ABSTRACT
Whilst communities in Northern Ireland are divided along many lines such as ethnic, national and political, the dominant cleavage since the seventeenth century has been religious. Although it was not inevitable that this would be the case, over subsequent centuries Catholicism and Protestantism became closely associated with wider power struggles within society. As argued in Chapter 2, religious affiliation, more than any other social difference, provided a stable source of identity and belonging. However, neither religious ‘bloc’ has ever been internally homogeneous. In fact, each grouping has contained significant differences in religious as well as political attitudes. But what is significant is that religion, whilst never universally practised or doctrinally coherent, has over time come to be the most entrenched signifier of the communal boundary in Northern Ireland.
