Lewis literalists collide with modernity

Two events on the Isle of Lewis enraged local free-church fundamentalists recently.

On the Sunday of July 19, a ferry-boat sailed from Stornoway with jubilant passengers on board, whilst a small gathering of serious faced objectors invoked their patriarch god who was presumably was not best pleased. One of the passengers cheekily wore a tee shirt with the words “Let’s Drink in Ullapool On Sundays” – a dig at The Lord’s Day Observance Society. Co-incidentally, the following day, two local men did what they were perfectly entitled to do in 21st century Scotland and formally registered a civil partnership.

Now none of this would raise an eyebrow anywhere else but on the Isles of Lewis and Harris, where the draconian Free Churches would prefer that all citizens accept the literal interpretation of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. This particular doctrinal world-view owes its origins to the nineteenth century revival movement, but why does it persist in such concentration within one geographical area?

I was quite astonished one day to find a salesman in an electrical shop who firmly believed that, in spite of all the geological, anthropological and fossil evidence, the earth and everything on it was converted by divine will from nothing into an incredibly complex living planet in just six days. Ironically, none of the electrical appliances in that shop would have existed without a modern scientific understanding of thermodynamics.

Lewis and Harris have a reputation for good hospitality and warmth towards visitors but amidst the conviviality lurk sinister aspects of local religion, which are worth elaborating. Just ten years ago there was a local free paper available, useful for the sale and purchase of second-hand goods but it carried religious articles which were so homophobic that I first mistook them for satire. At about the same time you could find old, small, hard-back volumes in the hospital waiting rooms, which attacked Catholicism with shocking vitriol, notwithstanding the fact that South Uist and Barra remain predominantly Catholic.  

A peculiar history

	But why is it that such beautiful islands inhabited by warm friendly people should have a body of opinion that is so ferociously Old Testament? I think I may have found some of the answers in Rev Murdo Macauley’s “Aspects of the religious history of Lewis” (published around 1980). In this valuable contribution to local history, Macauley draws attention to the lack of penetration by the changes implicit in the Reformation.
	One of the main tenets of the Protestant creed was that services would no longer be conducted in Latin but in the native tongue, which in the United Kingdom moreover, would be enhanced with the universal provision of the King James Bible. The obvious problem in the Hebrides was that the native tongue was Gaelic and the King James Bible was in English. Thus Macauley reveals that though the occupants of Lewis and Harris were nominally Protestant very little had actually changed by the end of the eighteenth century.

In addition to unreformed Catholic practices, which persisted, Macauley recounts a number of examples of local pagan rites holding sway. This is hardly surprising in my view if you understand Roman Catholicism as an accommodating religion that thrived on absorbing local pagan rites. With the abundant availability of bibles in Gaelic by 1807, the ground was now ready for an intensive effort to round up the flock.  

One of the most observable features of the Reformation seems to have been the re-emergence of God the father (wielding a large stick). As a child the old and new testaments never seemed to me to fit together that well, almost as if God had undergone a personality change between the two. As Dawkins says in The God Delusion:

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully

Whilst Roman Catholicism had a pantheist flavour and even venerated a woman, the Reformation seemed to restore the perspective of stricter monotheism and patriarchy.

“To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city, is repugnant to nature; an insult to God, a thing most contrary to his revealed will and approved ordinance; and finally, it is the subversion of good order, of all equity and justice.” John Knox  (Scottish Reformation)

Contrast this with the recent words of Marian Therese Horvat, Ph.D. (writing in the Daily Catholic) 2004:

"It really comes as no surprise to me that several centuries later, the feminist revolution and emancipation movement found fertile ground for growth, and particularly in the Protestant countries. It was in part a reaction to a distorted view of women, quite different from the view of the Middle Ages, in a Catholic society where there were many outlets for a woman to exercise her influence and capacities."

Note that the notion of a complementary role for women, as extolled by Horvat, does not imply the goal of equality, but it is significantly different from the extreme patriarchy of Knox. This is not to say that catholic clergy do not indulge in homophobia and attacks on women’s rights. The Catholic Church has traditionally attempted to regulate all non-procreative sexual acts - an ambitious project, inevitably doomed to failure.

The nineteenth century evangelisation of Lewis and Harris must also be viewed against the backcloth not just of the Reformation but also the revivalist movements of the late eighteenth century. These movements can clearly be seen as a reaction to the Enlightenment. Rather ironically, in their zeal to spread the word of God they assisted the age of reason by spreading literacy. This movement also evangelised slaves in the Americas leading eventually to a U-turn of many evangelisers’ position on slavery and, of curious interest, according to Professor Ruff (the Independent 2003), blues and black gospel music might owe its origins to evangelising plantation owners who originated from Lewis and Harris.

One thing that poor people of the Hebrides had in common with plantation slaves was that daily life was undoubtedly harsh. The social conditions would have been shaped by the Highland Clearances of the eighteenth century. It is said of the Highlands in general that to landlords, "improvement" and "clearance" did not necessarily mean depopulation. At least until the 1820s, when there were steep falls in the price of kelp, landlords wanted to create pools of cheap or virtually free labour, supplied by families subsisting in new crofting townships. There seems to be another parallel in the initial orientation towards the slave trade, which was to convert slaves rather than free them. This could be backed up by biblical quotes, for example the biblical patriarch Abraham was said to exploit slaves himself.

