After the dizzying hopes and bitter disappointments of the last year, prospects for peace in Northern Ireland seem caught between realistic possibility and foolish delusion. The Good Friday agreements remain in place and retain the support of hereditary antagonists like Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams and the Ulster Union Party's David Trimble, but there is evidence aplenty of the thick residuum of hate that remains all too near the surface of the province.Because of the sad identification of Northern Ireland's historical warring tribes with the labels"Catholic" and"Protestant," Christians from other parts of the world have multiple reasons to pray for the soon coming of peace. They also should be curious about how active Christian believers in Northern Ireland carry on day-to-day religious life and also about how such believers regard the"troubles" in their land. For such curiosity, a book called Them and Us?: Attitudinal Variations Among Churchgoers in Belfast, by Frederick W. Boal, Margaret C. Keane, and David N. Livingstone, is a godsend. Sponsored by the Community Relations Unit of the United Kingdom's Northern Ireland Office, funded in part by the European Economic Union, and published under the auspices of the Institute of Irish Studies at the Queen's University, Belfast, Them and Us? (the question mark is important) grows out of a lengthy survey administered to 3,176 Catholic and 2,079 Protestant Belfast churchgoers in the fall of 1993. (It is poignant to read that the survey date was postponed for about a month when two acts of extreme violence occurred just before the originally scheduled Sunday.)To some degree, the survey results confirm outside perceptions of a divided society. Thus, only a tiny percentage of those surveyed ...