Religious Practice in a Post-Catholic Ireland: Towards a Concept of ‘Extra-Institutional Religion’ - Notes

Religious Practice in a Post-Catholic Ireland: Towards a Concept of ‘Extra-Institutional Religion’

This article introduces the concept of “extra-institutional religion” to describe how religiously committed individuals practice their faith in a “post-Catholic” Ireland. This concept is derived from an island-wide study and defines extra-institutional religion as religious practices that occur outside or in addition to the Catholic Church, which has historically been the dominant religious institution in Ireland. This concept offers an alternative to the sociological emphasis on religious individualization, as advocated by sociologists of religion and theorists like Ulrich Beck. It builds on the work of British sociologists of religion Grace Davie (believing without belonging and vicarious religion) and Abby Day (believing in belonging and performative religion). The article posits that extra-institutional religion may be applicable beyond Ireland, in the mixed religious markets of Europe, by balancing its position on the margins with its continued links to institutional religion.

Introduction

Secularization theory in the sociology of religion has evolved to acknowledge secularizing trends alongside plural religious markets and religious individualization. While secularization theories suggest secularization is ‘probable’ in Europe, the question arises whether religion will retain social significance.

Ulrich Beck's (2010) "A God of One’s Own" argued for a central social role for religion, even in Europe, highlighting its potential to produce ethical, reflexive individuals who can contribute to a peaceful cosmopolitan world. Beck’s advocacy for the social importance of religion confirms that the sociology of religion is broader than the sociology of secularisation. Reflexive religious individualisation, characterized by choice, experience, and cosmopolitanisation of belief, equips religion for an age of pluralism and global risk. However, Beck has been critiqued for simplistic depictions of religion, particularly regarding fundamentalism and religious violence.

Religious individualisation also includes those who still identify with Christian identities. Studies of ‘lived religion’ or ‘every day religion’ have de-emphasised the importance of religious institutions. The emphasis on individualisation has highlighted that conventional approaches in the sociology of religion, like measuring declines in church attendance and belief in ideas such as God, heaven and hell, do not adequately explain individuals’ practices and beliefs – nor their social impacts.

Individualisation alone could not explain how people were practising their religion so the concept of ‘extra-institutional religion’ was developed to describe how some individuals who are relatively committed to religion practice it in a ‘post-Catholic’ Ireland. Extra-institutional religion is defined as the practice of religion outside or in addition to the Catholic Church, Ireland’s historically dominant religious institution. While those who practice extra-institutional religion are reflexively individualistic in their beliefs and practices, their individualisation is moderated by the dominance of the institution in how they thought about and practiced their religion. Extra-institutional religion is committed religious practice that defines itself and its practice over and against the Catholic Church. It is this preoccupation with the historically dominant religious institution that sets extra-institutional religion apart from other concepts, like lived religion.

Mixed Religious Markets

A debate exists between secularisation and Rational Choice Theories (RCT). RCT challenges secularisation theories by explaining why the United States has not followed the assumed European pattern of secularisation. RCT views the religious field as a market where rational actors choose their religion. Religious activity increases with more religious options and decreases with limited choices. Rational choice theorists argue that the monopolistic religions of Europe stifle religious vitality.

European societies have mixed religious markets shaped and dominated by historic state churches. Europeans' indifference to conventional religious belief and practice is balanced by relationships with historic state churches. In mixed religious markets, historic state churches retain residual social influence and political privilege. Jean-Francois Laniel (2016: 380) used the term ‘cultural religion’ to signal the importance of ‘a relationship with a single Church, with distinct role and societal functions’, within particular countries.

Grace Davie's concepts of ‘believing without belonging’ (1994) and ‘vicarious religion’ (2000); and Day’s (2011, 2010) emphasis on ‘believing in belonging’, and the key role of institutions in ‘performing’ religion on behalf of a nominal public help understanding how religion functions in Europe’s mixed religious markets.

Davie’s concept, believing without belonging, describes individuals maintaining belief in God and other Christian ideas, but with little or no participation in church activities. Davie (2007: 127) prefers her later concept of ‘vicarious religion’: ‘the notion of religion performed by an active minority but on behalf of a much larger number, who implicitly at least not only understand, but quite clearly approve of what the minority is doing’. Davie characterises religion as a form of collective memory, secured by the institutional churches, educational systems and media. Vicarious religion resonates with Danièle Hervieu-Léger’s (2000) idea of religion as a chain of memory which links people in the present to the religious traditions of the past and future.

Day’s (2011) use of the term believing in belonging challenges what she sees as an inherent individualism in Davie’s early approach. Day (2010, 2011) draws on theories from the anthropology of religion, which stress that belief is linked with action, like ritual and performance. Day argues that people are finding meaning through relationships, countering a prevailing fiction in social science that late modernity is characterized by individualism. Nominal Christians in Britain continue to ‘align themselves to institutional Christianity and what, for them, it represents’ (Day, 2011: 181). Day argues that the continued salience of institutional religion suggests a ‘turn to the social’. Performative belief explains how beliefs carried and conveyed by the institutional church play a ‘role in bringing into being forms of identity that actors strategically create in order to adapt to and integrate themselves into various social situations’ (Day, 2010: 10).