I think it is arguable that the perceived need to shift attitudes in the direction of a more patriarchal mindset can often be preceded by a shifting of gender roles. When it’s a case of ‘all hands to the pump’ in demanding times, pre-existing traditions over the division of labour can be seen to stand in sharp contrast to the ground-level reality. To the patriarch preacher, the first duty would be to disperse the bibles, ‘correct’ behaviour and not worry too much about poverty, a condition that was not within their power to change.

The protestant revival

The balance of power between the sexes does not appear to be either fixed or move in one direction on the scale of recorded history. Moreover it seems that under harsh conditions, the shift has generally been towards stricter forms of patriarchy and then whilst men are away engaging in warfare, the social power of women often increases, leading to an ideological backlash.

The start of the eighteenth century was marked by the Napoleonic wars, followed rapidly by the Highland clearances, but it also arrived on the heels of the Enlightenment and the French revolution. As Karl Marx noted when discussing the question of history repeating itself:

The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. Thus Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul….

Marx’s reference to the Apostle is written in relation to the Reformation but the concept is valid in relation to the nineteenth century revival. With the established church bending and responding to the Enlightenment, the more conservative elements recall the historical period when Christianity was a small struggling sect. Thus the Acts of the Apostles which reflect that period become a focal point.

Whereas the Church of Scotland could accommodate both neo-conservative and more enlightened wings for a period of time, it seems that the conflict between modernity and fundamentalism rose to head. In any event by 1843 the dominant Lewis and Harris form of religion had been effectively frozen in its most extreme version because the Free Church and the more moderate presbyterians parted company.

The Sabbatarians

Austere and stringent adherence to a Sabbath tradition would be absolutely essential to any revivalist movement. Interestingly in the wikipedia definition of Sabbath the name Abraham (patriarch or strong man) pops up again. Whatever the historical purpose may have been in pre-history, the puritan interpretation generally requires that pleasure, not just labour, should be set aside and the whole day dedicated to God worship.

Ten years ago when my friend was in hospital, conscious but unable to read or hold any kind of conversation, some of the other patients complained about her watching television on a Sunday. This would not happen now and this tradition has perhaps lost some of its edge though, absurdly, the mere sight of washing lines on a Sunday remains controversial.

The Lords Day Observance Society was established in 1831and attracted the attention of Charles Dickens who wrote in 1836:

“You were among the first, some years ago, to expatiate on the vicious addiction of the lower classes of society to Sunday excursions; and were thus instrumental in calling forth occasional demonstrations of those extreme opinions on the subject, which are very generally received with derision, if not with contempt. Your elevated station, my Lord, affords you countless opportunities of increasing the comforts and pleasures of the humbler classes of society--not by the expenditure of the smallest portion of your princely income, but by merely sanctioning with the influence of your example, their harmless pastimes, and innocent recreations. That your Lordship would ever have contemplated Sunday recreations with so much horror, if you had been at all acquainted with the wants and necessities of the people who indulged in them, I cannot imagine possible. That a Prelate of your elevated rank has the faintest conception of the extent of those wants, and the nature of those necessities, I do not believe”

Recent politics

Beginning in the 1990s there was some dissatisfaction with the manner in which allegations of sexual impropriety against Professor Donald Macleod of the Free Church College were handled. MacLeod was acquitted of such a charge in the secular courts of Scotland. Some members of the church had felt uneasy with MacLeod's theological statements and points of view since the early 1980s.

In the mid-1990s, the Free Church General Assembly refused to hold a full inquiry into allegations of adultery against MacLeod, on the grounds of insufficient evidence. Some members of the General Assembly who did not accept these verdicts, continued to campaign for an inquiry. When they continued their actions after being ordered by the General Assembly to cease, a number of them were removed from their pulpits and suspended on charges of contumacy (stubborn resistance to authority). On 20 Jan 2000 the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) was formed when these ministers and others left the Commission of Assembly and claimed to reconstitute the denomination. Splitters!

In the run up to the 2005 general election, Reverend Hargreaves, a Pentecostal minister, was able to rapidly recruit sufficient local support in Stornoway to mount a highly visible campaign. His “Operation Christian Vote” towed the familiar revivalist line and he went on to secure 7.6%. It’s reasonable to assume that there would be Christian fundamentalists who did not vote for this new patriarch in town and the proportion of the population holding similar beliefs may be 15% or more.

Interestingly, Hargreaves was once in the music business and allegedly funds his political activities from substantial royalties on “So Macho” a number two hit from the eighties. The lyrics are obviously copyrighted, so I won’t risk reproducing them here, but you can Google them yourselves or watch the You-tube video.

The song became extremely popular amongst gay men. I find this quite ironic because I think the affirmation of patriarchy and gender stereotyping is there in the words, written long before the writer became a Pentecostal minister. Surely the healthiest sorts of relationship are those based on mutual respect and whilst the adoration of the strong man might be fine in a male same-sex context, it is now historically outmoded as a theme of heterosexual harmony or social governance.

The whole gamut of possibilities is still open in the new post-modern debate about gender roles, what it is to be human, and how we might best achieve both personal fulfillment and social progress, but long may the age of reason continue. What we least need is a return to the age of prophets and patriarchal gods.

It’s a measure of maturity and self-confidence when we dispense with superstition and find our own spirituality without archaic religious dogma. Hopefully, the Enlightenment is still a work in progress but I think it most unlikely, wherever we go from here that a renewed ban on Sunday ferries or a moratorium on civil partnerships will be happening at any time in the forseeable future.

Joanne Telfer

Western Isles. July 2009.