Religion in Scotland
As of the 2022 census, None was the largest category of belief in Scotland, chosen by 51.1% of the Scottish population identifying when asked: "What religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?
The trend of declining religious belief coincided with a sharp decrease since 2009 in the proportion of people who report that they belong to the Church of Scotland, from 34% to 20% of adults.
Other religions have established a presence in Scotland, mainly through immigration and higher birth rates among ethnic minorities.
[12] The Christianity that developed in Ireland and Scotland differed from that led by Rome, particularly over the method of calculating Easter and the form of tonsure, until the Celtic church accepted Roman practices in the mid-7th century.
[15] In the late Middle Ages the Crown was able to gain greater influence over senior appointments, and two archbishoprics had been established by the end of the 15th century.
[19] During the 16th century, Scotland underwent a Protestant Reformation that created a predominantly Calvinist national kirk, which was strongly Presbyterian in outlook.
[20] The kirk found it difficult to penetrate the Highlands and Islands, but began a gradual process of conversion and consolidation that, compared with reformations elsewhere, was conducted with relatively little persecution.
The result was the Bishop's Wars in 1639–40, ending in virtual independence for Scotland and the establishment of a fully Presbyterian system by the dominant Covenanters.
Then the late 18th century saw the beginnings of its fragmentation around issues of government and patronage, but also reflecting a wider division between the Evangelicals and the Moderate Party.
[26] Beginning in 1834 the "Ten Years' Conflict" ended in a schism from the church, led by Dr Thomas Chalmers, known as the Great Disruption of 1843.
Roughly a third of the clergy, mainly from the North and Highlands, formed the separate Free Church of Scotland.
[26] Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and the influx of large numbers of Irish immigrants led to an expansion of Catholicism, with the restoration of the Church hierarchy in 1878.
In response the church adopted a "prune to grow" policy, cutting 100 posts and introducing job-shares and unpaid ordained staff.
[60] Other Protestant denominations which entered Scotland, usually from England, before the 20th century included the Quakers, Baptists, Methodists and Brethren.
[69] In February 2013, Cardinal Keith O'Brien resigned as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh after allegations of sexual misconduct against him.
[8] Non-Trinitarian denominations such as the Jehovah's Witnesses with 8,543 respondents in the 2011 census and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with 4,651[8] are also present in Scotland.
Many were skilled in the tailoring, furniture, and fur trades and congregated in the working class districts of Lowland urban centres, like the Gorbals in Glasgow.
[77] Refugees from Nazism and the Second World War further augmented the Scottish Jewish community, which has been estimated to have reached 80,000 in the middle of the century.
As with Christianity, the practising Jewish population continues to fall, as many younger Jews either become secular or intermarry with other faiths.
[citation needed] Scottish Jews have also emigrated in large numbers to the US, England, and the Commonwealth for economic reasons, as with other Scots.
[6] Most Scottish Hindus are of Indian origin, or at least from neighbouring countries such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh.
[88] The ancient architectural landscape of pre-Christian Britain, such as stone circles and dolmens, gives pagan beliefs an attraction, identity, and nationalist legitimacy.
[91] Scotland's Baháʼí history began around 1905 when European visitors, Scots among them, met `Abdu'l-Bahá, then head of the religion, in Ottoman Palestine.
According to the 2011 Census in Scotland, 459 people living there declared themselves to be Bahá'ís,[8] compared to a 2004 figure of approximately 5,000 Baháʼís in the United Kingdom.
This focused on the threat to the "Scottish race" based on spurious statistics that continued to have influence despite being discredited by official figures in the early 1930s.
Sectarian attitudes continued to manifest themselves in football rivalries between predominantly Protestant and Catholic teams.
The Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 strengthened statutory aggravations for racial and religiously motivated crimes.
[103] Relations between Scotland's churches steadily improved during the second half of the twentieth century and there were several initiatives for co-operation, recognition, and union.
[105] Proposals in 1957 for union with the Church of England were rejected over the issue of bishops and were severely attacked in the Scottish press.
[6][109] A study carried out on behalf of the British Humanist Association at the same time as the 2011 census suggested that those not identifying with a denomination, or who saw themselves as non-religious, may have been much higher at between 42 and 56 per cent, depending on the form of the question asked.
