Souperism was a phenomenon of the Irish
Great Famine. Protestant
Bible societies
A Bible society is a non-profit organization, usually nondenominational in makeup, devoted to translating, publishing, and distributing the Bible at affordable prices. In recent years they also are increasingly involved in advocating its credibi ...
set up schools in which starving children were fed, on the condition of receiving Protestant religious instruction at the same time. Its practitioners were reviled by the
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
families who had to choose between Protestantism and starvation.
People who converted for food were known as "soupers", "jumpers" and "''cat breacs''". In the words of their peers, they "took the soup".
Although souperism did not occur frequently, the perception of it had a lasting effect on the popular memory of the Famine. It blemished the relief work by Protestants who gave aid without proselytising, and the rumour of souperism may have discouraged starving Catholics from attending soup kitchens for fear of betraying their faith.
History
One example of souperism was the Reverend
Edward Nangle
Edward Nangle (1799 – 9 September 1883) was a Church of Ireland minister and the founder of the Achill Mission Colony. He established a Protestant mission on Achill Island, County Mayo, in 1834 and worked there for eighteen years with the ...
who established the Achill Mission Colony in the 1830s. In the Famine years, he took the decision to provide food for the children in the Colony's scriptural schools which led to a rise in demand for places in those schools. This, in turn, led to charges that Edward Nangle was a 'buyer of souls'. However, souperism was rarely that simple, and not all non-Catholics made being subject to
proselytisation
Proselytism () is the policy of attempting to convert people's religious or political beliefs. Proselytism is illegal in some countries.
Some draw distinctions between '' evangelism'' or '' Da‘wah'' and proselytism regarding proselytism as invo ...
a condition of food aid. Several Anglicans, including the
Anglican Archbishop of Dublin,
Richard Whately
Richard Whately (1 February 1787 – 8 October 1863) was an English academic, rhetorician, logician, philosopher, economist, and theologian who also served as a reforming Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin. He was a leading Broad Churchman ...
, decried the practice; many Anglicans set up soup kitchens that did no proselytising; and
Quaker
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...
s, whose soup kitchens were concerned solely with charitable work, were never associated with the practice (which causes them to be held in high regard in Ireland even today, with many Irish remembering the Quakers with the remark "They fed us in the famine.").
Souperist practices, reported at the time, included serving meat soups on Fridays – which Catholics were forbidden by their faith from consuming.
Soupers were frequently
ostracised
Ostracism ( el, ὀστρακισμός, ''ostrakismos'') was an Athenian democracy, Athenian democratic procedure in which any citizen could be exile, expelled from the city-state of Athens for ten years. While some instances clearly expressed ...
by their own community, and were strongly denounced from the pulpit by the Catholic priesthood. On occasion, soupers had to be protected by British soldiers from other Catholics.
Use of the term after the famine
The idea of Souperism has become a
leitmotif
A leitmotif or leitmotiv () is a "short, recurring musical phrase" associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical concepts of ''idée fixe'' or ''motto-theme''. The spelling ''leitmotif'' is an anglici ...
of fiction written about the Famine, and folklore and Irish literature are replete with depictions of souperism. This may have served to exaggerate the extent that it actually occurred. Both Bowen and Whelan (listed in
Further reading) note that the ''fear'' of souperism was very real, and state that the practice did indeed occur. But they point out that there is very little actual evidence that the practice was widespread. Whelan states that, given the highly charged atmosphere of the 1840s, contemporary accounts cannot be taken at face value. Much of what surrounds the story of souperism is its ''perception'', rather than its reality. The popular myth that the few souperists engendered has largely eclipsed the impartial philanthropic aid that was given by genuinely altruistic organisations at the time.
One of the effects of the perceptions surrounding Souperism was that, to avoid its stigma and avoid becoming embroiled in the war of words between Protestants and Catholics, many charities decided to only serve those whose religious persuasions matched their own. For examples: In
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...
, Mercer's Endowed Boarding School for Girls provided education for "girls of respectable Protestant parents", and the Magdalen Asylum on Lower Leeson St aided "Protestant women after a first fall" and "those who were to become mothers"; whereas the St Joseph's Reformatory School for Catholic Girls provided education for Catholic girls and the Catholic Rotunda Girls Aid Society aided unmarried Catholic mothers. Barret, whose ''Guide to Dublin Charities'' listed many overlapping charities, decried the "wasteful overlapping of work" and begged such charities to work together, to improve the overall amount of aid that could be given. (Williams, publisher of ''Dublin Charities: A Handbook'', expressed similar sentiments about the state of disorganisation.) However, she herself ran a charity, Cottage Home for Little Children, aimed at providing shelter for "the very young children of the industrious Protestant poor". The reasons for the disorganised and duplicated efforts were not solely sectarian, and can also be attributed to a general unwillingness amongst charities to co-operate with one another.
By 1913 "souper" had become a general term of abuse used against overly religious
Catholics
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
as well. A priest near
Macroom
Macroom (; ga, Maigh Chromtha) is a market town in County Cork, Ireland, located in the valley of the River Sullane, halfway between Cork city and Killarney. Its population has grown and receded over the centuries as it went through periods of ...
was opposed to informal dances, and a crowd of dancers taunted his informants with shouts of "soupers".
[Hart P. "The IRA and its enemies"; OUP 1999 p.296 .]
See also
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Rice Christian
The expression rice Christian is a term used to describe someone who has formally converted to Christianity for material benefits rather than for religious reasons. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as "a convert to Christianity who accepts ba ...
References
Further reading
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{{Great Hunger
History of Ireland (1801–1923)
Great Famine (Ireland)
Religious slurs for people
Protestant evangelisation of Irish Roman Catholics
Food politics