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ABSTRACT
There is scholarly consensus among theologians and their disciplinary partners that religion closely links with identity formation, unmatched by identification with any other social group. However, detachment from organised religion in Western cultures among young people is increasingly evident. This paper presents research findings for theological reflection derived from an empirical sequential mixed-method, ethnographic Gadamerian doctoral study exploring Ireland’s rapidly changing religious landscape. Survey findings (n = 178) and follow-up interviews (N = 22) of a random sample of 18–39 year olds suggest that while Irish Catholicism remains culturally important there is increasing disconnection from the institutional Church. It appears that privatised, self-referential forms of spirituality related to a wellness culture are growing. However, this paper suggests that a positive benefit may also accrue from these trends, specifically that sectarianism as a historically pernicious form of racism may diminish.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 There are many terms used in the literature to denote unreligious positions, however I chose ‘irreligious.’ This term best describes the mindset suggested by my data as opposed to, for example, any hostility to religion. Sociologist Colin Campbell describes irreligion as ‘deliberate indifference towards religion.’ See: Colin Campbell, Towards a Sociology of Irreligion (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), 7.
2 Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin. Cited in: Gladys Ganiel, Transforming Post – Catholic Ireland: Religious Practice in Late Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2016), 1.
3 By heuristic reflection in this context, I mean that it focuses on an issue (sectarianism) that, although not posing a specific personal problem, cast a long shadow of social unease between both my peers and I during the stage of early adulthood in the 1970s when the worst episodes of sectarian killings occurred.
4 Timothy J. White, ‘Catholicism and Nationalism in Ireland: From Fusion in the 19th Century to Separation in the 21st Century’, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture (4:1) (London: University of Westminster, 2007).
5 Kevin Boyle and Juliet Sheen, ‘Freedom of Religion and Belief: A World Report’ (New York: Routledge, 1997).
6 See for example: David T. Buckley, Faithful to Secularism: The Religious Politics of Democracy in Ireland, Senegal and the Philippines (Columbia University Press, 2017).
7 Rajeev Bhargava, Secularism and its Critics (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 493–4 and 520.
8 Buckley, Faithful to Secularism.
9 Tom Inglis, Moral Monopoly: The Rise and fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland (University College Dublin Press, 1998).
10 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). Bourdieu’s central concept of habitus is the principle that negotiates between objective structures and practices.
11 Tom Inglis, ‘Catholic Identity in Contemporary Ireland: Belief and Belonging to Tradition’, Journal of Contemporary Religion 22, no. 2 (2007), 205–220.
12 See for example: David F. Ford, Broader, Deeper, Further: Engaging with Religions in the Twenty-first Century (Eton College, The Bevir Lecture, 2014). https://www.interfaith.cam.ac.uk/resources/lecturespapersandspeeches/the-2014-bevir-lecture-eton-college-broader-deeper-further-engaging-with-religions-in-the-twenty-first-century.
13 See: Crystal L. Park and Jeanne M. Slattery, ‘Religion, Spirituality and Mental Health’, in The Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, eds. Raymond F. Paloutzian and Crystal L. Park (The Guildford Press, 2015), 540–559.
14 Renate Ysseldyk, Kimberly Matheson, and Hymie Anisman, ‘Religion as Identity: Toward an Understanding of Religion from a Social Identity Perspective,’ Personality and Social Psychology Review 14 (2010), 60–71.
15 Park et al., ‘Religion, Spirituality and Mental Health’.
16 Charles Kimball, When Religion Becomes Evil (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2002).
17 Israela Silberman, ‘Religious Violence, Terrorism and Peace: a Meaning-System Analysis,’ in The Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, eds. Raymond F. Paloutzian and Crystal L. Park (The Guildford Press, 2005), 529.
18 Claire Mitchell, ‘Introduction’, in Religion, Identity and Politics in Northern Ireland: Boundaries of Belonging and Belief (Ashgate, 2006), 1–21.
