick, the bible studies she did at the nursing homes to help people made me want to be like her.

As an adult, I still wish to be more like my grandmother since to me, she did what Jesus taught us to do ~ love one another.

Peregrinus

getz wrote: »

inter faith marriage in ireland at one time was common,the sons would take the fathers faith and the daughters the mothers,[it was known as a irish thing,] since that was stopped by the catholic church,the protestant population has declined by 70%,by saying it was dicouraged is being kind to the church,in fact it was banned unless the children were brought up as catholic,i should know as i was one of those children,

But the fact that mixed marriage was effectively banned served to support the Protestant population, not to reduce it.

Think about it. Under what you describe as the former practice, a proportion of Protestants married Catholics, and half of their children were raised as Catholics. Since Protestants were the minority, the proportion of Protestants marrying Catholics was always going to be much higher than the proportion of Catholics marrying Protestants. (Think about it.) It follows that the “loss” of half of the offspring was always going to impact the minority community much more than the majority community.

The restrictive rules of the Ne Temere decree were promulgated in 1908. It required, as you point out, the children of mixed marriages to be raised as Catholic. Its purpose, however, was not so much to ensure that the children of such marriages would be Catholic as to ensure, so far as possible, that such marriages did not happen in the first place, and in this it was largely successful; the rate of mixed Catholic-Protestant marriages in Ireland between 1908 and 1970 was extremely low. The result of this is that the steady attrition of the Protestant community through mixed marriages, and the “loss” of half the children, ceased. Protestants overwhelmingly married other Protestants, and all of the resulting children were raised as Protestants.

The notion that Protestants had to leave Ireland to find marriage partners is a popular politically correct trope, but without real foundation. In 1911, the first census after the promulgation of the Ne Temere decree, there were well over a million Protestants in Ireland (out of a total population of 4.4 million); that’s many times larger than the critical mass needed for a community to sustain itself through marriage and reproduction. It’s possible that in some very isolated places people did have to leave in order to find non-Catholic marriage partners, but it certainly wasn’t the general experience. And even those who did have to leave didn't have to leave the country; they could find a viable Protestant community, if not in their own county, then certainly in an adjacent county.

The other historical fact that explodes this politically correct theory is that the Protestant proportion of the population in Ireland peaked in the mid-nineteenth century and declined steadily thereafter. This cannot be blamed on Ne Temere, which was only promulgated in 1908, when the process had already been under way for sixty years.

The conventional account of this is that Protestants enjoyed a privileged political, social and economic status which was gradually dismantled during the nineteenth century. Protestants experienced this as a process of alienation, and they came more and more to identify themselves as British, and to see themselves as separate from the bulk of the Irish nation, leading to a higher propensity to emigrate, not so much for marriage as for career or economic or social advantage - the army, the Indian Civil Service, etc. So the decline in the Protestant population is not so much due to Ne Temere as it is to Catholic emancipation, land purchase, the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, the Local Government Act 1898 and other democratising measures.

getz

well thats one way of looking at it

Peregrinus

To go back to the OP's question, in the 2011 Republic of Ireland Census 3,531 respondents indicated that that they were "Baptists". This puts them just ahead of the self-identified "Agnostics" (3,521) and a bit behind the self-identified "Atheists" (3,905). However there could well be more Baptists included in the groups who identified as "Evangelical" (4.188), "Apostolic or Pentecostal" (14,043), or just "Protestant" (5,326) or "other Christian, not otherwise specified" (41,161).

All in all, it's quite hard to get a clear handle on the number of Baptists in Ireland, but they are certainly eclipsed by Catholics, people of no Religion, people who declined to answer the question, Anglicans and Muslims, who (in that order) are the five largest groups in Ireland

getz

Peregrinus wrote: »

To go back to the OP's question, in the 2011 Republic of Ireland Census 3,531 respondents indicated that that they were "Baptists". This puts them just ahead of the self-identified "Agnostics" (3,521) and a bit behind the self-identified "Atheists" (3,905). However there could well be more Baptists included in the groups who identified as "Evangelical" (4.188), "Apostolic or Pentecostal" (14,043), or just "Protestant" (5,326) or "other Christian, not otherwise specified" (41,161).

All in all, it's quite hard to get a clear handle on the number of Baptists in Ireland, but they are certainly eclipsed by Catholics, people of no Religion, people who declined to answer the question, Anglicans and Muslims, who (in that order) are the five largest groups in Ireland

catholic ireland in the 2011 poll,says 84.2% of the population see themselves as catholic,it was also interesting to see the smaller religious groups ,like the plymouth brethren,pantheist,and bah,i mentioned.

getz

found the answer,from homepage.eircom.net throughout ireland the baptist church has 8400 members,but only 600 members live in the republic.

Peregrinus

getz wrote: »

found the answer,from homepage.eircom.net throughout ireland the baptist church has 8400 members,but only 600 members live in the republic.

Well, there may be Baptist churches which are not members of the Association of Baptist Churches.

But, more to the point, the ABC distinguishes between members of their constituent churches, and people who come to worship there, which is a much larger number. There may be people who are not formally members of a Baptist church - they haven't enrolled in a congregation, or whatever the procedure is - but who worship in Baptist churches and consider themselves Baptists, and identify as such in the Census.

