This ethnographic research will explore how Northern Irish, evangelical Christians experience and engage in the construction of race within the context of international missionary activities. Taking an interdisciplinary approach drawing on the sociology of religion and race/ethnicity, human geography, and missions history, it aims to investigate how NI evangelical Protestants involved in international missions conceptualise the mission field across the spatial contexts of “home” and “overseas”, and how this relates to processes of racialisation and ethnic relations in NI.
Despite the fact that religious belief and observance remain high in Northern Ireland compared to much of western Europe, the sociology of religion in NI has seen little empirical research outside of the study of conflict and peacebuilding. Furthermore, the sociology of religion more broadly has been critiqued for neglecting critical theoretical approaches which explore how religious beliefs and practices shape the processes of racialisation. While a burgeoning body of literature has begun to explore the role of “white” evangelicalism in contemporary socio-political polarisation, this has been largely limited to the US context. Meanwhile, sociological research in racial and ethnic studies in the UK and Ireland have frequently omitted NI as an outlier because of its unique history of sectarian conflict and its relatively small population of ethnic minorities. Studies of race in Northern Ireland have been mostly quantitative and macro-sociological, focusing on social attitudes and instances of racist violence.
As the first qualitative study of racialisation within religious communities in Northern Ireland, this research aims to use ethnographic methods in the context of evangelical mission organisations to explore how the processes of racialisation are constructed through everyday religious socialisation, beliefs, and practices, and how these are adapted, reinforced, or disrupted through participation in international missionary work.
