Recent commemorations of the Easter Rising have made us aware of Ireland's leadership in the dismantling of the world's greatest 19th century empire and the genesis of that ubiquitous 20th century phenomenon, the nation state. Soon after the events on the streets of Dublin in Easter 1916, other peoples were following suit. In the Indian sub-continent, in the African colonies and, eventually, in Australia and Canada, the realities of national independence would eventually pull the British Empire apart.

So it is appropriate that some contemporary sociologists see Ireland as once more leading the way in the construction of new kinds of political and cultural identity. Recently, the American academic Saskia Sassen delivered a couple of talks in Dublin in which she outlined the ways that she sees Irish people already experimenting with forms of allegiance in which, before long, 'territory will no longer be geographic, authority will no longer come from individual nation-states and rights will have to be defined and protected through new kinds of legal instruments.'

She believes that a new generation of Irish men and women have taken with unparalleled enthusiasm and skill to a 'multilayered' lifestyle where they may work, say, for an American company, keep their money in a German-owned bank, dress in Italian fashion, own a second home in a Mediterranean location, read an English newspaper, follow a Scottish football team, travel regularly to India or Singapore as part of their job, eat at weekends in a local restaurant where they are served by a Latvian, a Nigerian or a Pole and spend a considerable amount of their time in cyberspace, whether at work or at play.

Although globalisation is a widespread 21st century phenomenon, Sassen believes that the citizens of Ireland are particularly adroit exponents of the new 'globalism', in large measure because of the way in which the Irish diaspora always created a sense of a pan-global identity for a network of global citizens who shared an Irishness which was more about a sense of belonging than residence in the domestic territory.

To the flexible citizen of the earth's new and accessible highways, 'the boundaries of any particular nation-state are matters for his lawyers and accountants to sort out'. The new ultra-modern inhabitants of the world will of necessity be 'not citizens of nations …but members of a new order that we will have to consciously create.' In this reconfiguration of identities, it seems to be the Irish who are leading the way, in creating a sense of belonging which is a chosen composite of allegiances and interests in 'cyber-emotional space rather than a physical place.'

So, if Saskia Sassen is right in her judgment, what kind of Irish Christianity is going to emerge in the next few years, operating at the Celtic vanguard of social and cultural change in the world? What kinds of new Irish theology will emerge, relevant to the modern Irish man and woman who composes his or her own identity in such a radically fluid way? What kinds of Irish but globalised church structure will emerge? What will be the positive aspects of the Christianity which is forged amidst such 'multi-layered' circumstances, and what will be the besetting sins of such a post-territorial faith? Will the doggedly territorial struggle which has persisted in the north of this island be swallowed up in the onward rush towards a modernity that Patrick Pearse and James Connolly could scarcely have foreseen as they stood on the steps of the GPO in 1916?

Philip Orr

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Centre for Contemporary Christianity in Ireland - Summer School
Listening Post - Rediscovering God, ourselves and the world
31 May - 3 June, 2006
For further information visit: www.contemporarychristianity.org/events