Plus, you have children being raised in the Baptist tradition who, of course, are not baptised but may be recorded as Baptists in the Census.

getz

Peregrinus wrote: »

Well, there may be Baptist churches which are not members of the Association of Baptist Churches.

But, more to the point, the ABC distinguishes between members of their constituent churches, and people who come to worship there, which is a much larger number. There may be people who are not formally members of a Baptist church - they haven't enrolled in a congregation, or whatever the procedure is - but who worship in Baptist churches and consider themselves Baptists, and identify as such in the Census.

Plus, you have children being raised in the Baptist tradition who, of course, are not baptised but may be recorded as Baptists in the Census.

the numbers i have quoted are not from the census,they are from their own,who we are on the web,i understand well about the baptist church as my father was a catholic and my mother was a deacon in the baptist church,i was christened catholic,but as there was a war on in england at that time,i never got to any catholic church,so spent my early religious studies with the baptist and CofE,i married a catholic girl,but not in any church,and i dedicated[not christened] my son as a baptist,in the idea that if he could make his own mind up,and not be brainwashed.

Peregrinus

getz wrote: »

the numbers i have quoted are not from the census,they are from their own,who we are on the web . . .

Sure. I'm not disagreeing with you. My point is that the question "how many Baptists are there in Ireland?" doesn't have a one-word answer.

The ABC says it has a "committed membership" of about 8.500, of whom about 600 are in the Republic. And of course there may be some non-ABC Baptist congregations not included in that fiture. On the other hand, they also say that about 20,000 rock up to their churches each Sunday, so presumably the number of people attending ABC churches in the Republic is considerably greater than 600. If the ratio of "committed members" to "regular attenders" is pretty uniform across congregations, then there are probably about 1.500 coming to worship at the ABC's churches in the Republic - 600 "committed members" and 900 others.

As against that, we have a census figure of 3,500 or so self-identified Baptists in the Republic. This presumably includes

- the 850 "committed members" of ABC churches in the Republic, plus some people in border areas who live in the Republic but worship at an ABC church in the North.

- similar "committed members" of non-ABC Baptist churches, if any. (There may be no non-ABC Baptist churches in the Republic, for all I know.)

- people who are not "committed members" but who nevertheless worship at a Baptist church and identify as Baptists. This could be quite a large group - I have crudely estimated 900 - but it could also be disproporationately made up of children.

- people who don't go to church much, or at all, but who come from a Baptist background and identify with that tradition.

So, probably the best answer to the question "how many Baptists are there in Ireland?" is "not a huge amount, but they are certainly there. And they're mostly, but not all, in the North."

getz

Peregrinus wrote: »

Sure. I'm not disagreeing with you. My point is that the question "how many Baptists are there in Ireland?" doesn't have a one-word answer.

The ABC says it has a "committed membership" of about 8.500, of whom about 600 are in the Republic. And of course there may be some non-ABC Baptist congregations not included in that fiture. On the other hand, they also say that about 20,000 rock up to their churches each Sunday, so presumably the number of people attending ABC churches in the Republic is considerably greater than 600. If the ratio of "committed members" to "regular attenders" is pretty uniform across congregations, then there are probably about 1.500 coming to worship at the ABC's churches in the Republic - 600 "committed members" and 900 others.

As against that, we have a census figure of 3,500 or so self-identified Baptists in the Republic. This presumably includes

- the 850 "committed members" of ABC churches in the Republic, plus some people in border areas who live in the Republic but worship at an ABC church in the North.

- similar "committed members" of non-ABC Baptist churches, if any. (There may be no non-ABC Baptist churches in the Republic, for all I know.)

- people who are not "committed members" but who nevertheless worship at a Baptist church and identify as Baptists. This could be quite a large group - I have crudely estimated 900 - but it could also be disproporationately made up of children.

- people who don't go to church much, or at all, but who come from a Baptist background and identify with that tradition.

So, probably the best answer to the question "how many Baptists are there in Ireland?" is "not a huge amount, but they are certainly there. And they're mostly, but not all, in the North."

as i say 20 years ago the methodists and the baptists joined together in the UK,so we can expect many of the will pray together in baptist churches, TBH there is not much between both of them.

Peregrinus

getz wrote: »

as i say 20 years ago the methodists and the baptists joined together in the UK,so we can expect many of the will pray together in baptist churches, TBH there is not much between both of them.

The Methodists and the Baptists are still separate denominations in the UK, though in some towns a Methodist and a Baptist congregation share a church building. It's the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists who have formally joined together (to form the United Reformed Church).

SoulandForm

getz wrote: »

as i say 20 years ago the methodists and the baptists joined together in the UK,so we can expect many of the will pray together in baptist churches, TBH there is not much between both of them.

Methodists practice infant Baptism and believe in the Real Presence in a "Classical Anglican"/Calvinist way. Pretty big differences.

SoulandForm

Peregrinus wrote: »

The Methodists and the Baptists are still separate denominations in the UK, though in some towns a Methodist and a Baptist congregation share a church building. It's the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists who have formally joined together (to form the United Reformed Church).

