Visible Divinity: Money and Irish Catholicism, 1850-1921

宗教信仰和经济行为之间的关系一直是社会科学和人文科学的一个长期主题，为卡尔马克思、马克斯韦伯、埃米尔涂尔干、米尔恰伊利亚德、R.H.托妮，薇薇安娜·泽利泽和其他许多理论家。在承认并在许多方面谈到这些有影响力的思想家和学者的开创性工作的同时，这个项目也是关于宗教实践和经济思想之间的关系。它是基于一个很少被理解的前提，即宗教环境中的主要经济交换不是也从来不是智力交换，而是一直是物质交换。换句话说，该项目表明，教会筹款的过程本身就是一种重要的经济现象，值得对其本身进行研究和概念化，它有可能告诉我们很多关于宗教和经济在普通人生活中的相互作用。因此，这项研究采取了一个扩展的历史案例研究的形式，爱尔兰天主教会的财务状况，在什么是巩固其对爱尔兰人口的影响的关键时期，即1850年之间，一些人认为是爱尔兰人之间的“虔诚革命”的开始，1921年，当它不再是英国境内的少数教会，反而成为了这个新独立国家的主导教会该项目将包括一个由多个教会和其他档案建立的独特的收入数据库，对所采用的各种收入收集策略的系统概述，捐款动机的类型学，以及对该项目发现的现代适用性的考虑。虽然主要是一个历史项目，但它与经济人类学和经济社会学的许多最新研究一样，思考并希望以主流经济学的方式提供对个人经济行为的见解，其重点是理性行为者模型，往往被忽视。（Graeber，2011年; Stirrat，2006年; Zelizer，2013年;因此，虽然美国宗教的一些社会学家已经开始考虑宗教筹款背后的动机和后果，（Peifer 2010; Mundey等人，2011）有不可抗拒的理由将这些问题历史化，并在爱尔兰天主教背景下这样做。其中包括在一个更加虔诚的时期涉及的资金数额相对要大得多;在爱尔兰以外的国家存在多个“爱尔兰”教区，以及爱尔兰神职人员旨在吸引侨民宗教汇款的呼吁，提供了有用且几乎无与伦比的跨国比较;所谓的世俗化/现代化与日益货币化和崛起的消费社会的平行联系;以及爱尔兰天主教会的财富和天主教对新兴爱尔兰身份的核心重要性的公认的象征意义。对于该项目的成功完成至关重要的是，在爱尔兰和英国的档案馆以及数字存储库中，也存在着多种可访问和未充分利用的源材料，可以用来探索这些主题。因此，该项目将代表对宗教历史的贡献，特别是爱尔兰天主教会，探索这一主导机构的地方，国家，以及经济领域的跨国权力和影响力，并询问它在多大程度上帮助塑造了爱尔兰在爱尔兰和海外爱尔兰人之间的经济身份。但它也旨在作为对货币历史和经济行为更普遍的文献的及时补充，通过提供一个国家的宗教动机筹款的全面探索，并询问有关宗教和经济在人们生活中的相互作用的基本问题。

The relationship between religious faith and economic behaviour has been a perennial subject in the social sciences and the humanities, informing the work of Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Mircea Eliade, R.H. Tawney, Viviana Zelizer and many other theorists besides. While acknowledging and in many respects speaking to the path-breaking work of such influential thinkers and scholars, this project is also about the relationship between religious practice and economic thought. It is predicated on the little-appreciated premise that the primary economic exchange in a religious setting is not and has never been an intellectual one, but rather, has always been a physical one. In other words, the project suggests that the process of church fundraising was (and is) in itself a significant economic phenomenon, worthy of examination and conceptualisation in its own right, and that it has the potential to tell us a great deal about the interaction of religion and economics in the lives of ordinary people. This research therefore takes the form of an extended historical case study of the Irish Catholic Church's finances during what was a key period of consolidation in its influence over the Irish population, namely between 1850, considered by some the beginning of a 'devotional revolution' among the Irish, and 1921, when it ceased to be a minority church within the United Kingdom, and instead became the dominant church in a newly independent country. The project will incorporate a unique database of income constructed from multiple church and other archives, a systematic overview of the kinds of income-gathering strategies employed, a typology of motives for contributing funds, and a consideration of the modern-day applicability of the project's findings.Though primarily a historical project, it is, like much recent research in economic anthropology and economic sociology, thinking about and hoping to provide insights into individual economic behaviour in ways that mainstream economics, with its focus on rational actor models, has tended to neglect. (Graeber, 2011; Stirrat, 2006; Zelizer, 2013; Dodd, 2014) Thus, while some sociologists of American religion have begun to consider the motivations behind and consequences of religious fundraising, (Peifer 2010; Mundey et al, 2011) there are irresistible reasons for historicising these questions, and for doing so in the Irish Catholic context. These include the relatively much larger sums of money involved in a much more devout period; the useful and virtually unmatched transnational comparison afforded by the existence of multiple 'Irish' parishes in countries outside Ireland and of Irish clerical appeals directed at attracting religious remittances from the diaspora; the parallel nexus of supposed secularisation/modernisation and an increasingly monetised and rising consumer society; and the acknowledged symbolic significance of the Irish Catholic Church's wealth and central importance of Catholicism to emerging Irish identity. Crucially for the successful completion of the project, there also exists a multiplicity of accessible and underexploited source materials, in archives in both Ireland and Britain and in digital repositories, with which to explore these themes.Therefore, this project will represent a contribution to the history of religion and the Irish Catholic Church in particular, exploring that dominant institution's local, national, and transnational power and influence in the economic realm, and asking to what extent it helped to shape an Irish economic identity both in Ireland and amongst the Irish abroad.But it is also intended to serve as a timely addition to the literature on the history of money and economic behaviour more generally, by offering a comprehensive exploration of one nation's religiously-motivated fundraising and asking fundamental questions about the interaction of religion and economics in people's lives.