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demonstrate instances where groups or individuals deliberately instrumentalize religion to bolster
ethnic identity. After this, the religious elements of identity can become rehabilitated and take on a
life of their own.There are also cases where religion ‘once removed’ becomes unconsciously
reactivated in the self-understanding of individuals. They are not deliberately harnessed,but
religious beliefs and practices may spontaneously resurface as individuals grope to make sense of
their unfolding biographies.Jim’s story (Mitchell, 2005) helps illuminate the dynamics of the
unconscious reactivation of religious identity. This demonstrates the salience of latent religious
content in what might otherwise might be seen as secular ethnic group identities. Jim (a
pseudonym) is a young, non-churchgoing Protestant loyalist from Belfast. His father was a
Pentecostalist but Jim says he was a troublemaker and never made a serious commitment. He
describes himself as becoming more moderate in recent years, both religiously and politically. Jim
is motivated by class issues as well as a wider attachment to his community; his religious identity
is secondary. However, in times of political crisis, such as the perceived Protestant loss after the
Good Friday Agreement of 1998, religious aspects of identification are reactivated. Although Jim
now works with Catholics and considers them to be friends, he describes how his sense of political
loss, in his words, provokes the ‘triggers of anti-Catholicism’ in him once again. Even though he
is not a practising Protestant and despite his new-found relationships with Catholics, political fears
cause him to rebound back into religious ideas about self and other. He finds himself reverting to
traditional religious categories, suspecting that the Catholic Church and his Catholic colleagues
have sinister motives. He wonders why he feels that there are right and wrong religious principles
and no compromise between them.Whilst Jim’s Protestant loyalist identity is ostensibly a secular
one, and whilst he will show up in no quantitative measure of religiosity, his identity is at least
partially constituted from religious resources. Indeed, religious aspects of identity may be latent
and can be triggered in response to circumstances.Social and political experiences can
impact on an individual’s religious journey.Where there is familiarity with religious ideas,
contact with religious institutions or participation in religious activities, for whatever reason,
religion remains in people’s consciousness and may be rehabilitated in response to external
(or indeed internal) factors. These religious elements of identity make most sense in times of
struggle, but this does not mean that religion merely backs up a deeper ethnic category.
Instead it helps constitute the meaning of that struggleand interpretations of social
relationships. Once these ideas are put ‘back out there’ into society, they continue to have their
own logic and to reproduce patterns of social relationships, rather than simply signify them. This
is important because an identity constituted from these kinds of religious resources – in the case of
‘Protestant identity’, ideas of freedom, individualism and so on – is a specific kind of identity.
These religiously informed concepts play a major role in social relationships and political
negotiations. To understand their substance is to inch toward understanding what makes
Protestants in Northern Ireland tick. Reducing this to ethnic symbolism or support is to
misconstrue how many Protestants see themselves, and to misunderstand how to communicate
with them on their own terms. So, religious substance matters.
***
In sum, religion often constitutes the fabric of ethnicity. Sometimes groups or individuals
may use religious resources to boost ethnicity, and in many cases,this reactivates religious
dimensions of identity. In these situations, identity becomes simultaneously informed by
religious as well as ethnic content. In other cases, latent religion, or religion ‘once removed’,
can be rekindled unconsciously by individuals in response to social and political changes.
Sometimes religious ideas learned in childhood seem to make sense of situations in later life and
can be called upon by individuals groping to understand themselves and their social relationships.
Once rekindled, the religious aspects of identification may become dominant, they may remain
secondary, or they may recede once again. They may come into play in some situations and not
others. The important point is not that there is a set pattern of religious reactivation, but