Towards a Spatial Theory of Worship: Some Observations from Presbyterian Scotland

Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2002

Towards a spatial theory of worship: some observations from Presbyterian Scotland

Fraser MacDonald Arkleton Centre for Rural Development Research, University of Aberdeen, St Marys, King’s College, Aberdeen AB24 3UF, UK

In an attempt to add theoretical depth to the emerging literature on geographies of religion, this paper pays particular attention to the concepts of space and worship in relation to the practice of evangelical Presbyterianism in the Scottish Highlands. I argue that ‘worship’, a term which has no universal application in religious studies, has been thinly conceived in geographical literature and must be examined both as process and as practice. Worship is here considered as the dynamic and varied human response to the theological proposition of Divinity. Specically, the paper explores the dialectic between the theology of the Reformation and the practice of formal worship, a relation that is given a spatial expression in the Sabbath service. Departing from the familiar use of Henri Lefebvre’s work on the production of space to describe the geography of mobile capital, I apply his neglected observations on French ecclesiastica l architecture to Calvinist worship in the Outer Hebrides. The material in this paper was collected in the course of a long-term ethnographic engagement with the island of North Uist and is placed in the context of wider representations of Presbyterianism within popular culture.

Key words: space, religion, worship, Reformation, Presbyterian, Scotland.

Introduction service of competition. If globalization has meant that places have taken on a levelling and What would remain of the Church if there were no ‘cosmopolitan character’ as Marx and Engels churches? The Christian ideology, carrier of a recog- described it 150 years ago (1998 [1848]: 39), nizable if disregarded Judaism … has created the then local capital has surely become more spaces which guarantee that it endures. (Lefebvre adept at producing the signs of national differ- 1991a: 44) ence as a means of claiming distinctiveness. ‘The more somewhere becomes everywhere’ In our present condition of late capitalism there quipped Terry Eagleton, ‘the more these some- are few material cultures which have been left wheres need to attract investment by demon- untouched by the market: all emblems of na- strating that they are not just anywhere’ (1997: tional distinctiveness have been pressed into the 23). In the Scottish context, it would be hard to

