Religion
Irish bishop Paul Cullen set out to spread Irish dominance over the English-speaking Catholic Church in the 19th century. The establishment of an 'Irish Episcopal Empire' involved three transnational entities - the British Empire, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Irish diaspora. Irish clergy, notably Cullen, made particular use of the reach of the British Empire to spread their influence. From the 1830s until his death in 1878, Cullen held several key positions near the top of the Irish hierarchy and influenced Rome's appointment of Irish bishops on four continents. By contrast, a number of Irish people abroad converted to Asian religions and played significant roles in anti-colonial revival movements, such as the Irish Buddhist monk U Dhammaloka (?Laurence Carroll?) in Burma, Buddhist sympathiser Lafcadio Hearn in Japan, the Hindu nun Sister Sanghamitta (Margaret Noble) and the Theosophist Hindu couple James and Margaret Cousins.
Walker (2007) compares Irish immigrant communities in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Great Britain respecting issues of identity and 'Irishness.' Religion remained the major cause of differentiation in all Irish diaspora communities and had the greatest impact on identity, followed by the nature and difficulty of socio-economic conditions faced in each new country and the strength of continued social and political links of Irish immigrants and their descendants with the old country.
From the late 20th century onward, Irish identity abroad became increasingly cultural, non-denominational, and non-political, although many emigrants from Northern Ireland stood apart from this trend. However, Ireland as religious reference point is now increasingly significant in neopagan contexts.
Read more about this topic: Irish Immigrants
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers. Whenever the appeal is made—no matter how indirectly—to numbers, proclamation is then and there made, that religion is not. He that finds God a sweet, enveloping presence, who shall dare to come in?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this—that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made—not to understand—but to feel—as crime.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“Culture’s essential service to a religion is to destroy intellectual idolatry, the recurrent tendency in religion to replace the object of its worship with its present understanding and forms of approach to that object.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)