Ethno-Religious Segregation in Post-Conflict Belfast

The last 15 years have seen ethno-religious segregation in Belfast stabilize as mixed residential neighbourhoods have expanded on the back of peace and political stability. However, the recession has exposed some of the fragility of these changes and in particular the overreliance on property-led growth and the housing market to achieve lasting forms of desegregation. This paper examines the nature of sociocultural spatial change and in particular how uneven urban restructuring has privileged the south of the city at the expense of the inner east, north and west. The paper concludes by highlighting the implications for housing policy and planning skills both regionally and nationally.

Transforming Post-Catholic Ireland: Religious Practice in Late Modernity

Transforming Post-Catholic Ireland is the first major book to explore the dynamic religious landscape of contemporary Ireland, north and south, and to analyse the island’s religious transition. It confirms that the Catholic Church’s long-standing ‘monopoly’ has well and truly disintegrated, replaced by a mixed, post-Catholic religious ‘market’ featuring new and growing expressions of Protestantism, as well as other religions. It describes how people of faith are developing ‘extra-institutional’ expressions of religion, keeping their faith alive outside or in addition to the institutional Catholic Church.

Drawing on island-wide surveys of clergy and laypeople, as well as more than 100 interviews, this book describes how people of faith are engaging with key issues such as increased diversity, reconciliation to overcome the island’s sectarian past, and ecumenism. It argues that extra-institutional religion is especially well-suited to address these and other issues due to its freedom and flexibility when compared to traditional religious institutions. It describes how those who practice extra-institutional religion have experienced personal transformation, and analyses the extent that they have contributed to wider religious, social, and political change. On an island where religion has caused much pain, from clerical sexual abuse scandals, to sectarian violence, to a frosty reception for some immigrants, those who practice their faith outside traditional religious institutions may hold the key to transforming post-Catholic Ireland into a more reconciled society.