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Example research essay topic: Methodist Church Presbyterian Church - 1,551 words

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Ireland has been inhabited since Stone Age times. For more than five thousand years peoples moving westwards across the European continent have settled in the country and each new group of immigrants, Celts, Vikings, Normans, English, has contributed to its present population. In 1841, shortly before the Great Famine, the area comprising the present Irish State had a population of over 6. 5 million. The next census (1851) showed a massive decline to 5. 1 million for the same area, due to deaths from starvation and disease and large-scale emigration. The outflow thus begun became a dominant feature of the population pattern over the succeeding years. By 1961 the population of the State stood at 2. 8 million, the lowest census figure on record.

From 1961 onwards the pattern changed. A combination of natural increase and the commencement of inward net migration resulting from increased prosperity produced an average annual rise in population of 0. 6 % in the period 1981 to 1986. Between 1986 and 1991, largely as a result of the resumption of emigration, an average annual fall in population of 0. 1 % was recorded. At the 1991 census the total population of the State was 3, 525, 719. In 1994 the population was estimated at 3. 571 million. The major centers of population are Dublin (915, 000), Cork (174, 000), Limerick (75, 000), Galway (51, 000), Waterford (42, 000), and Dundalk (30, 000). 59 % of the populations live in cities and towns of 1, 000 people or more.

Overall population density is 51 persons per square kilometer with large variations between the east and south, where densities are highest, and the less populous west of the country. A high proportion of the population is concentrated in the younger age groups. Approximately 43 % of the population is under 25 and approximately 27 % is under 15. In 1993 for the first time on record the birth rate fell below the minimum population replacement rate of 2. 1 births per woman during child-rearing age, to 1. 93 births per woman.

Total births in 1993 were 49, 456 and, if present trends continue, the annual number of births could fall below 40, 000 by the year 2007. This compares with a peak of 74, 064 births recorded in 1980. Freedom of conscience and the free profession and practice of religion are, subject to public order and morality, Constitutionally guaranteed. The State guarantees not to endow any religion. The majority of the people belong to Christian denominations. At the 1991 census, approximately 92 % of the population of the Republic of Ireland was classified as Roman Catholic, approximately 3 % as Protestant (including Church of Ireland: 2. 35 %; Presbyterian: 0. 37 %; Methodist: 0. 14 %).

There is a small but long-established Jewish Community (0. 04 %). The remainder of the population belonged to other religious groups, many of them newly-established in Ireland (Islamic: 0. 11 %, Jehovahs Witnesses: 0. 10 %, etc. ) or claimed no specific religious beliefs. The main religious denominations are organized on an all-Ireland basis. They are as follows: The Church of Ireland is a Protestant Episcopal Church, an autonomous church within the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The Church is organized into twelve dioceses. The Archbishop of Armagh is the Primate of All Ireland and the only other Archbishopric is Dublin. Chief legislative power lies with the General Synod, consisting of the archbishops, bishops, 216 representatives of the clergy and 432 representatives of the laity. The clerical and lay representatives are elected every three years. The Church of Ireland is actively involved in education and social services.

The total membership of the Church of Ireland is around 380, 000, 75 % of whom live in Northern Ireland. The Presbyterian Church is a Protestant Church of the Reformed tradition with a strong emphasis on the authority of the Scriptures in the life of the Christian. The Church has 558 congregations or parishes grouped into 21 districts called Presbyteries, and five regional Synods. These are all represented at the highest court of the Church, known as the General Assembly of ministers and elders. Elders are men and women elected by the congregation and are responsible for the spiritual welfare of Church members. The Assembly makes rules and decides the policies of the Church.

It meets annually and is presided over by the Moderator who is elected to represent the Presbyterian Church for a one-year period. The Presbyterian Church in Ireland has ordained women to the ministry since the 1950 s. There are approximately 312, 000 Presbyterians in Ireland, more than 95 % of who live in Northern Ireland. The Methodist Church in Ireland owes its origins to the missions of John Wesley, the evangelic preacher who visited the country on several occasions in the 18 th century. Although closely linked to British Methodism, the Irish Methodist Church is an autonomous body with its own President and Secretary.

There are 240 local churches grouped into 77 Circuits, which are in turn grouped into eight Districts. The Methodist Church has approximately 130 ministers engaged in active parish duties. The total membership of the Church in Ireland is around 60, 000 people, about 90 % of who live in Northern Ireland. Irish Methodism has developed a wide range of social work activities, mainly through its missions in the larger cities.

These provide facilities for the elderly and the needy. The Church is also involved in education. Irish is a Celtic language and, as such, is a member of the Indo-European family of languages. Within the Celtic group, it belongs to the Goidelic branch of insular Celtic. Irish has evolved from a form of Celtic, which was introduced into Ireland at some period during the great Celtic migrations of antiquity between the end of the second millennium and the fourth century BC. Old Irish, Irelands vernacular when the historical period begins in the sixth century of our era is the earliest variant of the Celtic languages, and indeed the earliest of European vernaculars north of the Alps, in which extensive writings are extant.

The Norse settlements (AD 800 onwards) and the Anglo-Norman colonization (AD 1169 onwards) introduced periods of new language diversity into Ireland, but Irish remained dominant and other speech communities were gradually assimilated. In the early sixteenth century, almost all of the population was Irish-speaking. The main towns, however, prescribed English for the formal conduct of administrative and legal business. The events of the later sixteenth century and of the seventeenth century for the first time undermined the status of Irish as a major language. The Tudor and Stuart conquests and plantations (1534 - 1610), the Cromwellian settlement (1654), and the Willamette war (1689 - 91) followed by the enactment of the Penal Laws (1695), had the cumulative effect of eliminating the Irish-speaking ruling classes and of destroying their cultural institutions. A new ruling class, or Ascendancy, whose language was English, replaced them and thereafter English was the sole language of government and public institutions.

Irish continued as the language of the greater part of the rural population and, for a time, of the servant classes in towns. From the middle of the eighteenth century, as the Penal Laws were relaxed and a greater social and economic mobility became possible for the native Irish, the more prosperous of the Irish- speaking community began to conform to the prevailing middle-class ethos by adopting English. Irish thus began to be associated with poverty and economic deprivation. This tendency increased after the Act of Union in 1800.

Yet because of the rapid growth of the rural population, the actual number of Irish speakers increased substantially during the first decades of the nineteenth century. In 1835 their number was estimated at four million. This number consisted almost entirely of an impoverished rural population, which was decimated by the Great Famine and by resultant mass emigration. By 1891, the number of Irish speakers had been reduced to 680, 000 and, according to that years census of population; Irish speakers under the age of ten represented no more than 3. 5 % of their age- group. When the position began to stabilize early in the twentieth century, Irish remained as a community language only in small discontinuous regions, mainly around the western seaboard. These regions are collectively called the Gaeltachta.

In the 1991 census, the population of the officially defined Gaeltachta aged three years and over was 79, 563, of whom 56, 469 or 71 % were returned as Irish-speaking. The number of Irish speakers is a decreasing proportion of the total because, for a variety of complex reasons, some of the indigenous population of the Gaeltachta continues to shift to English, and because new English-speaking households are settling there. On the other hand, there are many Irish-speaking individuals and families throughout the rest of the country, particularly in Dublin. In 1991 just fewer than 1. 1 million people or 32. 5 % of the total population aged three years or over, were returned, as Irish-speaking, but this figure does not distinguish differing degrees of competence and use.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy had begun to develop an academic interest in the Irish language and its literature. Academic interest later merged with a concern for the survival of spo...


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Research essay sample on Methodist Church Presbyterian Church

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