The lines between the Methodists in Ireland and the C of I can very much blur at times. I think they have actually two or three joint parishes.

Peregrinus

SoulandForm wrote: »

The lines between the Methodists in Ireland and the C of I can very much blur at times. I think they have actually two or three joint parishes.

They have a couple of shared churches, but what you have there is, technically, not a joint parish but an Anglican parish and a Methodist congregation sharing the same building, and worshipping together. Christ Church, Leeson Park was the most prominent example, but a few years ago that arrangement came to an end because, even jointly, there were insufficient numbers to maintain the building properly.

getz

SoulandForm wrote: »

Methodists practice infant Baptism and believe in the Real Presence in a "Classical Anglican"/Calvinist way. Pretty big differences.

the difference is ,how wet do you get,methodists practice infant baptism but it is not essential ,they are very loose on that,the baptist only baptise adults at the age when they themselves can decide,

SoulandForm

Peregrinus wrote: »

They have a couple of shared churches, but what you have there is, technically, not a joint parish but an Anglican parish and a Methodist congregation sharing the same building, and worshipping together. Christ Church, Leeson Park was the most prominent example, but a few years ago that arrangement came to an end because, even jointly, there were insufficient numbers to maintain the building properly.

I was thinking of the north.

http://ireland.anglican.org/archive/hardgospel/index.php?do=articles&sid=7&rid=26

SoulandForm

getz wrote: »

the difference is ,how wet do you get,methodists practice infant baptism but it is not essential ,they are very loose on that,the baptist only baptise adults at the age when they themselves can decide,

http://www.covingtonfumc.com/BaptismintheUnitedMethodistChurch360166

I think that most Methodists would view infant Baptism as essential.

Peregrinus

SoulandForm wrote: »

I was thinking of the north.

http://ireland.anglican.org/archive/hardgospel/index.php?do=articles&sid=7&rid=26

That's very impressive! Thanks for the link.

getz

SoulandForm wrote: »

http://www.covingtonfumc.com/BaptismintheUnitedMethodistChurch360166

I think that most Methodists would view infant Baptism as essential.

no it is not essential,they also baptise adults

SoulandForm

Peregrinus wrote: »

That's very impressive! Thanks for the link.

I think that the C of I and the Methodists will gently fuse within the next two decades as the C of I outside of st George's in Belfast doesnt have a Catholic wing or much influence at all from the Oxford movement and the Ritualists. Dogmatic Calvinists also would be opposed to the Methodists, and I have heard from two Free Presbyterians that they dont believe that Methodists are saved, but Im not sure how many of these exist in the C of I.

This raises another question- why is it that Protestantism in Celtic lands tends to be so ultra-Protestant if that is the right word? You could put it down in Ireland to be being surrounded by RCs but that doesnt explain the situation in Wales and Scotland.

SoulandForm

getz wrote: »

no it is not essential,they also baptise adults

Adults who have not been Baptized before. Methodists dont re-Baptize adults the way that Baptists do.

getz

SoulandForm wrote: »

Adults who have not been Baptized before. Methodists dont re-Baptize adults the way that Baptists do.

not fully true some methodists who like the baptists, will not baptize children, the methodist church has a very wide belief ,

getz

only two main christian chuches do not believe in baptism ,the quakers and the salvation army,the baptist,pentecostal,and some methodist churches,argue that only adults should be baptised as you need to take a personal pledge of commitment at your baptism,and this is the only possible for an adult, [how can anyone argue against that ?]

Benny_Cake

getz wrote: »

only two main christian chuches do not believe in baptism ,the quakers and the salvation army,the baptist,pentecostal,and some methodist churches,argue that only adults should be baptised as you need to take a personal pledge of commitment at your baptism,and this is the only possible for an adult, [how can anyone argue against that ?]

People can and do argue against it because of the two main views on baptism: baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and baptism as a sign of faith. That's an argument that has been going on for centuries, even before bringing the Sally Army or the Quakers into it!

I'm not aware of any Methodists that require believers (adult) baptism, a group related to the Methodists, the Church of the Nazarene, leaves that decision to parents though.

SoulandForm

Methodists believe in Baptismal regeneration which Baptists do not. Its in their Articles of Religion-

Article XVII - Of Baptism.

Baptism is not only a sign of profession and mark of difference whereby Christians are distinguished from others that are not baptized; but it is also a sign of regeneration or the new birth. The Baptism of young children is to be retained in the Church.

homer911

SoulandForm wrote: »

Methodists believe in Baptismal regeneration which Baptists do not. Its in their Articles of Religion-

Article XVII - Of Baptism.

Baptism is not only a sign of profession and mark of difference whereby Christians are distinguished from others that are not baptized; but it is also a sign of regeneration or the new birth. The Baptism of young children is to be retained in the Church.

There is a world of difference between baptism as a sign of regeneration and baptismal regeneration

SoulandForm

homer911 wrote: »

There is a world of difference between baptism as a sign of regeneration and baptismal regeneration

Is there though? All Sacraments are seen by those who believe in them as outward signs of a Spiritual happening.