The Re—Conversion of Scotland

Extract

Scotland, more rapidly than England, is drifting into a confused but not yet convinced paganism. Calvin and Knox are fading into the background as religious heroes. Christ Himself may soon be a mere name to the multitudes unless there is a movement of re-conversion in our midst. About ten years ago the Church of Scotland published a Report which had the courage to admit that no more than 36 per cent, of the total population of this country was affiliated to organised religious bodies. It also revealed that about 150,000 children of school age were not connected with any church or Sunday school. At the present time it would probably be more correct to state that less than 25 per cent, of the people of Scotland are even nominal members of any Christian denomination. This is how Dr. George F. MacLeod, the Leader of the Presbyterian Iona Community sums up the religious situation in Scotland: “We have rejected an earlier discipline and discarded its Reformation alternative, and have left our youth with nothing.”

The Kirk, as a whole, has lost its authority over the people, although Scotland is still a Presbyterian nation so far as its established Church. Its membership is declining, while, on the other hand, the Catholic population tends to increase—through natural rather than by supernatural reasons. The statistics of birth-rate among Scoto-Irish families in the industrial Lowlands prove this fact. To-day about 13 per cent, of the total population of Scotland is Catholic. No statistics of conversions are allowed to he published as in England.