A Flight of Parsons

Irish Anglican clergymen played an important role in the creation of a nineteenth-century "Greater Ireland," a term denoting a diasporic movement in which the Irish transformed into a global people, actively participating in British imperial expansion and colonial nation building. These essays address the formative influences and circumstances that informed the mental world and disposition of Irish Anglicans, particularly clergy who were graduates of Trinity College Dublin (TCD), an institution pivotal in the formation of attitudes among the Irish Anglican elite. TCD was the gathering point for Anglicans of different backgrounds, and as such acted as a great leveler and formative center where laity and aspirant clergy were educated together under a common curriculum. In common with the Irish as a whole, TCD graduate clergy exerted an influence on colonial life in the religious, cultural, intellectual, and political spheres out of all proportion to their numbers. Faced with its dismantling in the old world, adherents of the Church of Ireland availed of opportunities for its reconstruction in the new and in the process bequeathed an important legacy in the colonial church.

"This collective volume is a fine example of the virtues of particularism. The essays are tightly focused, well documented, and clearly presented. No big history is on display here, just admirably solid scholarship that is much to be admired."
--D. H. Akenson, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario

"Thomas Power has assembled here an outstanding collection of essays which combine to reveal the crucial role played by Trinity College Dublin's Divinity School in supplying clergy for the Anglican Church worldwide for nearly a century, not least to Canada, and they unravel the rich evangelical strands within that diaspora. Ireland's sectarian hostilities were exported with them, but the contributors illuminate the sheer variety of emigre stories, each with a distinctive sense of mission."
--David Dickson, Trinity College Dublin

"As this volume brings to light, Anglicanism has exercised an important influence on Irish religious culture, as well as on those cultures touched by the wider Irish diaspora of the nineteenth century. This stimulating and welcomed study will be of interest to a wide range of scholars, including those exploring the history of Anglicanism, Irish, Canadian, and Australian religion and culture, and the religious and cultural impact of immigration in the modern age."
--Grayson Carter, Fuller Theological Seminary

"Thomas Power must be congratulated in bringing together these essays by a number of leading scholars in the fields of Irish and religious history . . . This book casts valuable light on hitherto neglected aspects of the history of the Irish diaspora and worldwide Anglicanism."
--Brian M. Walker, Queen's University, Belfast


Thomas P. Power is adjunct professor of church history and graduate studies coordinator, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto. He is the author of Minister and Mines: Religious Conflict in an Irish Mining Community, 1847-1858 (2014).