Religion and sectarianism in modern Scotland

Abstract

, Sectarianism' is often viewed with unease in contemporary Scotland, as an exclusively Scottish and Irish peculiarity, and evidence that Scotland is unworthy of modem nationhood. This thesis argues that such views represent a superficial analysis, lacking in particular a comparative framework looking beyond Scotland and Ireland. A broader view reveals that religious identity is, or has been until recently a key organisational principle in European politics, and that . sectarianism' has been a feature of most societies where Catholic and Protestant have mixed. If the term 'sectarian' is used to denote a society in which systematic discrimination affects the life chances of religious groups, and within which religious affiliation maps closely on to other social cleavages, the thesis argues that Scotland is not sectarian.

Scotland's 'sectarianism' is not systematically structured and is better understood as bigotry or prejudice. In terms of religious connections and activities, Scotland is an increasingly secular country. Through analysis of social surveys it is demonstrated that religion does not provide the marker of political cleavage that some of the literature on modem Scotland would suggest. Most accounts of religious conflict in Scotland agree on one thing: it was worse in the past. A key focus of this study, therefore, is an examination of inter-war Scotland, a period which saw a particularly sharp polarisation between Protestants and Catholics. This demonstrates that most accounts of the present depend upon a selective interpretation of the past. The relationship of religion and politics defies a simple and symmetrical division between Catholic and Protestant. Religious conflict was not the defining character of interwar Scotland - rather, it was an outcome of other, secular and profane processes. The study concludes by examining why religious division emerged as a controversial topic at the end of the 20th century. The question of sectarianism belongs within a broader debate about issues of identity and the place (or the absence) of religion within anew, re-imagined, configuration of Scottishness. The debate around sectarianism has been an invocation of past (and selectively interpreted) ghosts, an echo of a misunderstood past at the outset of a new era for Scotland.