Reconciling Belfast: The politics of faith and peace in Northern Ireland

This dissertation investigates the local political effects of the international Charismatic movement in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In Belfast, the historical alignment of religious affiliation, cultural heritage, and political allegiance has produced a division between two ethnic communities: Roman Catholics and Protestants. This binary has been consequential over the past thirty years, contributing to the low-intensity sectarian war in which the political future of Ireland is contested. The degree to which the sectarianism is a fundamental structuring principal of society in Belfast is reflected in the exclusion from public discourse of other dimensions of social difference, such as socioeconomic class, and socioreligious plurality. Rooted in endogamy, divisions between the communities is sustained by mutually-exclusive, stereotyping practices that include residential and educational segregation, various religious, cultural, and political practices, sundry acts of violence and terrorism (or the tacit support of these), and other discursive strategies that isolate "us" from "them."; The role of religion in this process remains under-investigated, despite its apparent centrality. I argue that a distinction must be made between popular faith and religious orthodoxy. Charismatic Renewal in Belfast is a revitalization movement wherein middle-class citizens ritually dramatize "reconciliation" between the two communities. Such drama re-constructs personal and social identity by performing what participants consider to be pan-Christian ethics, worldview, and embodied or effervescent experience. These stand in opposition to the orthodox, post-Enlightenment rationalist practices of the traditional Christian denominations. In so doing, Renewal empowers people who might otherwise have little influence on changing an atavistic and remorselessly violent social order.; Ritual constitution of new identities that are pan-Christian involves: (1) the re-imagining of the urban and rural landscape as imbued with the dynamic and sovereign Holy Spirit; (2) the re-construction of Christian and Irish history to show where and how supernatural forces have been active in Northern Ireland; (3) the rhetorical constitution of Northern Ireland as a sinful, "ill" society in which Satan creates hate and intolerance; and (4) the performance of healing in which sin and sickness are expelled from the body by the healing and boundary-destroying power of the Holy Spirit.