In this careful and convincing analysis, Irene Whelan explores the Protestant evangelical movement or the “Second Reformation” in Ireland from 1800 to 1840. She demonstrates that this revival is crucial to understanding how and why, in the first few decades of the nineteenth century, Catholic-Protestant tensions came to dominate Irish politics and society. The unique evolution of Irish evangelicalism, she maintains, would distinguish it from similar movements on the British mainland, help spark a Catholic response and thus a new sectarian conflict, and firmly establish religion as the primary marker of difference in modern Ireland.

In seven chapters, Whelan carefully outlines the growth of evangelical Protestantism in Ireland and assesses its effects on Irish politics and on the Protestant and Catholic leadership and public. Her first few chapters focus on the naissance of Irish evangelicalism and highlight its growing importance within Protestant society. While others have traced the origins of Protestant leaders’ attacks on Catholicism to the early nineteenth century, Whelan encourages us to consider earlier developments. She posits that the origins of Irish evangelicalism's hostility to Catholicism lie in the 1780s, when elite Protestants identified a new and dangerous threat to their interests in the form of the antitithe movement. Over the next few decades, Whelan observes, Ireland's evangelical revival was transformed. Beginning as a movement of dissenters inspired by successes in England, Scotland, and Wales and concerned with education, not conversion, it soon came to be dominated by Bible societies closely tied to the established church; increasingly, evangelicalism also focused on eradicating Catholicism.

By the 1820s, the “ultra-Protestant” leadership became more and more defensive, threatened by liberal Protestants’ support of Catholic emancipation and the growing power and popularity of Catholic activists such as Daniel O’Connell. As a result, Irish evangelicals committed themselves “to launch[ing] an ideological crusade” against Catholicism (268). Soon, Whelan asserts, proselytism had become the principal goal of the “Second Reformation” (84).

Much of this monograph focuses on leading Protestants’ attacks against Catholic emancipation and Catholic responses in the 1820s. A key moment, according to Whelan, was Bishop William Magee's 1822 inaugural lecture in Dublin, in which he publicly declared the Church of Ireland to be the only legitimate religious authority in Ireland and called for its members to work to bring the rest of Ireland's people “into the fold” (156). This provoked an impassioned response from leading Catholics such as Bishop James Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin. Doyle and others vigorously defended Catholicism against Magee's attacks, and many were forced into open support of emancipation; evangelicals responded with an even stronger denunciation of “popery” as responsible for the wretched condition of the Irish peasantry. The result was a new culture war, in which Catholic and Protestant leaders began a bitter public debate over the legitimacy of each faith. The Catholic and Protestant laities, meanwhile, began to define themselves as members of distinct and competing religious nations. And evangelical preachers and the Catholic priesthood soon became engaged in a new battle for the hearts and minds of the Irish peasantry, which the latter clearly would win. Ultimately, the “Second Reformation” would serve only to inspire the Catholic hierarchy and clergy to unite confidently and claim their place as the legitimate spiritual leaders of Ireland.

Whelan thus credits Irish evangelicalism for providing part of the impetus for the “devotional revolution” that would transform Irish Catholicism later in the nineteenth century, ultimately leading to the explicitly Catholic identity of the modern Irish state. In her view, Irish evangelicalism's negative response to Catholic emancipation provided the impetus for the Catholic Church to reorganize, strengthen, and assert itself as protector of peasants and defendant of the Irish nation. Whelan's attempts to weave together the Protestant evangelical movement and the early days of the “devotional revolution” are important and innovative; too often, historians have considered these developments in isolation.

One of the key strengths of The Bible War is Whelan's skillful placement of Irish evangelicalism within a broader context. She consistently both affirms the uniqueness of the Irish movement, with its specific focus on “the political struggle between Catholic and Protestant,” and argues for its inclusion in an international revival, providing us with a “forceful reminder of the country's place in the wider British colonial world” (266–67). She also reminds us that Irish evangelicalism developed within a specific framework provided by the aftermath of the Rebellion of 1798, the economic depression following the Napoleonic wars, and the politicization of European and Irish culture.

In chapters 5 and 6, she explores how sectarian hostilities played out through a new “propaganda war”; here she analyzes popular fiction, newspapers, and pamphlets. While Whelan does successfully posit that this new print culture made the sectarian divide more public and popular, her sources cannot document how the Catholic and Protestant public responded to such works. Throughout The Bible War, Whelan's attempts to illuminate the popular Protestant and Catholic responses to the evangelical movement are less than successful; in particular, she provides little direct testimony from Catholics other than religious leaders such as Doyle or notable activists such as O’Connell.

Still, through an analysis of an impressive array of sources, from sermons to poetry, Whelan has provided us with a clear, thoughtful, and well-argued examination of the emergence of modern Irish religious and political cultures. The Catholic-Protestant divide that evangelicalism created by the early nineteenth century would have long-lasting consequences, affecting not only responses to the famine of the 1840s but also perceptions of the Catholic Irish around the world. In her conclusion, Whelan, without falling into divisive nationalist or revisionist rhetoric, reminds us that this topic resonates today in a world in which the relationship between religion and politics remains both important and controversial.