Religion and Political Culture in Britain and Ireland

Book excerpt: The main theme of this book is religion and identity - not only national identity, but also regional and local identities. David Hempton penetrates to the heart of vigorous religious and political cultures, both elite and popular, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He brings to life a diverse and variegated spectrum of religious communities in all of the British Isles. With so much new British history really an extended version of old English history, Hempton has devoted more attention to the Celtic fringes, especially Ireland. It is an exercise in comparative history, but he also shows how richly coloured is the religious history of these islands. He demonstrates that even in their cultural distinctiveness, the various religious traditions have had more in common than is sometimes imagined. The book arises from the 1993 Cadbury Lectures at the University of Birmingham.