This is a remarkable first book by an excellent young scholar. It recognizes the importance of religion to Northern Ireland's sectarian conflict, while not reducing it to a religious war. Above all, it sees religionas a site of reconciliation as much as contest. It is based on impressive empirical analysis that displaysthe qualities of her insider knowledge, deriving fromGaniel'sextensive period of fieldwork in the Northof Ireland and her own evangelical beliefs, but also her outsider status asa North American social scientist, which gives the volume enormous sensitivity as well as a sense of balance. Evangelicals are a key sector of Northern Irish Protestantism, perhaps the dominant theological position within the Reformed tradition there, and Ganiel documents the transitions that are occurring in evangelical identities in Northern Ireland. The arguments are optimistic for Northern Ireland's future and fully consistent with the country's latest political developments. Politics, theology and ethnographyelide in this volume in wonderfully fertile ways that make it a pleasure to read. - John D Brewer, Department of Sociology, University of Aberdeen
Ganiel presents the world of Northern Ireland's Evangelical communities in an engaging and convincing manner...The fact that Ganiel documents how these Evangelical communities transform in response to policies of the state underscores her larger critique of the modern secular vision of autonomous social spheres...Ganiel's book offers an important contribution to the theoretical categories in the anthropology of Evangelicism - William Girard, Anthropology News