Towards a Spatial Theory of Worship: Some Observations from Presbyterian Scotland
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
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 geogra- phy. In addressing this need for a profoundly spatialized analysis of religious life, I advance Connecting space and worship Lefebvre’s conceptual triad of ‘spatial prac- tices’, ‘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.