ISSN 1464-9365 print/ISSN 1470-1197 online/02/010061–20 Ó 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/14649360120114143 62 Fraser MacDonald identify aspects of national culture which have Production of Space (1991a)— a volume which not been corralled into the wider goal of self- has already been put to work in fashioning new promotion. Religion, however, has not always approaches to human geography (see, for ex- proved amenable to the marketing project. Sev- ample, Harvey 1990, 1996; Merrield 1993; eral commentators have observed how Calvin- Soja 1989, 1996)— in order to cast light on the ist Presbyterianism in the Scottish Highlands spatial processes and paradoxes of Presbyterian has been one of the biggest obstacles in worship in the Scottish Hebrides. In so doing, tourists’ attempts to reconcile the reality of I hope to recongure the current geographical community life with the more romantic images interest in religion. of Celtic tradition (Chapman 1987: 25; Mac- This work is part of a wider ethnographic donald 1997: 166). While Presbyterianism could interest in the politics of Presbyterian Scotland be said to enjoy a limited brand loyalty, it is and is largely based on eldwork undertaken scarcely an image which, one would have on the island of North Uist during 1998 and thought, has much international currency. It is 1999. The island is part of the long archipelago perhaps surprising, then, that the 1999 edition which forms the Outer Hebrides off Scotland’s of the Lonely Planet Guide to Scotland has on north-west coast. It has been described by some its cover a picture of a remote Highland of the more conservative Presbyterians as a church, with its simple lines and damp-stained ‘frontier’ between the Protestant islands of whitewash (Smallman 1999). Even the austerity Lewis and Harris to the north and the Roman of Scottish Calvinism, it seems, has a market Catholic islands of South Uist, Barra and value. Eriskay to the south. These economically mar- On the cover of a tourist guide, the church ginal islands largely remain under crofting agri- takes on a new set of meanings: perhaps it culture, a tenurial system which has long been suggests a rough and rustic chic for which associated with the predominantly Presbyterian Scotland has always been prized; or maybe it communities that descended from the Clear- reinforces popular notions of isolation, as if the ance Highlanders of the eighteenth and nine- Highlands occupy a space and time outside teenth centuries (Hunter 1976). Although modernity. Most likely is that it has become crofting, the Gaelic language and Reformed another na¨õ ve exoticism with multiple mean- Presbyterianism are often considered to be ings, an image less kitsch than a castle but markers of community in the Protestant islands nonetheless identiably Scottish. The fact that (Mackenzie 1998), the latter of these has re- a decaying Presbyterian church has entered the ceived comparatively little research interest. imaginative geography of Scottishness in this And yet within popular culture, Scottish Pres- way, is surely sufcient justication to explore byterianism is frequently used as a metonym in more detail its social and spatial relations. for a variety of unhappy conditions ranging Despite this interest, both media and academic from Gordon Brown’s economic ‘prudence’ to understandings of the space of worship appear the oppressive patriarchy in Lars Von Trier’s sketchy or erroneous. Even within the substan- acclaimed lm Breaking the Waves (1996). This tial literature on geographies of religion, the secular hybridization of Presbyterianism as a very concepts of ‘space’ and ‘worship’ have linguistic sign for repression/oppression has been inadequately theorized. So in attempting also been refracted in more academic commen- to add depth to the analytic category of space, tary.1 Indeed, the paucity of reliable scholarship I want to draw upon Lefebvre’s seminal The on contemporary Presbyterianism serves to Towards a spatial theory of worship 63 perpetuate the more exotic mythologies of is a necessary approach if, as Livingstone, Calvinism (alcoholism, mental illness, gloomi- Keane and Boal (1998) suggest, religious space ness) while being simultaneously blind to its is a product of both material and metaphysical everyday meaning and politics. processes. Specically, I deal here with the Against this background, I consider one par- Calvinist strand of Protestantism to which ticular dimension of religious experience— the most Hebridean Presbyterians adhere. If the formally constituted Sabbath service— in an at- Reformation represented a seismic change in tempt to understand the complex dialectic be- the nature of organized Christianity, it was tween society and space that is enacted through revolutionary not least in its radical departure public worship. It is my contention that the from previous spatial codes. This transform- scholarly treatment of Presbyterianism fails to ation was, of course, pregured by the more take seriously the character and function of fundamental shift two thousand years ago from worship. Drawing from literature in anthro- the sacred space of the Judaic temple to that of pology and religious studies, I suggest that the the early Christian church (see Kunin 1998). study of worship should be elemental to much But these Protestant rules of space, although of the new work on the geography of religion. ostensibly liberating, have themselves become After briey outlining the character of Presby- an orthodoxy replete with a myriad of contra- terianism, I go on to locate this Hebridean dictions and complexities. In the nal section study both within the specic tradition of eccle- of the paper, I consider more closely the spa- siastical geography, and within more general tialities of Presbyterian worship with reference work on religious space. I argue that research to the churches and worshipping community in this eld could do more to realize the impli- on North Uist. cations of the spatial turn in cultural geography. In addressing this need for a profoundly spatialized analysis of religious life, I advance Connecting space and worship Lefebvre’s conceptual triad of ‘spatial practices’, ‘representations of space’ and ‘represen- Despite the much-vaunted reassertion of space tational spaces’ as a template for understanding in critical theory (Soja 1989, 1996), compara- the production of space through worship. This tively little attention has been paid to spaces of paper breaks the familiar use of Lefebvre’s worship. For many researchers religion remains work to describe only those processes which a matter of ritual rather than geographical are bound up with the geography of mobile importance. Inasmuch as geography has been capital. Despite his dogmatic materialism,2 brought to bear on religion at all, the discipline Lefebvre often used examples of French ecclesi- has largely been in its pre-Lefebvrian incarna- astical architecture to illustrate wider points, tion, concerned with areal patterns within a showing that in this respect he was a good deal passive space rather than treating space as an more heterodox than many of the heirs to his active part of social action. If space and wor- tradition (1991a: 220–221). Before introducing ship have been given insufcient attention inde- his schema to the empirical detail of Hebridean pendently (such a separation is in any case religion, it is necessary to attend to the histori- problematic), then there has been even less of cal importance of Reformation theology in the an attempt to explore their inter-relation. In his production of space. Such an attempt to corre- classic architectural history of Anglican parish late theological conviction with spatial practice churches in colonial Virginia, Dell Upton illus- 64 Fraser MacDonald trates how the politics and society of pre- compendious surveys of Lily Kong (1990, 1993, Revolutionary America are reected in the 2000; Kiong and Kong 2000). In her most re- plan, structure, fabric and construction of cent review of the eld (Kong 2000), she high- church buildings (1997). But his work rarely lights various themes which have gained attends to space in itself. A few other studies primacy within the discipline: the religious can be said to constitute a specically ecclesias- landscape; notions of sacred space and place; tical geography which, from a positivist stance, dichotomies of the sacred/secular; and the poli- consider the empirical arrangement of Chris- tics and mobilities of pilgrimage. Despite the tians in Britain (Baker 1966; Davies, Watkins geographical character of this research, the and Winter, 1991; Gay 1971). There is even a conception of space in relation to both the texts similar treatment of religion in the Scottish and practices of religion has scarcely changed, Highlands, albeit from an earlier era, which a point made almost a decade ago by David attempts to describe and account for the trans- Wilson (1993). This is not to say that all geog- formations in the ecclesiastical geography asso- raphers of religion have deployed a na¨õ ve ver- ciated secession and union within Highland sion of space; Kong, for instance, holds that Presbyterianism (Anon 1905). Although in space is open, contingent and is the outcome of more recent times Donald Macleod has docu- (rather than the container for) complex social mented some of the characteristics of Highland processes. But this body of theory which has religious life at the end of the twentieth century taken its initiative from Henri Lefebvre’s The (1998), there is no doubt that an empirical Production of Space has not been fully applied survey of geographical distributions of worship to the religious sphere, despite its increasing would be helpful. That, however, is not my inuence in economic and social geography intention here. Rather, I want to forge an (Unwin 2000). It is, however, an emerging eld alternative ecclesiastical geography which takes as Valins’ recent work on Judaism demon- as its central theme, the micro-politics and strates (1999). While geographers have conven- social relations of space in the context of wor- tionally ‘grounded’ religious behaviour through ship. a research emphasis on sites, locales and places, there has been little specic attempt to relate the practice of worship and the production of Spaces of worship space. This must be our main task. One might think that there could be no In examining worship in some detail, it is possible precedent for talking about the theory important to acknowledge a debt to anthropol- of Henri Lefebvre and the theology of Jean ogists who have considered the most obviously Calvin in the same breadth, given the temporal ritualistic and symbolic aspects of Scottish and political chasms between the two. But Presbyterianism, namely Communion and the although David Livingstone rather tantalizingly Sabbath (Ennew 1980; Macdonald 1997; Nadel mentions both in his paper on Calvinists’ en- 1986; Owen 1956; Parman 1990a, 1990b). Even gagement with Darwinian theory (1994), the if the geographical literature has not been so spatial connections have been left unexplored. particular in this sense, the long-established What, then, is Lefebvre’s project? The primary dialogue between geography and religion has commission of The Production of Space is the produced a coherent corpus of work, advanced search for an approach ‘which would analyse recently by the scholarly interventions and not things in space but space itself, with a view Towards a spatial theory of worship 65 to uncovering the social relationships embed- which savoured of the ancient faith, whether in ded in it’ (Lefebvre 1991a: 89). To this end, building or in services. The result was that during Lefebvre often illustrates his theses with refer- the century which followed the Reformation there ence to the monumentalism of Roman Catholic were two styles of ecclesiastical structures erected in architecture and the space of Mediaeval Chris- the country, one style showing some reverence for tendom (1991a, 1991b). By extending this rep- the house of God in its form and decoration, and in ertoire to include the material culture of the the appropriateness of the divine service; while the Reformation, I think it is possible to provide a other seemed to be designed, both in its buildings more complete account of the reciprocal pro- and form of worship, to be as far removed as cesses of the production of space. Such an possible from any outward sign of inward sweetness approach does not require a critique as reso- or grace. (MacGibbon and Ross The Ecclesiastical lutely materialist as that of Lefebvre. So in Architecture of Scotland 1897: 534) different ways this work simultaneously de- parts from and adheres to a long tradition of If there can be any conuence of meaning in Marxist scholarship on the Reformation (for these passages— and on an initial inspection example, Bloch 1962; Friesen 1974). this may seem improbable— it must surely be Lefebvre’s argument is often complex, the that form matters. Lefebvre here refers to a form of the book difcult and, being a consum- material and spatial order that is both product mate dialectician, he is prone to self-contradic- and producer of social action. As the phrase tion as a rhetorical strategy. This latter talent ‘spatial order’ implies, the form of space dis- has been dramatically mis-read by Tim Unwin closes a set of power relations, a system of who attempts to argue— in a style reminiscent rules (‘dos and don’ts’) through which social of Jones on Harvey (Jones 1999; Harvey behaviour is mediated. In order to avoid an 1999)— that the notion of the production of articial dichotomy between a spatial form on space is ‘fundamentally awed’ (Unwin 2000). the one hand and social behaviour in space But rather than attempt to summarize the total- on the other, the two must be conceived dialec- ity of Lefebvre’s argument, let us extract a few tically as part of the same process, which key points which are helpful for our present Lefebvre calls the production of space (1991a). interest in worship. Consider, for instance, the With a bold leap of imagination, we can unlikely juxtaposition of the following pas- envisage that the authors of the second quo- sages, one from our revolutionary Marxist and tation, MacGibbon and Ross, might be in the other from the more sedate authors of an agreement with this theory inasmuch as they encyclopaedic treatise on Scottish church archi- recognize that the form and structure of a tecture: building, in some sense, conditions a be- havioural response. And that a theological (so- What [space] … signies is dos and don’ts … above cial) conviction can be held to account for all it prohibits. Its mode of existence, its practical differences in form. reality (including its form) differs radically from the In their discussion of church architecture reality (or being-there) of something written, such as they contend that the iconographic style of a book. Space is at once result and cause, product Episcopal religion is more God-honouring and and producer. (Lefebvre The Production of Space appropriate for collective worship than the 1991a: 142) minimal aesthetic of Presbyterianism (MacGib- Presbyterians and Puritans discouraged everything bon and Ross 1897). If there is, as I suggest, a 66 Fraser MacDonald complex dialectic between society and space Worship as practice and process enacted through religious practice, this is not to say that spaces of worship exist primarily Any attempt to understand the practice of wor- to be read in this specic manner. On the ship must surely be based on some form of contrary, Lefebvre himself makes clear that ethnographic engagement with religious com- ‘space was produced before being read; nor munity. Written accounts— even hagiographi- was is it produced in order to be read but to cal or pietistical literature on worship— can be lived by people with bodies and lives in never sufciently illuminate the micro-dynam- their particular … context’ (1991a: 143, original ics of formal worship. The observations emphasis). But the import of Lefebvre’s work recorded here are based on sixteen months of is that the study of space (spatial practices, eldwork in the Scottish Hebrides in the period representations of space, representational 1998–99, during which time I attended the spaces) must be considered alongside other Sabbath services of the North Uist congre- textual sources which have conventionally gation of the Free Church of Scotland (see been used in writing the history and geography Figure 1). of Presbyterian Scotland. Lefebvre cautions There are four Presbyterian denominations that currently worshipping in North Uist, their names betraying the common progenitor of to underestimate, ignore and diminish space these famously ssile conservative protestant amounts to the overestimation of texts, written mat- groups (see Bruce, 1985): the Church of Scot- ter and writing systems along with the readable and land, the Free Church of Scotland, the Free the visible, to the point of assigning to these a Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and most re- monopoly on intelligibility. (1991a: 62) cently the Free Church of Scotland (Continu- ing) (see Ansdell 1998; Brown 1997; With the exception of a few ethnographic MacDonald 2000a). All share most of the same works (most notably Macdonald 1997; Munro liturgical and theological features arising out of 2000; Nadel 1986; Owen 1956; Parman 1990b), a common view of the infallibility of the Bible mainstream ecclesiastical scholarship has been as the Word of God and, in the words of the almost entirely text-based. The material and Shorter Catechism, as ‘the only rule to direct us folk cultures of Presbyterianism, in historical how we may glorify and enjoy Him’ (Westmin- accounts at least (for example, MacLaren 1974; ster Assembly 1978). The congregations have Withers 1998), have been largely eclipsed by services twice on a Sunday (a day of strict ofcial and bureaucratic sources. Given the Sabbath observance) which consist primarily of recent priority accorded to ‘practices and praise (singing), prayer, Bible reading and the performances’ in geography and anthropology, sermon or ‘preaching of the Word’. A service it is important to look beyond the conventional normally lasts just over an hour3 and is at- boundaries of ecclesiastical knowledge in tended by all able-bodied ‘members’ of the order to uncover some sense of the profoundly church and other ‘adherents’, a distinction to spatial everyday experience of worship in which we shall later return. The congregation both historical and contemporary contexts are conspicuously well dressed, men wearing (see Crang 1998). This, I believe, is the pri- suits and women smartly clothed in dresses and mary challenge for a new ecclesiastical geogra- hats, this latter article representing the Pauline phy. injunction that women should cover their heads Towards a spatial theory of worship 67

