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Early on May 7, 2006, a gang of teenagers beat Michael McIlveen with baseball bats and jumped on his head. A day and a half later, McIlveen, a 15-year-old schoolboy from Ballymena, Northern Ireland, died in the hospital. It quickly emerged that McIlveen had almost certainly been attacked for wearing a green-and-white striped football shirt.1 In the charged world of Irish republicanism and unionism, this was not just another shirt; it was a Celtic jersey. Celtic is a Glasgow soccer team fervently supported by Catholics. Celtic's rival, the Glasgow Rangers, wear red jerseys and are equally fervently supported by Protestants.
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McIlveen's tragic death adds to the long and sad story of religious conflict in Ireland, where everything from naming babies to cheering soccer teams carries a confessional label. Under the headline "Sectarian divide has not healed," David Adams commented in The Irish Times that it was only a matter of time until someone else was killed in sectarian violence in the North. In this divided land, Adams wrote, "Protestant and Catholic youngsters do not live on the same streets, they do not play together, they do not go to school together and they do not socialise together."2
The religious and cultural antagonisms displayed in McIlveen's murder have long roots, reaching back to the 16th century. But while it's fairly easy to find accounts of 20th- and 21st-century sectarianism in Northern Ireland, finding an explanation for the origins of violent sectarianism is more difficult. The Origins of Sectarianism in Early Modern Ireland, a collection of conference essays edited by Alan Ford and John McCafferty, aims to correct that deficit.
Sectarianism in Ireland can be seen as the result of Ireland's two Reformations: one supported by the English crown, and one supported by most Irish people. These two Reformations shared many goals—celebrating the sacraments, preaching the Gospel, instructing the laity—and often ran parallel to each other. For example, in 1592 Queen Elizabeth established Trinity College Dublin to educate young Irish Protestants. In the same year Father Thomas White, sj, founded the Irish College at Salamanca to train Catholic priests for Ireland.
For all their similarities, however, two concurrent Reformations, each exclusively claiming to represent the true faith, did not get along well. In the concluding essay, John Morrill points out that Protestants and Catholics in Ireland couldn't even agree on the date. Catholics in Ireland were quick to adopt Gregorian calendar reform, instituted near the end of the 16th century, which moved the calendar forward ten days. Irish Protestants stuck with England, which clung to the Julian calendar until 1751, by which time the difference between the two reckonings amounted to 11 days.
At first glance, finding the origins of sectarianism seems quite easy; it simply requires two confessions. With closer examination, the issue appears more complicated. Sectarianism stems from the ways in which the Protestant Reformation was propagated in Ireland and the Catholic population resisted it. The Protestant Church of Ireland was established by English fiat. Had the entire Irish population defied royal command there would have been no sectarianism. Likewise, if the entire population had accepted Protestantism (or the English crown had been able to enforce Protestantism), there would have been no sectarianism. In the event, most did not accept Protestantism, but some did, setting the stage for sectarian conflict. Understanding how Protestantism was propagated and how Catholicism was maintained is the key to the origins of sectarianism. Regrettably this book leaves these questions about the very beginnings of sectarianism unanswered.
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