19 Mitchell, ‘The Sectarian Headcount’, in Religion, Identity and Politics in Northern Ireland: Boundaries of Belonging and Belief (Ashgate, 2006), 21–39.
20 Joseph Liechty, Roots of Sectarianism in Ireland.
21 Christian Scharen, ‘From the Body’, in Perspectives on Ecclesiology and Ethnography, eds. Pete Ward (W.B Eerdmans: Grand Rapids: Michigan. 2012), 59.
22 Robbie Mc Veigh and Bill Rolston, ‘From Good Friday to Good Relations: Sectarianism, Racism and the Northern Ireland State,’ Race and Class 48, no. 4 (2007), 1–23.
23 Steve Bruce, ‘Late Secularization and Religion as Alien,’ Open Theology 1, 13–23 (De Gruyter. 2014), 19.
24 Hastings Donnan and Kirk Simpson, ‘Silence and Violence among Northern Ireland Border Protestants,’ Ethnos 72, no. 1 (2007), 5–28.
25 Liam Kennedy, Unhappy the Land: The Most Oppressed people Ever, The Irish? (Merrion Press, 2016), 205.
26 Scharen, ‘From the Body’, 50–70.
27 Siobhan Garrigan, The Real Peace Process: Worship, Politics, and the End of Sectarianism (London: Equinox, 2010), 25.
28 Hans Gunter Heimbrock, ‘Practical Theology as Empirical Theology’, International Journal of Practical Theology no. 14, (Walter de Gruyter, 2011).
29 Ann Taves, ‘Building Blocks of Sacralities: a New Basis for Comparison across Cultures and Religions’, in The Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, eds. Raymond F. Paloutzian and Crystal L. Park (The Guildford Press, 2015), 138–164.Taves underlines how religious studies favour historical and qualitative ethnographic methods, with psychology favouring more quantitative methods. She posits that psychologists of religion are more concerned with identifying the psychological processes that mediate religion and spirituality. In contrast, religious studies scholars have traditionally been more concerned with the various ways that religion and spirituality are manifest across times, places and cultures.
30 Pete Ward, ed., ‘Introduction’, in Perspectives on Ecclesiology and Ethnography (Michigan: W.B Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 2012), 2.
31 Paloutzian and Park, Recent Progress and Core Issues, 9.
32 John Swinton, ‘Where is Your Church? Moving towards a Hospitable and Sanctified Ethnography’, in Perspectives on Ecclesiology and Ethnography, ed. Pete Ward (Michigan: W.B Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 2012), 87.
33 Leslie J. Francis, ‘Comparative Empirical Research in Religion: Conceptual and Operational Challenges within Empirical Theology’, in Empirical Theology in Texts and Tables: Qualitative, Quantitative and Comparative Perspectives, eds. Leslie J. Francis, Mandy Robbins, and Jeff Astley. Empirical Studies in Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 127–152.
34 Zoe Bennett, Elaine Graham, and Stephen Pattison, Invitation to Research in Practical Theology (Routledge: Taylor and Francis Group, 2018). 60.
35 Lois Lee, ‘Being Secular: Towards Separate Sociologies of Secularity, Nonreligion and Epistemological Culture,’ Unpublished PhD thesis (University of Cambridge. 2012) See also: Stacey Gutkowski, ‘From Multiculturalism to Multifaithism? The Panel Debate’, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 10, no. 2 (2012): 319–22.
36 Lois Lee, ‘Locating Nonreligion in Mind, Body and Space: New Research Methods for a New Field’, Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 135–57.
37 Miguel Farias, ‘The Psychology of Atheism’, in: The Oxford Book of Atheism, eds. Stephen Bullivant and Michael Ruse (Oxford University Press, 2013), 468–482.
38 Based on the first wave of the European Social Survey (ESS) undertaken during 2002/2003.
39 Judaism was included as an option in this section.
40 I amended a question from the ‘2018 Religion1V Questionnaire for the International Survey Programme,’ (country amended to ‘Ireland). Source: A compilation of documents used to develop the 2018 Religion1V questionnaire for the International Survey Programme.