Figure 1 The Free Church of Scotland, North Uist. Author’s photograph. during worship (First Corinthians 11: 5). The the fact that during most of my eldwork the worshippers sit together in the regular pews, Free Church congregations in North Uist were often in the same places according to family vacant (without a minister) and were often custom, with the back pews full and the front dependent on English-speaking ‘pulpit supply’ ones usually empty. Before the service starts— from the mainland. Language is therefore a often with the Minister’s words ‘let us worship highly important— though by no means pre- God by singing to His praise, Psalm number …’ eminent— determinant of the character of wor- — the congregation sits silently in the pew. ship, Gaelic being associated with particular Likewise, there is no conversation in the church sound patterns in preaching, singing and prayer after the worship is concluded with the Bene- (Heath 2000). At the end of the service, once diction. The services are conducted in either the minister has left the pulpit and stands at the Gaelic or English or, depending on a diverse set door ready to greet the congregation, the pews of variables, sometimes both. A measure of are emptied row by row from the back for- reexivity is important here, as it was clear that ward, with such rapidity that a visitor might be my own presence as a non-Gaelic speaker was forgiven for thinking that it was a well- factored into this process of linguistic broker- rehearsed re drill. When safely outside the ing. This position was further complicated by building, the worshippers exchange eeting 68 Fraser MacDonald handshakes before darting into cars and head- sider the weekly act of collective worship to be, ing for home.4 in itself, unremarkable. In the case of Chris- The solemnity of the service and the high tianity in Scotland, the social functions per- reverence of the liturgical style is central to our formed by churches have been reduced to how interest here. It powerfully suggests that we individuals and groups have used the church as must consider the motivation, function and an instrument of some secular transformation. character of worship as elemental to a more Charles Withers, for instance, in his work on nuanced geography of religion. The problem is the role of urban Gaelic chapels in lowland that the concept of worship is by no means a Scotland has consistently emphasized the way conventional category of analysis or subject for in which these institutions have been used as geographical enquiry. Even within the substan- meeting places for Gaelic-speaking urban High- tial literature on geographies of religion, the landers; as social elevators for the upwardly conceptual understanding of formal worship is mobile; and as civilizing agents of a politicized often regarded as ‘given’. Inasmuch as the term Anglo-improvement (Withers 1985a, 1985b, can be considered familiar at all, it is usually 1991, 1998). Many of these aspects of social found lurking in phrases like ‘places of wor- life in the church are disproportionately ship’ or ‘the worshipping community’ (Kong weighted by an historical record largely com- 2000). In part this can be attributed to the fact posed of minutes of Presbyterian government, that the concept of worship has no universal which necessarily deal with points of conict application in descriptions of religious life. (MacDonald, I.R. 2000: xv). And from these While it may be an appropriate term for the sources, ecclesiastical historians and geo- Abrahamic religions, it cannot as easily be used graphers have understandably concerned them- to describe the actions of devotees of Hin- selves with internal fractures along the fault duism, Buddhism and Sikhism. There are, how- lines of class, ethnicity and language ever, sufcient commonalities in religious (MacLaren 1974; Withers 1998). But none practice to make ‘worship’ a potentially viable of this is to account in any meaningful sense concept. But in using the word we must place for what brings people to worship, in varied it alongside a wider vocabulary of associated and culturally elaborate forms and with com- terms that retain— as Wittgenstein might de- plex socio-spatial dynamics. Those works scribe it— some ‘family resemblance’. These re- which have, in some small part, attempted to lated concepts may include bhakti detail other aspects of sociality and spirituality (devotionalism) or dharma in Hinduism, pu¯ ja¯ (extemporary public prayer; the nature of (honour) in Sikhism and so on (Davies 1994a). preaching; family worship in the home) with- Although worship is only one aspect of re- out reference to a wider class context, tend to ligious life it is, to be sure, an important one; it be regarded as narrow and unambitious (see emphasizes what people do rather than what Withers 1996 on MacDonald 1995). I would they ‘are’ (as in some essentialist readings). It suggest that a fuller picture can only be ob- privileges process and practice against religion tained by situating the micro-scale practices of as a ‘thing’ or a state. worship that are embedded in congregational The superciality with which worship is re- histories and hagiographies within a wider so- garded is by no means conned to the specic cio-political frame, while simultaneously taking literature on geographies of religion. Historical account of complexity in the desire to worship. and cultural geography too has tended to con- The sociologist Steve Bruce has attempted to Towards a spatial theory of worship 69 identify these motivational factors behind Pres- and of producing it. As such it brings together verbal byterian religion, even if he arrives at conclu- signs … and non-verbal signs (music, sounds, evoca- sions which are not ultimately very different tions, architectural constructions). (Lefebvre 1991a: from the historians (1983). 47) So if worship is given scant treatment in geographical literature, what denition can we That the Scottish Reformation of 1560 had use with regard to our present interest in space? far-reaching consequences for the subsequent At its most basic, worship must be considered political and ecclesiastical development of the as the human response to a belief in the great- nation is incontestable. Whether this has been a ness of God. For Christians, it is a process progressive or reactionary force is a question through which the believer can meditate on which still exercises Scotland’s intellectual and specic contrasts: a eeting temporality in rela- artistic elite (see Devine 2000). It certainly tion to a vast and unfolding eternity; on the brought about changes in the fabric of ecclesi- moral perfection of God in relation to a ‘fallen’ astical Scotland— in churches, religious art and humanity (Davies 1994b). In the Reformed architecture— ostensibly in accordance with the Presbyterian tradition, the Shorter Catechism is slogan of Reform: ‘Sola Fide, Sola Sciptura’ (by used as a doctrinal statement to summarize the faith alone, by scripture alone) (Drummond attributes of God for which worship is the 1934; Hay 1957; Howard 1995). These changes necessary response: ‘God is a Spirit, innite, were themselves evidence of a fundamental eternal and unchangeable, in his being, wis- transformation in the space of worship: if, as dom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and Reformers like Calvin contended, God could truth’ (Westminster Assembly 1978). Worship no longer be corporeally located in the sacra- must also be considered as the practical ment but as a Spirit manifest in the lives of afrmation of a particular cosmology such that individuals, then the spatial code must be re- its constituent elements relate closely to the vised. Space that had hitherto been engineered doctrines or theology of the worshippers for the administration of the Mass was now (Turner 1979). Although we shall consider used for different purposes. Signs were redi- these in more detail later in the paper, it is rected from rites of a priestly class to the worth restating the varied forms that worship teachings of a ministerial class. Pulpits replaced can take (singing, prayer, teaching, reading) the altar as the focal point of public worship which— at a time when cultural geography pur- and practices of burial and monumentalism ports to attend to senses and the body— must were banished from the church to the church- be given closer scrutiny. For the meantime we yard (Spicer 2000b). But the enduring remem- shall consider the explicitly geographical brance of attacks on pre-Reformation art and character of Christian worship. architecture is apt to overshadow the energy expended in the creation of new spaces of worship which were designed to emphasize the The space of the Reformation and the primacy of the Bible as the Word of God reformation of space (Spicer 2000a). Far from being a comprehensive break with the past, Scottish Calvinism was It is clear, therefore, that a spatial code is not simply able to take earlier forms and practices and a means of reading or interpreting space: rather it is adapt them to local use (Dawson 1994: 233). a means of living in that space, of understanding it, Space was re-formed. 70 Fraser MacDonald

