Whiteness in Witnessing Unto the Nations: An Ethnography of Whiteness in the Context of Evangelical Christian Missions in Northern Ireland

This paper aims to answer the lacunae of race and whiteness within the sociology of religion in Northern Ireland (NI). Based on ethnographic study of missionary networks, it will explore how “white” NI evangelical socialization shapes representations of and contact with racialized “others” within missions work at “home” and “abroad”. Findings represent the first critical, empirical study of race in the context of religion in NI, contributing to understandings of social divisions there in entirely new ways and broadening discussions of evangelical whiteness beyond the hegemonic US context (Gorski and Perry, 2022).

Issues of religion and race are of paramount importance in Northern Ireland, a settler-colonial society emerging from a period of violent sectarian division (Cash, 2017), now facing concerns around social cohesion amid increasing ethnic diversity and a surge in racist incidents in recent years (Hart, 2022). Religious identification and observance in NI remains high compared to much of western Europe, yet there are few empirical studies of the sociology of religion in NI outside of sectarian conflict (Altglas, 2022). Issues of race are unexplored within the sociology of religion in NI (Wood, 2006), and research on race more broadly has omitted NI due to its history of ethno-national conflict (Gilligan, 2022). There has been no scholarship exploring how religious social structures shape processes of racialization in NI social groups, or how these processes structure the experiences of those racialized as “white”.

NI evangelical communities constitute a key support base for international Christian missionary work (Tonkin, 2006), which has been critiqued for perpetuating neocolonial power relations of material and spiritual dependency (Cruchley, 2022). Whiteness can be methodologically challenging to explore (Twine and Warren, 2000), yet the ethnographic context of missions offers unique insights into how white racialization is constructed and disrupted in relation to racialized “others”.