The Soul of Scotland: Celebrating Scotland’s Spiritual Richness

Harry Reid

St Andrew Press £16.99

A Little History of Religion

Richard Holloway

Yale University Press £14.99

Review by Hugh MacDonald

THE world of Thomists and Taoists, agnostics and atheists, Christians and humanists is, of course, indebted to the philosophy of Homer. Simpson of that ilk once opined: “Here’s to religion, the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”

I have, with some mischief, misquoted Homer. He was citing alcohol, but the sentiment remains intoxicating. The modern world is now wracked and pitted and rocked and made bloody by the awful violence of religious zealots. Yet the spiritual void that seems inherent to all human life is filled for many by organised religion.

It is a dichotomy that seems impossible to reconcile. It is not enough to declare that religion is of itself beneficent and that it is merely some deluded followers who bring it into murderous disgrace. It is not enough, either, to declare from some intellectual highpoint (Dawkins Peak or Dawkins Pique) that there is no God. A deity, or at least a spiritual presence, remains a consolation, an inspiration and a template for life for much of the world’s inhabitants. Certainty should be elusive on whatever side of the chasm one stands.

Therefore, it is a blessing that both Harry Reid and Richard Holloway do not attempt to impose their world view or their almost certainly differing stances on the existence of God. Crudely, Reid, a distinguished journalist once of this parish, could be described as a theist and a member of the Church of Scotland. Holloway, former bishop of Edinburgh and primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, has a faith that is more difficult to summarise but it seems not to chime with many of the fundamental planks of the Christian doctrine.

These differing standpoints inform these books rather than tilt or taint them. Both books are simply extraordinary.

Holloway’s is marked with a chutzpah that is ultimately beguiling. His history of a discipline that has accompanied man and divided mankind for all of existence weighs in at just under 250 pages. He adopts a simple but not simplistic style. This, incidentally, is work that can be read by all ages. His style is engaging, too. It is not enough to describe religious denominations and their beliefs (the chapters on the Quakers, Zoroaster and Buddhism are particularly illuminating), Holloway also discusses such subjects as the role of prophets, the concept of converts, and the tenets of submission and struggle.

He avoids certainty but not erudition or enlightenment. And he does not step away from controversial subjects. He writes of Muhammad: “War was an instrument of his spiritual purpose.” Holloway adds that the prophet was not alone among religious leaders, then and since, to adopt this stance. But he uses this bald statement as a base for inquiry rather than for trite and ultimately useless condemnation.

He can be bold and engaging on the consolations of religion. He is particularly acute on the notion of salvation. “When religion took a turn in a more personal direction, it was able to bring such peace into troubled lives that believers described the experience as dying and being born again, or being blind and seeing again, or being paralysed and walking again,” he writes.

This is the nub of religion or, at least, belief. The organised churches or sects can and sometimes must be mired in politics. Their hierarchy is vulnerable to the corruption of the easy life. Many of their clergy are guilty of awful crimes, some towards children. All this is undoubtedly evil.

But how to ignore the power of religion to bring good to people’s lives or even to save them? Holloway examines the possibility of the growing secular humanist movement to supplant or even replace religion. But it remains less powerful, for good and evil, than a faith placed in a supernatural theory or being. It is why many recovery programmes from addiction use the 12-Step model on submitting to a power greater than oneself, an individual conception of God.

This lies at the heart of the human condition. Many will find a morality, a way of living a productive, loving and decent life without invoking God or the religions that are polytheistic. But other seekers need a relationship with their God that takes their lives from ruination to salvation. Increasingly, too, these religionists (and some would baulk at that term) do not ally themselves with creeds or denominations and their search has been guided by some clergy who sail dangerously close to challenging the orthodoxy of their churches. Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr and Anthony Di Mello are three of the most powerful voices from within Catholicism who have sought to address the human problem without simply riffling through a book on doctrine.

Holloway remains an agnostic on the future of belief systems. He states the case for humanism and outlines the enduring strength of organised religion, even if the latter is in general decline. This is a book of inquiry, even illumination, not of unrelenting argument.

Reid, of course, indulges in argument. He has written two fine books on the Kirk and the Reformation and these have been marked, indeed made invigorating and even inspiring by the author’s willingness to state his case. There is a suspicion that many a convention has been moved from Edinburgh because a host of empty rooms have been booked for Reid to have an argument in.

There is no child-like petulance in this, rather a need to make his case as powerfully as he can and a belief that prevarication makes for poor literature. The Soul of Scotland is a wonderful concoction of reportage, travelogue, history and literary criticism. It almost defies categorisation except that it will remain at or near the head of this reviewer’s book of the year list.

Its flaw are slight and are mostly concerned with Reid’s over estimation of the interest of many of his compatriots. He observes at one point that the Covenant continues to split the nation in terms of those who support it or denigrate it. More accurately, perhaps, it splits the nation into those who know of it and those who do not. The latter, I suspect, will form the greater congregation.

But Reid is brilliant on his handling of such great themes as the Disruption, the future of the Church of Scotland, and the difficulty of faith colliding with doctrine. However, it is his power of observation that consistently delights.

His pen portraits are insightful, challenging and unforgiving. They are rarely marked with doubt. George Mackay Brown is “the most seriously Christian creative writer of the century”. This may cause some disruption among the disciples of CS Lewis, Graham Greene or even GK Chesterton. But in this, as in all other sections, Reid builds his case shortly but surely and stands by it, unconcerned by those who will seek to destroy it. His championing of Fionn MacColla and his demolition of the kailyard school of Scottish literature are particularly sparky.

Reid has succeeded in moving across geography, politics (excellent on Tom Winning and his modus operandi), bigotry, theology and literature with a sureness of foot and a less defined purpose. This is a work that should be read as a series of essays.

Its most unifying aspect across pages that range from a Free Kirk in Culloden to the inherent Catholicism of the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie may be its pursuit of truths.

Reid, too, seeks certainty though he knows that this is a chase that may never have a successful conclusion. That is true for him. And for the rest of us.