If, as Lefebvre argues, space is a product, the ‘Lord’s Table’5 lest they ‘eat and drink then it follows that we should be able to judgement on themselves’ by partaking in an reconstruct the process of its production (in ‘unworthy manner’ (First Corinthians 11: 29). this case through worship) by an examination Admission to the Lord’s Table on the basis of its material and representational forms of an ‘accredited’ profession of faith (Macleod (1991a: 36). This is most easily done with 1998: 165) represents a basic separation be- reference to the conceptual triad to which Lefe- tween members and adherents that is often bvre himself constantly returns: spatial prac- expressed in a spatial metaphor: ‘coming for- tices, representations of space and ward’. Prior to the dispensation of the sacra- representational spaces. It is not merely ment, members will leave their pew in the back through material forms that space is produced and go forward to take their seat in the linen- but, as in Lefebvre’s quotation above, through designated front pews. On entering this space, ‘music, sounds, evocations, architectural con- the member presents an inscribed ‘coin’ or structions’. It is to these diverse elements that ‘Communion token’ to an elder who thus regu- we must now turn, using the framework of lates access to the table (see Figure 2). These Lefebvre’s triad to understand spatialities of tokens are handed out to the members of the Presbyterianism in North Uist. congregation at one of the earlier ‘preparatory’ I have already mentioned the transforma- services in the communion weekend. If this tions in ecclesiastical space that characterized separation constitutes a hierarchy, it is one in the Reformation: the importance of the pulpit which other hierarchies of class, ethnicity, even as a signier of the Word of God; the mini- gender, are momentarily suspended. Indeed, as mization of decorative detail, an ‘absence’ of Slavoj Zizek recently observed of Pauline the- signs which in itself signies the accessibility of ology, it can be argued that ‘social hierarchy is God only through individual faith and experi- reected in an inverted way so that the lowest ence. There are, however, numerous other deserve the greatest honour’ (2000: 125; First ways in which spatial practices are constitutive Corinthians 12: 24). As if to emphasize the of and constituted by Protestant theology, not social equality at the table, two male members least those connected with the sacraments. On recounted how (in Harris and Lewis) they had the occasion of the bi-annual Communion, the been privately reproached by elders for the front pews are covered in simple white linen ‘gentlemanly’ act of letting their wives into the cloth to demarcate a space in which church pew before themselves; this was considered to members will participate in the remembrance be an inappropriate expression of difference in of the Lord’s Supper (see Cheape 1997; Owen the context of communion. This complexity of 1956; Parman 1990b). Only those who have spatial order evident even within normal Sab- publicly ‘professed faith’ through membership bath worship is difcult to describe, far less are eligible to sit at these tables and such a step explain. In an earlier draft of this paper (and is expected to involve rigorous self-examin- thinking of Free Churches more broadly), I ation. In practice, the scrutiny of the individual wrote that for ‘marks of faith’ is conducted by the elders of the congregation who police the Com- munion roll and ensure that individuals whose The ordering of the congregation in the pews repre- lifestyle is incompatible with the accepted sents something of an unspoken gradient of self- norm, or whose understanding of the ‘means of estimated piety. To sit near the front is to subtly salvation’ is defective, are refused admission to identify oneself with church membership and thus Towards a spatial theory of worship 71

Figure 2 A Gaelic communion token from Spring Garden Parish Church, Aberdeen, 1839 (28 mm diameter). Photo: J. Livingstone, courtesy of I.R. MacDonald.