41 An Italian study which investigated the distinction between religion and spirituality theoretically and empirically found that Italian Catholics who are now totally or partly disengaged from religion might still identify as Catholics because they were born in a Catholic country, attended Catholic schools, youth groups, went to Mass and the Sacraments and married in a Catholic Church. The author, Stefania Palmisano asserts that they feel they belong to Catholicism as an important way of the Italian way of life, but they are not officially or formally members. See: Stefania Palmisano, ‘Spirituality and Catholicism: The Italian Experience’, Journal of Contemporary Religion 25, no. 2 (2010), 221–241.
42 Brian J. Zinnbauer, Kenneth I. Pargament, Brenda Cole, Mark S. Rye, Eric M. Butter, Timothy G. Belavich, Kathleen M. Hipp, Allie B. Scott, and Jill L. Kadar, ‘Religion and Spirituality: Unfuzzying the Fuzzy’, Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion 36, no. 4 (1999), 549.
43 Ralph W. Hood, B. Spilka, B. Hunsberger, B. Gorush, The Psychology of Religion: an Empirical Approach (New York: Guildford Press, 1996).
44 Barbara Tedlock, ‘From Participant Observation to the Observation of Participation: the Emergence of Narrative Ethnography’, Journal of Anthropological Research no. 47 (2005), 69−94.
45 Jose Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
46 Abby Day, Believing in Belonging: Belief and Social Identity in the Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2011).
47 Grace Davie, Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing Without Belonging (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).
48 Daniele Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 164.
49 See also: James Emery White, ‘A Post-Christian World’, in: The Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated (Baker Books, 2014), 49–51.
50 Heimbrock, ‘Practical Theology as Empirical Theology’.
51 Tom Inglis. ‘GAA Has Tapped Into Growth of Sport as a Substitute for Religion’, The Irish Times, August 24, 2009, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/gaa-has-tapped-into-growth-of-sport-as-substitute-for-religion-1.724754 (accessed February 5, 2023).
52 Cathal Mc Call, ‘Culture and the Irish Border; Spaces for Conflict Transformation’, Cooperation and Conflict 46, no. 2 (2011), 205.
53 Mc Call, ‘Culture and the Irish Border’, 207.
54 Bennett et al., Invitation to Practical Theology, 31.
55 V. Braun and V. Clarke, ‘Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology’, Qualitative Research in Psychology 3, no, 2 (2006).
56 Sen, Amartya, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2007).
57 Zandra Waggoner, ‘Deliberation, Reason, and Indigestion: Response to Daniel Dombrowski’s ‘Rawls and Religion: The Case for Political Liberalism’, American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 31, no. 3 (2010): 179–195.
58 Richard Rorty, ‘The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy’, in: Objectivity, Relativism and Truth (New York: Cambridge University Press), 175–96.
59 Maeve Cooke, ‘A Secular State for a Postsecular Society? Postmetaphysical Political Theory and the Place of Religion’, Constellations 14, no. 2 (2007): 233.
60 Cooke, ‘A Secular State for a Postsecular Society’, 234.
61 Michael R. Levenson, Carolyn M. Aldwin, Heidi Igarashi, ‘Religious Development from Adolescence to Middle Adulthood’, in: The Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, eds Raymond F. Paloutzian and Crystal L. Park (The Guildford Press, 2015), 183.
62 Liechty, ‘Roots of Sectarianism in Ireland’, 3.
63 Garrigan, The Real Peace Process, 147.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Padraig Mc Bennett
Padraig Mc Bennett is a doctoral student in the School of Theology, Philosophy and Music at Dublin City University, having previously been an academic member of the mental health nursing profession. His research centres on exploring the spiritual landscape of Ireland’s younger demographics by means of mixed-methods empirical study. [email protected]