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Editorial:
Trust enough? From
the director: Icons of Culture and Political Identity: A Decade
of Opportunity Comment:
Shaking hands with soldiers At
the end of the day: Trust Remember
1916 Shattered
pieces - a journey in recovering trust Interview
with Rev John Dunlop & Danny Morrison: Truth & Trust Faith
matters lyo
nta kindi dufite uretse UKWIZERA A
Reader's Response to Lion&Lamb #40 Bible
Study: Trust Review:
Religion, Identity and Politics in Northern Ireland: Boundaries
of Belonging and Belief Review:
1916: Lest We Forget Difficult
Conversations |
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EVERYONE KNOWS that the conflict in Northern Ireland isn’t about religion – or so the story goes. In the vast body of literature that has been produced on the Northern Ireland conflict, something of a cosy consensus has emerged: religion is what the academics call an ‘ethnic marker’. It provides a name for the opposing communities but has little social or political significance in and of itself. Claire Mitchell’s Religion, Identity and Politics in Northern Ireland: Boundaries of Belonging and Belief, is a timely challenge to that dominant orthodoxy. Mitchell’s carefully researched account presents a succinct analysis of how religion matters in Northern Ireland. In the preface Mitchell, a sociology lecturer at Queen’s University, confesses that “Researching religion and politics in Northern Ireland is an odd experience. It is at once the least appropriate topic of discussion at any social gathering and one of the most deeply rooted social issues. I try to always keep the topic of my research quiet at parties and in taxis.” Now religiously agnostic, Mitchell grew up in Northern Ireland’s evangelical subculture. Her book combines the sociologist’s facility of analysis with sensitivity to the depth of belief amongst the faithful. The core of Mitchell’s argument is that religion derives social and political significance from five overlapping dimensions. She devotes a chapter to each of the dimensions, which she argues reinforce each other. The first and second dimensions have been emphasised in previous research: the relationship between the churches and socio-political power (for instance, their relationships with nationalist and unionist politicians); and the role of religion as the dominant ethnic marker, maintained through segregated education, marriage, housing patterns and social networks. Mitchell argues that these dimensions are important for some people at various points in time, but she makes her most original contribution when she turns to the next three dimensions of religion. These dimensions explain how religion gives not just a label, but real meaning, to the boundaries between Catholic and Protestant. The next dimension Mitchell identifies is religion’s role in the construction of communities. She focuses on how religious rituals bring people together physically, psychologically, and socially. Arguing that this dimension is more important for Catholics, she explains how the Catholic Church organises social life and helps Catholics to imagine themselves as part of a community – one that does not include Protestants. This is an important insight, for there has been something of an academic and popular consensus that if religion matters in Northern Ireland, it matters for a few evangelical Protestants but not for Catholics. The fourth dimension focuses on how religious ‘ideologies’ contribute to the construction of boundaries between Catholics and Protestants. Religious ideologies, sets of doctrinally-informed concepts influencing the way people think and act, are significant even for people who don’t practice their religion. This dimension is more important for Protestants, providing concepts that allow them to define themselves in opposition to Catholics: liberty, the ‘honest Ulsterman’, and anti-Catholicism. This is in line with earlier research which stressed the importance of religious ideas for Protestants. The fifth dimension is the relationship between theology and politics. For Mitchell, theology is distinct from ideology in that it is defined by doctrines; and it is important only for people who actively practice their religion. She argues that this dimension is confined largely to evangelical Protestants, citing familiar evangelical concepts such as anti-Catholicism, the chosen people, and the ‘end times’. Mitchell also devotes a modest section of the chapter to “Protestant theology and reconciliation,” in which she highlights the work of Evangelical Contribution on Northern Ireland, Corrymeela, and the Fitzroy Presbyterian-Clonard Monastery fellowship. When these five dimensions of religion are considered in tandem, a more complex picture of religion in Northern Ireland emerges. Understanding this opens up avenues for religion to contribute to dismantling the oppositional ideas, practices, and identities that have perpetuated the conflict. However, Mitchell does not pursue this in great detail. For example, she does not cite the most comprehensive book-length attempt to explain how religion might contribute to conflict transformation, Joseph Liechty and Cecelia Clegg’s Moving Beyond Sectarianism (Dublin: Columba Press, 2001). Finally, Mitchell discusses the relationship between religious and political change. She asks those elusive questions: do religious ideas and practices cause people’s political attitudes? Or, do people’s political ideas and practices cause their religious attitudes? Mitchell recognises that these are questions with no definitive answers, concluding that “political changes can make room for religious changes, as well as vice versa” (144). However, in the next sentence and the final one of the book, she writes: “Whether this will lead to an increase or decrease in oppositional religious identities in Northern Ireland depends on the nature of political change.” This sentence casts religious actors in a more reactionary or passive light than they have been portrayed throughout the book. In doing so it may serve as a challenge to believers of all persuasions to become agents of religious and political change, contributing to the construction of inclusive identities and relationships. RELIGION,
IDENTITY AND POLITICS IN NORTHERN IRELAND: |
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