with particular codes of social behaviour outside the varied, the most frequent being that elders need space of worship. (MacDonald 2000b) to defend the pulpit from false teaching and heresy and must, symbolically at least, be ready But this is to over-simplify an impossibly com- to intervene. Even more intriguing is the declin- plex pattern. While the spatial metaphor of ing custom of allowing only ordained ministers ‘coming forward’ has some subtle transference access to the pulpit. If another minister could to non-communion services (congregants gener- not be found to take the service in the absence ally gravitate to the back of the church6), it or illness of the incumbent it was common for must be qualied by numerous other conven- a lay preacher or elder to lead the worship. tions, as in the practice of people sitting in This would not, however, be taken from the ‘family’ pews. An adherent may sit nearer the pulpit which was strictly reserved for the separ- front, not because of any spiritual condence ate (and spatially differentiated) teaching auth- but because a particular pew was historically ority of the minister. occupied by the adherent’s family. This distinc- These Protestant rules of space are, of tion between communicant members and non- course, replete with numerous contradictions. communicant adherents is augmented by Lefebvre writes: another spatial segregation between elders and the congregation. In Hebridean Presbyterian The indispensable opposition between inside and churches the elders sit apart from the congre- outside, as indicated by thresholds, doors and gation in a demarcated space below the pulpit, frames, though often underestimated, simply does commonly referred to as an suidheachan mor not sufce when it comes to dening monumental (the big pew). Explanations for this practice are space. Such a space is determined by what may take 72 Fraser MacDonald place there, and consequently by what may not take cloister or cathedral, space is measured by the ear: place there (prescribed/proscribed, scene/obscene). the sounds, voices and singing reverberate in an (1991a: 224) interplay set up when a reading voice breathes new life into a written text. (1991a: 225) This contest between prescribed and proscribed behaviour is severely paradoxical. One the one There is a sonorous geography at work here, hand, the concept of sacred space is an anath- which nds its varied expression in the very ema to the Calvinist tradition, as one Free different sounds (and in a sense, different Church ‘worthy’ put it: spaces) of English and Gaelic. If space, as Lefebvre suggests, is measured by the ear then We Scotch, when we have got a principle, we are its production must be a function of language. accustomed to follow it out to all lengths. God alone This is perhaps most obviously seen in relation can sanctify place and time. Under the N[ew] T[esta- to the practice of unaccompanied Psalm singing ment] dispensation no place is more sacred than (i.e. without an organ) in accordance with the another. The Sabbath, which was sanctied from the ‘regulatory principle’, the idea that only devo- beginning when God rested from all His work of tional practices which have an explicit Biblical creation, remains sacred, after the mosaic dispen- warrant should be introduced into public wor- sation of Law is done away in Christ. No other time ship. The praise is led by a precentor (always a is sacred. (Rev. John ‘Rabbi’ Duncan quoted in Ross man) who, standing at the front and facing the 1998; my emphasis) congregation, will choose a tune from the Scot- So anxious were the Reformers to avoid the tish metrical Psalmody and initiate the singing heresy that church buildings could have a terri- on the instruction of the minister. In Gaelic torial monopoly on religious experience, that worship, the precentor will sing a phrase— ‘giv- the churches were locked when not in use so as ing out the line’— which is then repeated by the to reinforce the doctrine that God was access- whole congregation, thereby establishing an ible at all times and in all places. But although acoustic relation between the precentor and the the space of Presbyterian worship cannot be congregation. The intonation of Gaelic Psalm considered ‘sanctied’, notions of sacred/ singing is appreciably more elaborate than its profane are still invoked in spatial practice. English equivalent, which prompted one un- The church buildings, for instance, are not comprehending nineteenth-century tourist to generally used for other purposes. Indeed for a describe it as ‘nothing but the baying of a pack church to host, say, a coffee morning would be of hyenas’ (MacDonald 2001: 163). On this regarded among certain conservative Presbyte- mutual constitution of sound and space, the rians as sowing the seed of schism. As we shall psychologist Erwin Straus anticipates Lefeb- consider briey below, the representational vrian ideas by fully ten years, drawing particu- space is also carefully policed lest rogue signs lar attention to musical tones which ‘approach distract the worshippers. It is also important to us … surround us … ll space, shaping them- attend to the embodied nature of spatial prac- selves in temporal sequences’ (1966: 7; see also 7 tice which is not only conditioned by optic Straus 1963: 323). Remembering haptic and senses but by sonic and haptic ones. Lefebvre kinaesthetic senses, it is worth mentioning that again: bodily practices of standing for prayer, sitting for Psalm singing and through long sermons on Silence itself, in a place of worship, has its music. In hard pews, also constitute a signicant part of Towards a spatial theory of worship 73 spatial practice. Bodies in pews are divided by tranche of churches were erected to accommo- respectful distances both in relation to each date the rise in evangelical Presbyterianism. other and, arguably, to the subtle gradient of Even then, there were still large numbers of spiritual self-condence from front to back. people for whom no formal provision of wor- Moreover, there are lateral patterns of social ship was made (Anon 1905: 21). interaction as in the practice of covertly dis- It would be wrong, however, to give the pensing boiled sweets at the start of the sermon impression here that spaces of worship were (see Macdonald 1997: 170). This acceptable strictly conterminous with church buildings. In transgression of an otherwise strict decorum addition to the Reformation insistence on the operates along the line of a pew, a sweet being worship being an individual as well as collec- pressed from one palm to another with an tive activity (i.e. a feature of both domestic and artful dexterity. ecclesiastical spheres), there are numerous in- To the extent that spaces of worship were stances, much celebrated in the hagiographic rst ‘conceived’, it is appropriate to examine tradition, of worship being conducted outside the context of Presbyterian church building in (Meek 1997). For the most part this was during the Scottish Highlands and islands. Lefebvre times of poverty or conict, particularly in the saw that representations of space ‘are tied to years following the Disruption when landlords the relations of production and the “order” hostile to the newly formed Free Church often that these relations impose’ (1991a: 33); which denied permission for church building. The is to say that we must look at the social and non-cooperation of the proprietor was certainly political context of worship in Reformation one reason why in the mid-nineteenth century, Scotland. Older pre-Reformation churches in the North Uist Communions were held at the the Highlands had often been built on holy local landmark, Creag Ha` stain, a large erratic sites associated with earlier Celtic saints who, boulder (Kilmuir Church Centenary Committee as Jane Dawson has remarked, ‘preferred iso- 1994). Curiously, at a time of revival in the lation to comfort’ (1994: 243). Small islands 1950s this site again became a key venue for were favoured locations despite (or perhaps evangelistic services run by the Faith Mission because) of their inaccessibility. As weekly (Ferguson 2000). If these spaces would not be worship had been uncommon, this had never described as sacred, their symbolic importance previously been considered a problem. But with was in no sense lost on the community of the Reformation transforming patterns of re- worshippers. ligious observance such that all parishioners were expected to attend worship every Sab- Representational space is alive: it speaks. It has bath, the logistical difculties in getting the affective kernel or centre: Ego, bed, bedroom, dwell- people to the church were formidable. The ing house; or square, church, graveyard. It embraces British Government, being concerned with the the loci of passion, of action, and of lived situations, religious instruction of the masses, embarked and thus immediately implies time. (Lefebvre 1991a: on a large-scale church-building programme in 42) the early nineteenth century, resulting in the so-called ‘Parliamentary Churches’. Later in the Both ideology and knowledge are, for Lefebvre, nineteenth century, after the Free Church of subsumed within the wider term of ‘representa- Scotland departed from the Established Kirk at tion’ (1991a). These ‘representational spaces’8 the cataclysmic Disruption of 1843, another (or ‘spaces of representation’ in other trans- 74 Fraser MacDonald lations) refer not merely to material signiers Given the importance of the Geneva leaders for but also extend to social practices and ‘lived the Scottish Reformation, it is unsurprising that situations’. Specically, we can take this to the home-grown reformers purged the interior mean the complex interaction of bodies and of churches with an almost Swiss vigour signifying practices that are most obvious in (Cameron 1984; Shaw 1985). Over four cen- the ordering of church boundaries, architecture turies later these same principles can be read in and de´cor. But there is also a sense in which it the representational space of Hebridean Presby- is particularly necessary to consider space here terianism. I want nally to consider three ex- as time-space; the representational space of the amples from the Free Church in North Uist. church is difcult to separate from sanctied High on an outside wall of one Free Church time of the Sabbath, or, as in the case of a building in North Uist, there are a series of weekday service, the formally constituted time small, seemingly random marks in the stone, as for public worship. Thus the production of if one of the granite blocks had been used as space in worship is a function of the time set workbench by the mason. This would, in all aside for worship; the building is used for no probability, be the only explanation were it not other purpose. for the fact that the masons contracted to build The minimalism of this space has seldom in the church at the turn of the twentieth century were from South Uist, and therefore Roman itself been assessed in artistic terms. For the Catholic. If this were not suspicious enough, travel writer Hugh Quigley, writing in the two of the marks intersect to form what 1930s, the Highland churches simply could not looks like the sign of a cross (Figure 3). The compete with the cultural glories that were on coincidence of these facts suggested, in cer- offer elsewhere: tain Protestant minds, an alternative account: that this was a Catholic conspiracy to impose If one were to measure the contribution of the the Papish sign (the cross) on the otherwise Highlands to creative art in religious buildings and clean space of Reformed worship. The fact memorials, communal dwellings or sculpture, that such an explanation could be offered— painted and illuminated MSS., one would have however disbelievingly— shows that policing difculty in discovering anything of real value. the representational space of worship is not (1936: 9) conned to those who rst conceived or designed the building. Rather, these spatial If he offers no explanation for this creative codes are actively negotiated, contested and decit, then basic material poverty goes some reproduced within the community of wor- way to accounting for the sparseness of detail, shippers. at least in many religious buildings. Even in the Let us take a further example. One of the Catholic islands of Barra and South Uist, the church members described how she had de- churches are modestly arrayed compared with cided to brighten up the area outside another of their urban counterparts. But in the Protestant the churches with some bedding plants which Hebrides there are, of course, other reasons for would add colour to the otherwise plain sur- visual austerity. For most of the notable Re- roundings. Within a day the plants had mys- formers— Luther, Calvin, Zwingli— it was teriously disappeared only to be later found necessary to be seen to react against what they abandoned at the back of the building. If sus- saw on the iconolatry of Rome and protect the picion was directed towards the elders of the spirit of the rst commandment (Spicer 2000a). congregation, this was a visual contest that Towards a spatial theory of worship 75

