Paper short abstract:

Drawing on research performed at a Pentecostal church in Belfast, this paper examines the practical and methodological aspects of liminality, privilege, and vulnerability for researchers with faith commitments researching communities within their own faith traditions.

Paper long abstract:

In 2013-2014, I performed fieldwork at a Pentecostal Christian church in West Belfast. As a professing Christian, I found that I was, as the convenors of this panel have put it, "ideally positioned" to carry out this research. My multiple identities as both Christian "insider" and American academic "outsider" assisted me in gaining access and building trust, while also allowing me to critically examine the congregation's discourses and practices. At the same time, my liminal positioning as an academic researcher at times made it difficult to communicate my research to participants.

Both my academic and religious backgrounds raised questions of privilege. While much has been written on imbalances in education and class, less has been said on the topic of religion. As the "religiously privileged" graduate of a Christian university and daughter of a minister, I found this to be the more salient point of disparity, as most of the church's attendees converted in adulthood and had received less religious education than I had.

Yet another area that has garnered little attention is the mental, emotional, and at times spiritual vulnerability of the researcher in the field, and in particular the researcher of faith studying her own faith tradition. Clashes between my own beliefs and those of my participants were felt more deeply, as I have a personal investment in questions of religious belief. Further, my fieldwork experiences caused me to confront my own family history of religiously charged mental illness.