Wednesday 2 February 2011

New religion in Ireland

Religion is not simply an individual matter of "changing yourself": it is also one of the ways in which people either maintain or challenge the status quo. Ireland's new religious movements, just published, looks at the many different ways in which people have done this over time. Within Ireland, alternative religions go back far longer than the 1970s, migrant communities develop complex internal structures and feminism exerts all sorts of unexpected influences; abroad, the island stands as a "global homeland" for a wide range of Celtic and pagan religious groups. Reality is suddener and more strange than we sometimes fancy it...