Figure 3 Wall markings on the Free Church with detail of a cross. Author’s photograph.

reected a more complex debate between very seen as a challenge to existing spatial codes, we different social actors. On the one hand, here can consider another more enduring example was a woman who had exercised some per- from inside the building. Having emphasized sonal autonomy; who, despite being local and the solemnity of the worship service, it might thus aware of (and even sympathetic to) He- seem surprising that ‘grafti’ on church pews bridean norms of behaviour, was aligned with could be part of the material record of worship. a modernizing movement characterized by a But in many of the island churches the genealo- more relaxed attitude to, for instance, the use gies of the worshipping community are in- of contemporary Bible translation or the prac- scribed in the pews, with initials, names and tice of women wearing hats.9 On the other dates etched into the woodwork with a pocket hand, the elders were, even by the standards of knife. Writing grafti can never be a very the denomination, considered conservative and clandestine activity as long as it involves writ- carefully protective of their own hegemony. But ing your name in a prominent place. But unlike if planting owers outside the church can be its urban counterpart, these grafti are not very 76 Fraser MacDonald controversial. They do not ‘adorn in order to phers, the Free Church of Scotland underwent desecrate’ (Stallabrass 1996: 148); rather they a denominational split or secession which div- are a powerful reminder that the space of ided several congregations throughout Scot- worship belongs to the congregation, pur- land, including the community in North Uist chased by their tithes and, in some cases, actu- (MacDonald 2000). It is signicant that this ally built with their labour. Grafti must be recent conict has followed the usual recipe for interpreted in a proprietorial sense: this is our schism (Bruce 1985): being passionately demo- space. A very Presbyterian transgression, it is a cratic and free-thinking (believing that all peo- breach of etiquette which afrms the ultimate ple can discern God’s will), conservative authority of pew over pulpit. Protestants have a structural propensity for ssion (Wallis 1979). It is as if, like amoebas, they have to divide to survive. Of most interest Some concluding remarks is that fact that conict has to some extent served to test the relation between theology and Opening the paper with a globally recognized space that I have offered in this paper. In North image of Presbyterian worship from a tourist Uist where the conservative minority have left guide book, I have suggested that despite some to form the Free Church (Continuing), the popular interest in these images, the production remaining group adhering to the ‘historic’ Free of ecclesiastical space is thinly conceived in Church have asserted their deance against the both popular and academic representations. I strictest theological and spatial orthodoxy by have attempted to show that Henri Lefebvre’s holding tea and coffee in the church after the theses on space apply to forms of sociality evening service. Although this is held in a room which are not necessarily bound up with the adjacent to the main church, it is nevertheless a geography of mobile capital and, specically, practice that would not have been sanctioned can be used in the context of understanding by the conservative minister and elders who spatial dimensions of religious life. Taking have since seceded. In this case, the space of space seriously in this sense, or at least resisting worship has been used to enact a new liberty the hegemony of written and verbal sources, which was unavailable under the earlier regime must be central to future geographies of re- of leadership. And in a new Free Church religion. If the title of this paper alludes to the cently started on the neighbouring island of Protestant Reformation, it is also intended to Benbecula, the congregation are meeting in a qualify Lefebvre’s own title by suggesting that coffee bar rather than in a church building. space is produced in and through earlier spatial Predictably, this offers dramatic contrasts in forms in a dialectical process of re-formation. the style of worship, the spatial order opening As I have shown, the sixteenth-century ecclesi- up new possibilities of informality and social astical revolution did not start anew, but inher- engagement before and after the service. ited, modied and re-worked earlier Thus, theological convictions are enacted in representations of space. It was certainly a spatial practices, embodied in representations fundamental change, or more accurately, a set of space and signied in representational of changes, which are constantly re-negotiated spaces. But space also reciprocates: theology, in through the practice of worship. theory and practice, can be upheld or trans- In January 2000, two weeks after presenting formed by the spatial in/formalities of worship. this paper at the Institute of British Geogra- It is to this dialectic that Lefebvre brings a Towards a spatial theory of worship 77 particular insight. The Production of Space is 2 In ‘Notes written one Sunday in the French countryside’, as useful in deciphering the spatial code of Lefebvre identies churches as part of the ‘irksome and incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo’ to which dialectical worship as of capital; a code which, as we can methods of de-mystication must be applied (1991b: see, ‘is a means of living in that space, of 224). understanding it and of producing it’ (1991a: 3 By Hebridean standards this service is unusually short, a 48). result of the same minister having services in two places in the late morning. One visiting preacher from the neighbouring island of Lewis clearly felt constrained by such a time limit; in his own congregation he had the Acknowledgements liberty of three hours. 4 It is necessary to say something about the nature of the Through various iterations, this paper has eldwork, which was principally based on observations of Sabbath worship together with informal conversations beneted from the helpful comments of friends, with the congregants. Unlike many ethnographic ac- colleagues and referees, notably Keith Hart, counts, I make no attempt to represent their voices Julian Holloway, Donald Meek, David Living- directly in this paper. This is because discussing worship stone and Oliver Valins. Some of the material and its spatial codes is acutely personal: in talking about in the paper bears witness to long discussions the distinction between members and adherents, for with Julie S. Heath and my father, Ian R. instance, one is skirting around a discourse which is simultaneously about eternal destinies and the ultimate MacDonald; their work has been suggestive for separation between heaven and hell. It would thus be the ideas developed here. I must also record my hard to conceive of another subject, which has such a sincere thanks to (and beg the continued for- peculiar sensitivity. bearance of) the people of North Uist. 5 Although most churches have a table that is used specically for communion, the term ‘Lord’s Table’ is generic and refers not to the furniture but rather the social space in which the sacrament is dispensed. Notes 6 There is a more pronounced pattern in the Lewis churches with adherents tending to sit in the upstairs 1 John Agnew’s article ‘Liminal Travellers’, for instance, balcony and members downstairs (see Parman 1990a: offers the common but suspect notion that the ‘hege- 149). mony’ of the ‘organic intelligentsia’ (Presbyterian minis- 7 I am grateful to David N. Livingstone for drawing my ters) ‘undoubtedly contributes to a number of social attention to the work of Straus. problems, such as high levels of anxiety and obsessional 8 In the Donald Nicholson-Smith translation this is term is disorders among Hebridean women and very high levels written as ‘representational spaces’, although other com- of alcoholism among the menfolk’ (1996). To support mentators including Ed Soja have since opted for ‘spaces this argument, Agnew casually cites the comparative of representation’ (Soja 1989). research of Brown and Harris while seeming not to 9 For a fuller discussion of the split in the Free Church of notice that they explicitly refrain from drawing this Scotland, see MacDonald, F. (2000a). conclusion (1978: 250–253; Brown, Davidson, Harris, Maclean, Pollock and Prudo 1977). In a comparative study of psychiatric disorders from Camberwell, London and North Uist, the authors observe that there is less References depression and more anxiety in the Hebridean women, though the difference is not statistically signicant. Agnew, J. (1996) Liminal travellers: Hebrideans at home Within the North Uist sample, anxiety is greater and and away, Scotlands 3(1): 31–41. depression is less in those women who are well inte- Anon (1905) The Geography of Religion in the Highlands. grated into the community, church attendance being only Edinburgh: R. Grant & Son. one of three markers of integration. Brown and Harris Ansdell, D. (1998) The People of the Great Faith: The say nothing about ‘alcoholism in menfolk’. Highland Church, 1690–1900. Stornoway: Acair. 78 Fraser MacDonald

