Set against the international 'Great Awakening' and turmoil of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, The Bible War in Ireland reveals the growth of religious revivalism in Ireland during a period of unparalleled political upheaval. After the 1798 Rebellion, evangelical religion became enormously popular within Irish Protestant society, as evangelicals led a moral crusade to mold the minds of a rising generation of Catholics through education and Bible distribution. The threat implicit in the rise of Catholic democracy caused Protestants to unite behind this, culminating in the 1822 'Second Reformation' sermon of Archbishop William Magee that claimed ecclesiastical supremacy for the Church of Ireland. This provoked an unprecedented response from the Catholic hierarchy and clergy, led by Bishop James Doyle.
Chapter 1. Eighteenth-Century Antecedents
Chapter 2. The Age of Moral Reform
Chapter 3. The Mission to the Catholic Population
Chapter 4. The Politics of Catholic Emancipation
Chapter 5. The 'Second Reformation,' 1822-7
Chapter 6. The Catholic Counter-Attack
Chapter 7. New Directions, 1828-40
Appendix A: Tracts on the Popish Controversy
Appendix B: Richard Lalor Shiel’s Account of a Contest between Doyle and Magee