Kirk and Culture

Abstract

Religion, since the Reformation of 1560, has been seen by historians as a distinctive and fundamental aspect of Scottish identity and Scottish culture. Following loss of independence in 1707 religion has been a key element in preserving Scottish national consciousness (Brown, 1987). The Reformation was certainly an event of major political importance, arguably the most significant watershed in early-modern Scottish history. It also had economic dimensions. The Calvinist emphasis of Scottish Protestantism has been viewed as a force that encouraged Scotland’s dramatic economic growth in the eighteenth century. Marshall (1981) has attempted to show that Calvinist doctrines encouraged entrepre-neurship in seventeenth-century Scotland. Calvinism has been used to explain supposedly Scottish personality traits like dourness, thrift and a desire to succeed. Nevertheless, it is the impact of the Reformed church on Scottish society that has been seen as most fundamental and lasting. The power of puritanical Presbyterianism has been portrayed as a negative and ruthlessly repressive force, which impoverished popular culture and turned seventeenth-century Scotland into a cultural wilderness. Yet there is an apparent paradox here as at the same time the kirk has been credited with introducing a system of education which, even if its virtues have been exaggerated, produced a society in which, by the later seventeenth century, levels of literacy were relatively high by European standards.