Baker, C. (1966) Geography and the church register, Ferguson, J. (2000) When God Came Down: An Account Geography 51: 50–52. of the North Uist Revival, 1957–58, Inverness: Lewis Bloch, E. (1962) Thomas Munzer als Theologe der Revol- Recordings. ution. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Friesen, A. (1974) Reformation and Utopia: The Marxist Brown, C. (1997) Religion and Society in Scotland Since Interpretation of the Reformation and its Antecedents. 1707. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag. Brown, G.W. and Harris, T. (1978) Social Origins of Gay, J.D. (1971) The Geography of Religion in England. Depression: A Study of Psychiatric Disorder in Women. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. London: Tavistock Publications. Harvey, D. (1990) Between space and time: reections on Brown, G.W., Davidson, S., Harris, T., Maclean, U., Pol- the geographical imagination, Annals of the Association lock, S. and Prudo, R. (1977) Psychiatric disorder in of American Geographers 80: 418–434. London and North Uist, Social Science and Medicine 11: Harvey, D. (1996) Justice, Nature and the Geography of 367–377. Difference. Oxford: Blackwell. Bruce, S. (1983) Social change and collective behaviour: the Harvey, D. (1999) On fatal aws and fatal distractions, revival in eighteenth century Ross-shire, British Journal Progress in Human Geography 23(4): 557–566. of Sociology 34(4): 554–572. Hay, G. (1957) The Architecture of Scottish Post- Bruce, S. (1985) Authority and ssion: the Protestants’ Reformation Churches, 1560–1843. Oxford: Clarendon divisions, British Journal of Sociology 36(4): 592–603. Press. Cameron, J.K. (1984) Aspects of the Lutheran contribution Heath, J. (2000) Liberty and tradition: sound patterning as to the Scottish Reformation, Scottish Church History poetic device and linguistic sign in Hebridean prayer and Society Records 22: 1–12. preaching, paper, Rannsachadh na Ga`idhlig 2000, Uni- Chapman, M. (1987) The Gaelic Vision in Scottish Culture. versity of Aberdeen, 4 August. London: Croom Helm. Howard, D. (1995) Scottish Architecture from the Refor- Cheape, H. (1997) Notes and documents: the Communion mation to the Restoration, 1560–1660. Edinburgh: Edin- season, Scottish Church History Society Records 27: burgh University Press. 305–316. Hunter, J. (1976) The Making of the Crofting Community. Crang, P. (1998) Guest editorial: popular geographies, Edinburgh: John Donald. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 14: Jones, A. (1999) Dialectics and difference: against Harvey’s 631–633. dialectical ‘post-Marxism’, Progress in Human Geogra- Davies, D. (1994a) Introduction, in Holm, J. and Bowker, phy 23(4): 529–555. J. (eds) Worship [Themes in Religious Studies Series]. Kilmuir Church Centenary Committee (1994) Kilmuir London: Pinter Publishers. Church, North Uist, 1894–1994. Inverness: Lewis Davies, D. (1994b) Christianity, in Holm, J. and Bowker, J. (eds) Worship [Themes in Religious Studies Series]. Recordings. London: Pinter Publishers. Kiong, T.C. and Kong, L. (2000) Religion and modernity: Davies, D., Watkins, C. and Winter, M. (1991) Church and ritual transformations and the reconstruction of space Religion in Rural England. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. and time, Social & Cultural Geography 1(1): 29–44. Dawson, J. (1994) Calvinism and the Gaidhealtachd in Kong, L. (1990) Geography and religion: trends and Scotland, in Pettegree, A., Duke, A. and Lewis, G. (eds) prospects, Progress in Human Geography 14(3): 355– Calvinism in Europe, 1540–1620. Cambridge: Cambridge 371. University Press, pp. 231–253. Kong, L. (1993) Negotiating conceptions of sacred space: a Devine, T. (ed.) (2000) Scotland’s Shame: Bigotry and case study of religious buildings in Singapore, Transac- Sectarianism in Modern Scotland. Edinburgh: Main- tions of the Institute of British Geographers 18(3): 342– stream. 358. Drummond, A.L. (1934) The Church Architecture of Kong, L. (2001) Mapping ‘new’ geographies of religion: Protestantism: An Historical and Constructive Study. politics and poetics in modernity, Progress in Human Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Geography 25(2): 211–233. Eagleton, T. (1997) Spaced out, London Review of Books Kunin, S. (1998) God’s Place in the World: Sacred Space 19(4): 22–23. and Sacred Place in Judaism. London: Cassell. Ennew, J. (1980) The Western Isles Today. Cambridge: Lefebvre, H. (1991a) The Production of Space. Nicholson- Cambridge University Press. Smith, D. [trans.]. Oxford: Blackwell. Towards a spatial theory of worship 79

