Mitchel, Patrick

PERSONAL:

Education: Received B.Sc., B.A., and Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Irish Bible Institute, Ulysses House, 22-24 Foley St., Dublin 1, Ireland.

CAREER:

Irish Bible Institute, Dublin, Ireland, director of studies; board member, Centre for Contemporary Christianity in Ireland.

WRITINGS:

Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster, 1921-1998, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Patrick Mitchel is director of studies at the Irish Bible Institute, where he also teaches courses on theology, Christology, faith in Ireland, and pneumatology. Mitchel's Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster, 1921-1998 "is a welcome addition to [the] growing field" of the history of Protestantism in Ireland, according to H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online contributor Sean Farrell. "Arguing that commentators too often focus on the extremist voices of Ulster Protestantism, like the Reverend Dr. Ian Paisley, Mitchel emphasizes the broad diversity of Ulster Evangelical Protestantism, examining evangelicalism within the Irish Presbyterian Church and the Evangelical Contribution of Northern Ireland (ECONI), as well as the Orange Order and Paisley's Free Presbyterian Church," stated Farrell.

For Mitchel, Protestantism in Northern Ireland, and especially in Ulster, is not merely a form of Christian worship, but a means of nationalistic expression. Since at least the time of the founding of the Orange Order in 1795, Protestant Irish have created institutions that were both political in nature and religious in affiliation. Mitchel's point, according to Marianne Elliott in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, is that the religiously oriented nationalistic movements "came to dominate even the ‘open’ evangelicalism of the mainstream Presbyterian Church (the largest Protestant denomination in Northern Ireland), leading to complacency during the ‘golden era’ of Unionism up to 1972 and a failure to recognise the existence of the Catholic nationalist minority." This issue became especially acute when "the Troubles" broke out in 1960s. For nearly thirty years, violence between Catholic republican groups (who wanted Ulster to join with the independent Republic of Ireland) and Protestant loyalist groups (who wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom with England, Scotland, and Wales) tore the country apart. In the 1980s, however, the evangelists who formed ECONI began working to break the link between religion and nationalism that had driven the violence. For ECONI members, the idea of Christianity being used to justify acts of violence was anathema, and their efforts helped to bring about the power-sharing that ended the Troubles in 1998. "Based largely on institutional documents, Mitchel explicates the development of four strands of Northern Irish evangelicalism from Partition in 1921 to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement: ‘Orangeism,’ ‘Paisleyism,’ Irish Presbyterianism, and" ECONI, explained Edward J. Gitre in Church History. Mitchel "arranges the four along a spectrum from ‘closed evangelical’ to ‘open evangelical.’ The former—‘Orangeism’ and ‘Paisleyism’—belonging to the defensive ‘closed’ camp; the latter—Presbyterianism and ECONI—the more porous, to ‘open.’ This scheme, he argues, allows for a capacious construction of evangelicalism that gives room for a marked degree of divergence and, significantly, disagreement," Gitre concluded.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Church History, June, 2005, Edward J. Gitre, review of Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster, 1921-1998, p. 376.

Journal of Ecclesiastical History, January, 2006, Marianne Elliott, review of Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster, 1921-1998, p. 189.

Journal of Religion, April, 2005, David Bebbington, review of Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster, 1921-1998, p. 325.

Journal of Theological Studies, October, 2005, John Kent, review of Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster, 1921-1998, p. 789.

Theology Today, July, 2005, Joseph Farry, review of Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster, 1921-1998, p. 290.

ONLINE

BBC History,http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ (July 7, 2008), "The Troubles, 1963 to 1985."

Contemporary Christianity,http://www.contemporarychristianity.org/ (June 26, 2008), author profile.

H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online,http://www.h-net.org/ (June 26, 2008), Sean Farrell, review of Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster, 1921-1998.

Irish Bible Institute,http://www.ibionline.ie/ (June 26, 2008), faculty profile.