Introduction

This chapter discusses the myriad ways the researcher/practitioner can inadvertently offend those with specific faith identities, which is based on experiences as both a researcher and practitioner working within the social sciences. When embarking on research involving faith communities there are few ethical guidelines one can access and only through sharing the experiences of others can such dilemmas be avoided and addressed. Many researchers and practitioners believe the issues arising from conflict within religious and spiritual beliefs are relatively easy to solve (Bouma, 2006). However, these assumptions can be misleading. Issues that are most likely to cause offence can be categorised as either a ‘macro’ issue or a ‘micro’ issue. Macro issues are formalised, standardised issues within faith traditions such as food/dietary requirements, dress codes and appropriate terminology. I argue that such issues are less likely to be at the heart of incidents of inadvertent offence because they are relatively easy to research in advance and there tends to be significant levels of publicly accessible knowledge about them. Instead, it is often ‘micro’ issues that acts of inadvertent offence centre on as these are what I term ‘day-to-day’ practices of religiosity and custom which frequently vary dramatically within faith traditions and are often not well documented. This chapter focuses on a number of examples of the micro issues that were at the centre of incidents of inadvertent offence.

At an individual level few religious observances and customs are standard. It is dangerous to assume all faith communities share exactly the same beliefs and practices (Bouma, 2006). The global beliefs concerning a particular religion may not apply to a specific faith community, or apply only in its broadest sense. Within each religious community there may be a variety of different branches, strands, groups and subgroups. Each of these can develop their own particular beliefs and practices in a similar manner to the development of cultural traits, and it is at this micro level that the researcher or practitioner encounters difficulty.

For instance, one particular manifestation of these difficulties was the need to respond sensitively to the contention by most of the participants in this particular study that their personal concept of religion or spirituality was the ‘truth’. In part this required specialised methodological design.