astorian, another American here, but I think you aren’t far off. From what I’ve read, and irishgirl seems to confirm it, the religion/denomination/sect is a label nothing else. I don’t even know if it is just the dumbed down American media, or the media in general.
Think about it, William of Orange (Dutch) was on the Unionist side. The Unionist are primarily of Scottish origin (who were an Irish tribe that went to Scotland and lost to the Picts, but I digress) and Protestant. But the other side was led by a * Scottish Catholic *. They weren’t fighting over religion, either, it was over who got to stay in charge. The Nationalists are upset over the predominant religion in the area, it is over their treatment for the past 400 years. (Last I looked the “Protestant” majority had shrunk from 2/3 to 60%.)
In Scotland, home of Presbyterianism, the Catholic Stuarts were championed, because they were Scottish kings before they became English kings, and many Scots felt they should get to pick their king. There is considerable truth to English opposition to the Stuarts being based on religion, but more truth to little details like Charles II not calling Parliament for over a decade.
Yep astorian, I (and a few others :)) have been trying to get this point across here for ages. “Religion” in the six counties - as in the Balkans - is a marker of cultural and national identity which may have little or nothing to do with one’s actual spiritual beliefs. Which is not to say that genuine religious bigotry doesn’t exist in the North, but it isn’t - in modern times, anyway - the primary reason for the conflict.
And yes, it is pretty much “the dumbed down American media” perpetuating this myth. I haven’t got much time for the media on this side of the pond either but at least they (usually) portray the division accurately as “nationalist vs. unionist” rather than “Catholic vs. Protestant”.
If the arguments really were about religious beliefs, then the same conflicts would have been replicated in places like Holland and Germany where the proportions of people declaring religious affiliation are pretty evenly split and where there is also some geographical zoning (Catholics tending to live in the south and Protestants in the north of both countries). I’ve certainly never heard of anyone being shot in Ireland in a debate about transubstantiation, but there is a great deal of mutual ignorance about what various denominations are alleged to believe, and that arises out of sectarianism itself.
Of course there have been religious wars in other parts of Europe too, but they tend to have been generated by assumed political affiliations. That was certainly the case this side of the Irish Sea during the C16[sup]th[/sup] and C17[sup]th[/sup] – in a war involving England against Spain or France, for example, would English Catholics support the Papacy or their own Protestant monarch?*
Religion is generally used as a cipher for political affiliation in Northern Ireland too, but the true differences have nothing to do with articles of faith as such. The problems between Great Britain and Ireland have been more about British imperialism than anything else; problems within Ireland have been more complex than that.
*Sadly there seems to be an echo of that in the current position faced by Muslims living in western countries, but that’s a subject for another thread.