Davie identifies six ‘factors to take into account’ when analysing religion in Britain, arguing that they apply to almost all European societies (Davie, 2015: 3-4). The role of the historic churches in shaping British culture; and an awareness that these churches still have a place at particular moments in the lives of British people, though they are no longer able to influence—let alone discipline—the beliefs and behaviour of the majority.

Some sociologists of religion remain convinced that the terminal decline of religion remains Europe’s dominant story (Bruce, 2001). For them, religious individualisation supports secularisation by privatising religion and negating its social and political importance. They recognise that though religion has declined in important ways, it remains significant. Concepts like vicarious religion and performative religion depend on such observations.

Davie and Day weigh and combine evidence from surveys and in-depth interviews when they make their cases. Overall, their concepts help us understand how European societies are characterised by mixed religious markets where what were previously monopoly religions (historic state churches) shape and influence individuals’ market choices – even individuals whose religious practice is nominal. They help us see that religious institutions remain more important than has been supposed, even in Europe.

Ireland: A Mixed, Post-Catholic Religious Market

For centuries, Catholicism exerted a monopoly on the religious field in Ireland, functioning as a form of religious nationalism, defining the Irish against the Protestant British colonisers. The Scots and English who migrated during the Plantations of the 1600s were Protestants. The island was partitioned in 1921 after a war for independence, with 26 southern counties becoming the Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland), and retaining a Catholic majority of about 90 percent. Six northern counties – with a Protestant majority and a sizeable Catholic minority – remained in the UK. The churches remained organised on an all-island basis. In the Free State, there was no established religion, but the 1937 Constitution recognised the ‘special position’ of the Catholic Church and the State granted it extraordinary power in education and health. In Northern Ireland there was not an established religion either. Northern Ireland produced two competing ‘civil religions’ that established monopolies within the oppositional ethno-national communities: a Catholic civil religion and a pan-Protestant civil religion, which was influenced by evangelicalism (Jones and Ganiel, 2012).

Some argued that the importance of religion in maintaining ethno-political divisions contributed to the island’s high levels of religiosity (Nic Ghiolla Phadraig, 2009). As the Troubles wound down, and the Republic developed better diplomatic relations with the UK, religiosity declined –north and south. Other factors were at play, including the effects of modernisation and the impact of clerical sexual abuse scandals (Donnelly and Inglis, 2010; Keenan, 2014).

In the Republic, the percentage of those identifying as Catholic first dipped under 90 percent in the early 1990s and now stands at 78 percent, according to the 2016 Census. Mass attendance in the Republic has declined from 91 percent in 1972 to 38 percent in 2010. In Northern Ireland, mass attendance has fallen from 95 percent in 1968 to 39 percent in 2012 (Hayes and Dowds 2010: 3). The 2006 Church and Religion in an Enlarged Europe survey revealed that in the Republic this cohort prayed and attended mass less frequently. By 2017, just 56 percent of Irish Christians (all ages combined) said religion was important in their lives, signalling further declines among all age cohorts (Pew, 2018: 97).

The latest Census also found that more people than ever are choosing to identify as ‘no religion’ or ‘not stated.’ In 2016, this was 12 percent in the Republic, up from eight percent in 2011 and six percent in 2006. The figures stand at 17 percent in Northern Ireland in 2011, up from 13 percent in 2008 and nine percent in 1998. A 2012 survey commissioned by the Association of Catholic Priests showed that most Catholics do not agree with church teachings on a range of matters. This lack of agreement with Catholic Church teachings was confirmed by the 2015 referendum approving same-sex marriage, and the 2018 referendum removing the constitutional amendment that prohibited abortion in all but the most restrictive circumstances.

Inglis identifies four types of Catholics (2014: 126-149): 1) orthodox (people who ‘both believe and belong’); 2) cultural (people who ‘neither strongly believe in the church nor feel that they belong to it,’ yet maintain some beliefs and participate in Catholic rites of passage; 3) creative (people who mix and match their Catholic beliefs and practices with a variety of spiritual sources); and 4) disenchanted (people who oppose the Church). Inglis (2014: 188) concluded: ‘One of the main findings of the study was how little not just the Catholic Church but religion in general was part of the cultural repertoires of the everyday lives of people … There were few indications that God was in their minds and hearts and on their lips.’ Similarly, in her analysis of the Irish data in the Church and Religion in an Enlarged Europe survey, Karen Andersen concluded that Catholics were retaining their Catholic identity but becoming more detached from the institutional church. She described this as ‘a new Catholic habitus … where being Catholic entails exercising individual choice and being critical and selective’ (Andersen, 2010: 37).

Ireland still remains more religious than most other European countries. Pew’s (2018: 95) report on Being Christian in Western Europe revealed that the Republic is Western Europe’s third most ‘religiously observant’ country, with 24 percent showing ‘high levels of religious commitment.’

