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Dès le milieu du XIXe siècle, Darwin, Marx et, enfin, Mathew Arnold ont déjà statué, de façon directe ou indirecte, sur la situation de la religion dans la vie européenne et plus particulièrement la vie contemporaine des Anglais.
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By the mid nineteenth century Darwin, Marx and, finally, Mathew Arnold had all left their mark and comments, directly and indirectly, upon the state of religion in European life and in contemporary English life in particular. But if, in Arnold’s poetic phrase, the sea of faith was retreating down the vast edges and naked shingles of the world, it was not doing so in the colonized world, in Ireland or, for that matter, in any other of the British Empire’s colonies. Religion in Ireland was political and deeply connected with identity politics whether Catholic or Protestant. It must be remembered, too, that less than a generation before the act of emancipation in 1829, Catholic priests were still being hunted down because there was a bounty on their lives or, rather, literally, on their heads. Irish Presbyterians came with their identity politics too, invoking, among other things, the siege of Londonderry and the exploits of the Apprentice Boys at local Orange Order Lodge meetings. The vast majority of Catholics came to regard the Orange Order and its attendant parades as little more than legitimized bigotry supported by a Protestant state. At its worst, confrontations in the form of riots between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants in mid-nineteenth century Woodstock and Saint John resulted in several deaths, many injuries and damage to property. Eventually, Irish Catholics and Protestants would come to live and work together under Canadian law and in a more or less tolerant acceptance of each other. It would be wrong, however, to suggest that there was amity between the two religious groups because this, simply, was not the case; their divisions and suspicions would last as long as the old religious paradigm persisted.
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