Lefebvre, H. (1991b) Critique of Everyday Life, Vol. 1. Nadel, J. (1986) Burning with the Fire of God: Calvinism Moore, J. [trans.]. London: Verso. and community in a Scottish shing village, Ethnology Livingstone, D.N. (1994) Science and religion: foreword to 25(1): 49–60. the historical geography of an encounter, Journal of Owen, T. (1956) The ‘Communion season’ and Presbyte- Historical Geography 20(4): 367–383. rian in a Hebridean Community, Gwerin 1(2): 53–66. Livingstone, D.N., Keane, M.C. and Boal, F.W. (1998) Parman, S. (1990a) Scottish Crofters: A Historical Ethnog- Space for religion: a Belfast case study, Political Geogra- raphy of a Celtic Village. Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart phy 17(2): 145–170. and Winston. MacDonald, F. (2000a) Scenes of ecclesiastical theatre in Parman, S. (1990b) Orduighean: a dominant symbol in the the Free Church of Scotland, 1981–2000, Northern Scot- Free Church of the Scottish Highlands, American land 20: 125–148. Anthropologist 92(2): 295–305. MacDonald, F. (2000b) Producing Space in Presbyterian Quigley, H. (1936) The Highlands of Scotland. London: Scotland: Highland Worship in Theory and Practice. Batsford. Arkleton Research Papers 2. Aberdeen: Arkleton Centre Ross, J. (1998) A family correspondence: letters of John for Rural Development Research, University of Aber- Duncan and his daughter, Maria Dorothea and her deen. husband Adolf Spaeth with extracts from Maria’s diary, Reformed Theological Journal MacDonald, F. (2001) St Kilda and the Sublime, Ecumene 14: 28–55. 8(2): 151–174. Shaw, D. (1985) Zwinglian inuences on the Scottish Re- formation, Scottish Church History Society Records MacDonald, I.R. (1995) Glasgow’s Gaelic Churches: High- 22(2): 119–139. land Religion in an Urban Setting, 1690–1995. Edin- Smallman, T. (1999) Lonely Planet Scotland: From Cock- burgh: Knox Press. burnspath to the Butt of Lewis. Hawthorn, Victoria: MacDonald, I.R. (2000) Aberdeen and the Highland Lonely Planet Publications. Church, 1785–1900. Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press. Spicer, A. (2000a) Architecture, in Pettegree, A. (ed.) The Macdonald, S. (1997) Reimagining Culture: Histories, Iden- Reformation World. London: Routledge, pp. 784–803. tities and the Gaelic Renaissance. Oxford: Berg. Spicer, A. (2000b) ‘Defyle not Christ’s Kirk with your MacGibbon, D. and Ross, T. (1897) The Ecclesiastical carrion’: burial and the development of burial ‘aisles’ in Architecture of Scotland from the Earliest Times to the post-Reformation Scotland, in Gordon, B. and Marshall, Seventeenth Century, Vol. III. Edinburgh: David Dou- P. (eds) The Place of the Dead in Late Medieval and glas. Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- Mackenzie, F. (1998) The cheviot, the stag … and the sity Press, pp. 149–169. white, white rock?’: community, identity and environ- Soja, E. (1989) Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion Environment and mental threat on the Isle of Harris, of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso. Planning D: Society and Space 16: 509–532. Soja, E. (1996) Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and MacLaren, A. (1974) Religion and Social Class: The Dis- Other Real-and-Imagined-Places. Oxford: Blackwell. ruption Years in Aberdeen. London: Routledge. Stallabrass, J. (1996) Gargantua: Manufactured Mass Cul- Macleod, D. (1998) The Highland churches today, in Kirk, ture. London: Verso. J. (ed.) The Church in the Highlands. Edinburgh: Scot- Straus, E. (1963) The Primary World of the Senses: A tish Church History Society, pp. 146–176. Vindication of Sensory Experience. London: The Free Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1998 [1848]) The Communist Press of Glencoe, Collier-MacMillan. Manifesto: A Modern Edition. London: Verso. Straus, E. (1966) Phenomenological Psychology. London: Meek, D. (1997) The Scottish Highlands: The Churches Tavistock Publications. and Gaelic Culture. London: CCBI Publications. Turner, H. (1979) From Temple to Meeting House: The Merrield, A. (1993) Place and space: a Lefebvrian rec- Phenomenology and Theology of Places of Worship. The onciliation, Transactions of the Institute of British Geog- Hague: Mouton Publishers. raphers 18: 516–531. Unwin, T. (2000) A waste of space? towards a critique of Munro, G. (2000) Reconciling difference: religious life as the social production of space … , Transaction of the an expression of social, cultural and economic survival, Institute of British Geographers 25: 11–19. in Porter, J. (ed.) After Columba, After Calvin: Religious Upton, D. (1997) Holy Things and Profane: Anglican Community in North East Scotland. Aberdeen: Elphin- Parish Churches in Colonial Virginia. Yale, CT: Yale stone Institute, pp. 171–181. University Press. 80 Fraser MacDonald

Valins, O. (1999) Identity, space and boundaries: Ultra- dynamique et varieé a` la proposition theólogique de Orthodox Judaism in contemporary Britain, unpublished Divinite´. Plus spećiquement, ce travail explore la PhD thesis, Department of Geography, University of dialectique entre la theólogie de la Re´forme et la Glasgow. pratique formelle du culte, une relation qui Von Trier, L. (1996) Breaking the Waves. London: Faber s’exprime de façon spatiale dans l’ofce du Sabbath. and Faber. Partant de l’usage commun des travaux de Henri Wallis, R. (1979) A theory of propensity to schism, in Lefebvre sur la production de l’espace dećrivant la Wallis, R. (ed.) Salvation and Protest: Studies of Social geógraphie du capital mobile, j’applique ses observa- and Religious Movements. London: Pinter, pp. 174–192. tions moins connues sur l’architecture eccle´siastique Westminster Assembly (1978 [1647]) The Shorter Cat- française au culte Calviniste des He´brides- echism (with commentary and scripture proofs by Rod- Exte´rieures. Les informations utiliseés dans ce travail erick Lawson). Edinburgh: Knox Press. ont e´te´ recueillies au cours d’un engagement eth- Wilson, D. (1993) Connecting social process and space in nographique prolonge´ avec l’ˆõ le de Nord Uist et sont the geography of religion, Area 25(1): 75–76. placeés dans le contexte plus large des repre´senta- Withers, C. (1985a) Highland clubs and Gaelic chapels: tions du Presbytarisme dans la culture populaire. Glasgow’s Gaelic community in the eighteenth century, Mots clefs: espace, religion, culte, Re´forme, Presby- Scottish Geographical Magazine 101: 16–27. te´rien, Ećosse. Withers, C. (1985b) Kirk, club and culture change: Gaelic chapels, Highland societies and the urban Gaelic sub- culture in eighteenth century Scotland, Social History 10: 171–192. Hacia una teor´õ a espacial de culto: algunas observa- Withers, C. (1991) Class, culture and migrant identity: ciones de la Escocia presbiteriano Gaelic Highlanders in urban Scotland, in Kearns, G. and Withers, C. (eds) Urbanising Britain: Essays on Class and Haciendo una tentativa de profundizar la teorõá Community in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: sobre la nueva literatura que trata las geografõás de Cambridge University Press, pp. 55–79. religioń, este papel enfoca a los conceptos de espacio Withers, C. (1996) Book review: Glasgow’s Gaelic y culto con respecto a la praćtica del presbeterian- Churches, Northern Scotland, 16: 204–205. ismo evange´lico en las tierras altas de Escocia. Sug- Withers, C. (1998) Urban Highlanders: Highland–Lowland iero que el ‘culto’ (‘worship’), un te´rmino que no Migration and Urban Gaelic Culture. East Linton: Tuck- tiene aplicacioń universal en los estudios sobre la well Press. religion, ha sido ligeramente concebido en la liter- Zizek, S. (2000) The Fragile Absolute, Or, Why the Chris- atura de geografõá y debe ser examinado tanto como tian Legacy Is Worth Fighting For? London: Verso. un proceso como una praćtica. Aquõ´ el culto es considerado como la dina´mica y variada respuesta humana a la proposicioń teolo´gica de la Divinidad. En particular, el papel examina el dialećtico entre la Abstract translations teologõá de la Reformacioń y la praćtica de culto formal, una relacioń que tiene su expresioń espacial Pour une theórie spatiale du culte: observations sur en el ocio del Sa´bado. Desviando del uso familiar L’ećosse Presbyte´rienne de la obra de Henri Lefebvre sobre la produccioń de espacio para describir la geografõá de capital mo´vil, En vue d’ajouter une profondeur theórique a` la yo aplico sus omitidas observaciones sobre la arqui- litte´rature e´mergente sur la geógraphie des religions, tectura eclesia´stica francesa al culto Calvinista en las cet article porte une attention particulie`re au presby- He´bridas Externas. La materia de este papel fue te´rianisme e´vange´lique des Highlands Ećossais. Je acumulada en el curso de un estudio etnograćo a soutiens que le ‘culte’, un terme qui ne posse`de pas largo plazo en la isla de North Uist y aquõ´ la coloco d’application universelle au sein des e´tudes re- en el contexto de representaciones ma´s amplias del ligieuses, a reçu peu d’attention dans la litte´rature presbeterianismo dentro de la cultura popular. geógraphique et doit eˆtre examine´ a` la fois en tant que proce´de´ et en tant que pratique. Le culte re- Palabras claves: espacio, religion, culto, Reforma- ligieux est ici envisage´ comme une re´ponse humaine cioń, presbeteriano, Escocia.