A particular form of Irish Catholicism has been displaced. This was a Catholicism that had a monopoly on the religious market, was a defining characteristic of national identity, had a strong relationship with state power (in the Republic), elevated the status of priests to exceptionally high levels, and emphasised the evils of sexual sin (Inglis, 2014, 1998; Fuller, 2004). This signals a shift in consciousness in which the institutional Catholic Church is no longer held in high esteem by many, including practicing Catholics. Catholicism is important but no longer monopolises the religious market. The Catholic Church is part of a mixed religious market, where there are more options available than in the past.

Methods and Conceptual Development

The concept of extra-institutional religion was developed to describe how people were observed practicing their religion in Ireland. The research asked questions about how churches were navigating increased diversity due to immigration, and/or addressing historic Catholic/Protestant oppositions through ecumenism or reconciliation projects. We conducted two surveys in 2009. The first canvassed 4,005 faith leaders, as near as we could achieve a universal sample of Christian clergy and other faith leaders; 710 responded. The second was an open, online survey for laity; 910 responded (Ganiel, 2016a). We also conducted 113 in-depth interviews as part of eight case studies of ‘expressions of faith’ between 2009‒11.

Some case studies were generated through responses to the surveys (respondents were asked if they would participate in further research); others were located through my own and associated researchers’ embedded knowledge. My analysis of the interviews with these relatively religiously-committed individuals inspired the concept of extra-institutional religion.

People were eager to explain how they were engaging with the Catholic Church in ways that seemed to allow them to divorce themselves from what they called the ‘institution.’ In some people’s minds, the ‘institutional’ church was a dry and lifeless hierarchy. So they ignored it and found vitality instead in religious spaces (some of which were recognisably Catholic) which they perceived as outside the institution as they defined it. In this way, I learned about the methods and strategies people were using to keep their faith alive, outside or in addition to the Catholic Church, and began to conceive of these practices as extra-institutional religion.

People practised extra-institutional religion on the margins of Ireland’s religious market.

Extra-institutional religion was an exception to these trends. Those who practised it were attempting to invigorate beliefs and practices, and they had – however unusually among Irish laity – imbibed the idea of the Church as the People of God.

Two brief examples will provide a sense of how extra-institutional religion was practiced.

Patricia was a member of the PPC in Ballyboden. She distinguished between her personal experiences of faith, which included taking responsibility for interpreting the bible and connecting with other like-minded Catholics in small groups like the PPC; and the institutional church, which she saw as having betrayed not just Vatican II, but Christ himself. It is remarkable that even though she is a regular mass attender, Patricia thinks of much of her religious practice as in addition to the institutional church. She even seems to think of a few exceptional clergy as somehow outside the institutional church, uncorrupted by its sins.

Slí Eile, which means ‘another way’ in Irish, was a ministry for 18 to 35-year-old Catholics that focused on the themes of spirituality, social justice, and community; and featured a popular gospel mass at the Jesuits’ Gardiner Street Church in Dublin. As a Jesuit ministry, it was embedded in the institutional church. But the young people who participated in it did not think of it that way. The Catholic Church had been tarnished in their eyes, and Slí Eile seemed to exist in a space outside or in addition to it. All the young people said Slí Eile had prompted individual transformation.

Extra-institutional religion describes the practice of those who exhibit relatively unique enthusiasm for religion, while vicarious and performative religion explain how religion retains significance for people whose religious practice is nominal or non-existent. But extra- institutional, vicarious and performative religion are united in two important ways: 1) the significance they place on historic religious institutions, and 2) the recognition that such institutions retain relatively privileged positions in the mixed religious markets of Europe.

The Theoretical Potential of Extra-Institutional Religion

Given that extra-institutional religion is so deeply rooted in the Irish case, I am framing it as a provisional concept, with the potential to explain religious practice in other European countries. Its theoretical potential resides in: 1) its ability to describe how some religiously committed individuals practice religion outside or in addition to historic state churches; and 2) its potential to contribute to wider change by balancing its two structural strengths: its position on the margins, and its continued links with institutional religion.

Extra-institutional religion’s main structural advantage is its location on the margins of religious markets, which provides it with the freedom and flexibility to critique existing institutions. Maintaining links through dialogues and relationships, speaking with a vocabulary familiar to mainstream institutions, and even gaining access to some of the human capital and resources of mainstream institutions ensure that creative ideas developed on the margins reach wider audiences – enhancing extra-institutional religion’s potential to contribute to wider change.

Extra-institutional religion’s potential to contribute to wider changes also depends on the extent to which a particular society is open to contributions from explicitly religious activists – a point made by Habermas (2008).

Extra-institutional expressions of religion have the potential to enact the how that Habermas neglects, as they strive to strike the balance that his rules of engagement demand.

Conclusion

Despite secularising trends, religion has persisted across European societies. Extra-institutional religion can contribute to wider changes through their continued links with institutions. Theoretically, extra-institutional religion can capitalise on the relatively unique enthusiasm of its practitioners and their position on the margins to critique mainstream institutions, pushing and pulling them towards change.