Demonstrating Passion Constructing Sacred Movement In Northern Ireland

Abstract

This paper suggests that the ubiquitous cultural act of parading in Northern Ireland, frequently employed by ethnonational organizations as a means of symbolically marking sectarian political and religious control of and authority over territory, is also employed by charismatic Protestants seeking to create a sacred economy in which all Christians citizens participate in movement towards the universal "End Times" of evangelical and charismatic salvation history. In Belfast, this is accomplished in charismatic events (such as parading and "home-group" meetings) where locally important ideas about urban mobility as cultural and political performance are resituated and transformed within a global network of institutions and beliefs (Charismatic Renewal) that incorporate a alternate logic of ritual movement in which the city is itself the object of sanctification. This sanctification is not contemplated by charismatic Protestants, but is reflexively indexed and "proved" by their practices. The local or regional acts of parading and urban movement are thereby shown to be semantically porous and open to reinterpretation through contact with global cultural phenomena, such as Charismatic Renewal.