Religious experience among Catholic and Protestant sixth-form students in Northern Ireland: looking for signs of the presence of God

ABSTRACT

John Greer conducted major surveys of sixth-form religion in Protestant schools in Northern Ireland in 1968, 1978, and 1988. John Greer’s colleagues continued that research tradition in Northern Ireland in 1998 and 2010, and extended the survey to include sixth-form students in Catholic schools. Greer’s survey routinely included a question on religious experience, drawing on the approach of Alister Hardy and the Religious Experience Research Unit. The 2010 survey provided the data from around 1500 sixth-form students analysed in the present paper. These new data offer two main points of contrast, between students in Catholic and in Protestant schools, and between students in 1998 and 2010. The analysis preserves Greer’s historic descriptive categories of religious experience styled help and guidance, exams, God’s presence, answered prayer, death, sickness, conversion, miscellaneous, and difficulty in describing.

KEYWORDS:

• Religious experience
• adolescents
• Northern Ireland
• Catholic
• Protestant