Abstract

Recent decades have seen a sea change in the study of religion in Ireland. Numerically dominated by theology until very recently – to the extent that Ireland is one of only two European countries without an association for the non-confessional study of religion – the quantitative decline in academic theology, the generational change of staff, the merging of seminaries and the increasingly lay character of their students are all pointing towards a gradual transformation into departments of religious studies, following the experience of other Northern countries.