In 1870, disestablishment suddenly turned the Church of Ireland from a state church into a democracy, governed by its “parliament,” the General Synod. The empowerment of the laity left it with a distinctive, indeed unique, feature among the churches of the Anglican communion—a set of disciplinary canons designed to exclude high-church ritualism from its worship. Passed in 1871, these canons, the most radical of which included a ban on the use of the cross, were used by evangelical pressure-groups to prosecute high-church clergy in the church courts. For the dominant low-church lay party, determined to defend the “Reformation heritage” of the Church of Ireland, they represented an essential bulwark against the threat of English high-church ritualism and a “slide towards Rome.” For many clergy and bishops, anxious to allow for a broader range of Anglican churchmanship, the canons unduly narrowed and impoverished the worship of the Church of Ireland. Because of the General Synod's majority voting mechanism, efforts to amend the canons proved fruitless. It was only in 1964 that the ban on the cross was removed, and not until 1974 that the canons as a whole were revised, ending over a hundred years of contention and division.

By introducing different types of sources—published documents on Vatican's Eastern policy, archival material of the Soviet governmental agencies, egodocuments of local ecclesiastical leaders—this article tries to identify the role Lithuanian subjects have played in the field of Vatican-USSR relations during the first half of Pope John Paul II's pontificate. The research reveals that, since the end of 1970s, issues pertaining to the Lithuanian Catholic Church were considered priority agenda items—both within the halls of the Vatican and in the central government offices of the Soviet regime. An analysis of available sources illustrates also that interrelated issues of the boundaries of the Vilnius Archdiocese and the question of its further administration constituted the most acute node of issues during the period under review. The Soviet regime was the most interested in focusing on these issues, as it hoped thereby to dispel any mutual sympathies between Lithuanian Catholics and the Polish pope, put a stop to the emerging cooperation between Catholics in Lithuania and Poland, and bring an end to the politically costly case of Bishop Steponavičius, who by then had become a symbol of the Lithuanian Catholic Church's resistance. Suppressing of any attempts of the Holy See to be represented at commemoration of important events in Lithuania's history was yet another highly complicated task for the Soviet authorities.

In 1836, a new Roman Catholic periodical, The Dublin Review, was founded by Nicholas Wiseman, Michael Joseph Quin, and Daniel O'Connell. Though religion was only one aspect of its intended focus, the place and identity of Roman Catholicism in post-emancipation Britain was a major emphasis. Of particular focus was the Oxford Movement (1833–1845), otherwise known as Tractarianism. Wiseman, then rector of the English College, Rome, had paid close attention to the Oxford Movement since 1833 and, via the Dublin Review, would critically engage with Tractarian literature and ideas. This paper examines this engagement from 1836 to 1845, discussing Wiseman's polemical responses to the Oxford Movement. Paying attention to the pre-history of the Dublin Review, its importance as a periodical, and its significant influence upon a handful of the leading Tractarians, especially John Henry Newman, Wiseman emerges as an influential polemicist and apologist. Respectful of Tractarian learning and zeal, Wiseman was nonetheless unambiguous in his criticisms of Tractarian ecclesiology—relentless especially in his promotion of the view that the leaders of the Oxford Movement should convert to Roman Catholicism. By 1840, the year Wiseman arrived in England as a bishop, the Dublin Review had significantly dented Newman's confidence in the Tractarian project. Wiseman, the future Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, had, by means of the Dublin Review, made Roman Catholic views on Tractarianism known, heard, and felt in Oxford and Britain. In the case of John Henry Newman, who became a Roman Catholic in 1845, Wiseman could claim a significant victory.

In this article, I invite the guild to rethink received paradigms and perspectives in the study and teaching of American church and religious history. The common additive approach of the last decades that folds in Latino/a experience usually reflects new themes of contemporary immigration and diversity, but rarely considers constitutive contributions to foundational stories or is conscious of perspectival constraints. In the spirit of previous ASCH presidential addresses, the proposed introspection weighs the cost of the refractions, redactions, and omissions. Through a reconsideration of seminality—whether agential or textual—in Spanish colonial expansion (Esteban of Azamor), in the Puritan colonial imaginary, and in Latino/Latin American Pentecostal growth, and of anachronistic geographical boundaries in the case of New Mexico curate Antonio José Martínez, this address calls for greater clarity in our understanding of the variegated contours of Americana church history.

On September 3, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson released a letter praising organizations that had provided services for soldiers, including the Young Men's Christian Association, the National Catholic War Council, and the Jewish Welfare Board. Through the work of these groups, the president declared, “the moral and spiritual resources of the nation have been mobilized.” Wilson then asked that, instead of the individual fundraising drives they were planning, the groups instead have single drive during the week of November 11, 1918, what he called a “united war work campaign.”

The United War Work Campaign provides a window into understanding how a more pluralistic United States emerged through a process that involved competition and sacrifice as well as cooperation. The YMCA leadership fought to have a separate campaign, but they were forced into accommodating the changing religious dynamics of the nation. The Catholic and Jewish groups confronted Protestant establishment assumptions as they offered their own takes on how to appeal to a diverse American public. All the religious groups found themselves in situations where they had to downplay their faith commitments to ensure the campaign's success, and this led to tensions within the organizations and struggles with their co-religionists. Overall, the United War Work revealed the challenges of church-state collaboration and the compromises that were necessary for the emergence of a tri-faith nation.