‘Dumb Dogs’ and ‘Bonneted Chieftains’

Abstract

Religious separatism in Britain has tended to be social and cultural, and has had to accommodate itself to Britain’s ‘open’ political system. Achieving this accommodation, and the impact of religion upon Scottish politics, is a primary concern of this chapter. It reveals the crucial difference between religious separatism and religious bigotry. Separatism refers to the belief that the faithful should refrain from unnecessary contact with other faiths, or with the secular world. In other words, the proper place for Catholics is within the Catholic Church and a Catholic marriage, their children educated in a Catholic school, their leisure time enjoyed with fellow Catholics in lay Catholic organisations. Separatism is less well defined for Protestants, but Church, youth, and Temperance organisations did provide an institutional framework within which to lead a ‘Protestant’ life. Such separatism represents a diluted form of the pillarisation found in a number of European societies c. 1870–1970. Separation implied a value judgement upon the Other, of course: a Protestant life was encouraged in part because it was seen as superior — morally and culturally — to that of a Catholic or secular life. It is here that separatism and bigotry coincide: religious bigotry relates to an active opposition to another faith, to (attempted) interventions into, and denigration of, its activities.