Founding and history of Irish Church Missions (1849-69)

  

Alexander Dallas (1791-1869)

 The Society for the Irish Church Missions (ICM) was founded in March 1849, largely through the work of an English clergyman, the Reverend Alexander Dallas, Vicar of the parish of Wonston, Hampshire.  A man of immense energy and organising ability, Dallas had been a supplies officer in Wellington’s army during the Napoleonic wars in Spain and was present at the battle of Waterloo in 1815.  Following his ordination in 1821, Dallas served in a number of curacies during which time he was converted to a living faith in Christ, largely through the influence of Charles Sumner, who became Bishop of Winchester and a life-long supporter of ICM.  It was thus his conversion that was the source of the evangelistic zeal that motivated his whole life and led to the foundation of ICM.         

 

     The missionary zeal of Dallas is evidenced in a letter to a friend in 1850, in which he described his reason for founding ICM as nothing less than to ‘Protestantize’ Ireland.  In a sermon in 1851 he clearly outlined what he meant by this, saying that Evangelicals were without excuse if they did not ensure that the Reformation doctrines of grace were preached in Ireland. “The Society for Irish Church Missions … is one instrumentality, capable through the help and blessing of God, of carrying the Gospel to every part of Ireland.”   The chief motivation of his life was the Gospel of Christ and the need to be constantly in the work of preaching it.  The evidence of his zeal for the Gospel is seen in the monuments to his memory in St. Patrick’s Cathedral Dublin, in the parish church of Clifden in Connemara, and in the Mission building in Dublin, which state that ‘he was instrumental in having erected 21 churches, 49 schoolhouses, 12 parsonages, and 4 orphanages, in connection with the society’s operations.’  

 The Founding of ICM

 The particular focus of his concern was the Roman Catholic people of Ireland.  During visits to Ireland in the early 1840’s, when he preached to the annual April missionary gatherings of the Irish clergy on behalf of CMS and the Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, he became increasingly convinced of the need to bring the Gospel to Irish Roman Catholic people.  The Church of Ireland had been engaged for many years in Gospel outreach to Roman Catholics in a movement that came to be known as the ‘Second Reformation.’  Dallas gave fresh impetus to this work by his personal efforts at evangelism, sending Gospel literature by the recently established ‘penny-post’ to thousands of Roman Catholic homes in January 1846.  With the help of Miss Fanny Bellingham in Dublin, Dallas was not only able to send literature but he was also able to recruit eight Protestant Gospel preachers in October that year to preach from village to village.  Following his own successful preaching ministry in the west of Ireland in 1847, Dallas received the support of the Bishop of Tuam, Thomas Plunkett, to ordain a clergyman to work on behalf of ICM in Castlekerke, County Galway. 

            With the enthusiastic help of the Bishop and the support of an evangelical Landlord, Hyacinth D’Arcy of Clifden, Co. Galway, missionary schools began to spread in the west of Ireland.  It was soon realised that if the work of the Gospel was to continue to prosper and grow, a new missionary society was needed.  Thus, in March 1849, The Society for the Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics was founded and received the enthusiastic support of over 200 Irish Clergy who signed a resolution of support at the annual gathering of the missionary societies in April 1849.  From its inception, Bishops and Archbishops of the Irish Church were constantly patrons of ICM until 1984, when the growing climate of ecumenism in Ireland made Gospel outreach to Roman Catholics ‘politically incorrect’ in the eyes of many.

  

  

Controversy

 From its beginning, controversy was never far away from the work of ICM.  One controversial aspect of ICM’s Gospel activity was its timing: ICM’s earliest missionary work coincided with the era of famine in nineteenth century Ireland.  The charge of ‘souperism’ – offering soup to starving peasants in exchange for conversion – was strenuously refuted by ICM.  Minute 202 records the policy of ICM, which was ‘never to employ any of its funds for temporal relief to any of the persons who are the objects of their missionary labours’.  Of course, this left ICM open to the opposite charge of callous indifference to the physical plight of famine victims. However, many of the supporters of ICM, including Dallas himself, were deeply moved by the devastating effects of the Famine, and through their separate private giving, Dallas was able for example to open two orphanages in the worst affected region for children left destitute by the Famine.

 

            The second controversial aspect of ICM’s work, which continued throughout the nineteenth century, was its method of evangelism.  Co-operating closely with Irish churches, ICM set up local mission committees, which consisted of the parish clergy, ICM missionaries and Scripture readers, who not only preached the Gospel in towns and villages throughout Ireland, but also set up ‘controversial lectures’, which were aimed at exposing the unbiblical doctrines of Roman Catholic dogma in the light of the Bible’s teachings.  This ‘controversial’ method wasn’t new, as the Church of Ireland had employed it in the early days of the Second Reformation, but the work of ICM intensified and extended the debate.  It proved an exceptionally profitable method of evangelism, particularly in Dublin, where the first Superintendent of the Mission, the Rev. C. F. McCarthy of St. Michan’s parish, held a controversial class that had regularly 700 in attendance, most of whom were Roman Catholics, invited to the meeting by ICM workers who visited around the streets of Dublin.

  

Dublin and Connemara

 In Dublin, the extent of ICM’s missionary activity can be measured by the fact that in 1850 between eight and twelve thousand handbills, advertising the text of the next sermon and controversial class, were distributed weekly. The increasing number of converts necessitated the establishment of a Mission Church, which was built and opened in 1853 in Townsend Street with the support of Dr. Whately the Archbishop of Dublin.  At the opening service, eight hundred people were in attendance and the church was consecrated with the petition, “May many a poor soul now sunk in the ignorance and bondage of Rome, find the true light of the Gospel of Christ, and many a doubting, trembling enquirer, be guided into the way of peace, within the walls of the Mission Church of Dublin”.     

         The work of the Mission in Dublin was greatly aided by the wife of the Archbishop and her daughters as well as by Mrs Ellen Smyly, who helped to administer ICM mission schools and homes in Dublin, which were strategically located in the very poorest areas of Dublin.  These schools were run by separate committees but ICM trained the teachers and many of the boys and girls regularly attended the Mission church.  By the 1860’s, ICM had over eight mission stations in Dublin alone, and many more throughout the country        

    In Connemara, there were forty-six centres of activity by 1860 and mission stations were strategically placed throughout the Galway area.  Much of the success of the work was due to the tireless work of Hyacinth D’Arcy and the support of the Bishop of Tuam.  However, the large numbers of initial converts began to slow down by the time of the census of 1861.  The explanation of ICM to their critics was that this was due to the large scale emigration that affected the west of Ireland, the young people who left for employment in England, and in the British armed forces, and the increasing bitter and violent opposition that many converts faced from their families, which often forced them to leave their own communities.  Even so, in one area of Connemara, where in 1834 the registered number of Protestants didn’t even reach 100, the census of 1861 showed that above 2000 people voluntarily registered themselves as Protestants. 

 Evangelistic Zeal 

In assessing this period of ICM’s history, there is no doubt that the constant driving force behind ICM through all this era was the evangelistic zeal of Dallas.  His own personal example and courage in preaching in the face of opposition the west of Ireland and in debate inspired many.  Dallas was a Gospel strategist, who carefully planned and organised the preaching of the Gospel in key areas around Ireland.  Above all, he was a man of prayer who never took a step in the work of ICM without praying for it intently.  Following his death in 1869, his widow wrote a biography of his life and ended it with the prayer that Dallas constantly prayed, a prayer for all Gospel workers, “O God, for Christ’s sake, give me the Holy Spirit”.