The Western Isles - The Rough Guide to Scottish Highlands and Islands - page 295

RELIGION IN THE WESTERN ISLES
It's di cult to overestimate the importance of religion in the Western Isles, which are divided
- with very little enmity - between the Catholic southern isles of Barra and South Uist, and
the Protestant islands of North Uist, Harris and Lewis. Church attendance is higher than
anywhere else in Britain and in fact, Barra, Eriskay and South Uist are the only parts of Britain
where Catholics are in a majority, and where you'll see statues of the Madonna by the roadside.
In the Presbyterian north, the creed of Sabbatarianism is strong. Here, Sunday is the Lord's
Day, and the whole community (irrespective of their degree of piety) stops work - shops close,
pubs close, garages close and there's very little public transport. Visitors should check whether
it's OK to arrive at or leave their accommodation on a Sunday, to avoid causing offence.
The main area of division is, paradoxically, within the Protestant Church itself. Scotland's
national church, the Church of Scotland , is Presbyterian (ruled by the ministers and elders of
the church) rather than Episcopal (ruled by bishops). At the time of the main split in the
Presbyterian Church - the so-called 1843 Disruption - a third of its ministers left the Church
of Scotland, protesting at a law that allowed landlords to impose ministers against parishioners'
wishes, and formed the breakaway Free Church of Scotland - sometimes referred to as the
“ Wee Frees ”, though this term is also used for members of the Free Presbyterian Church of
Scotland. Since those days there have been several amalgamations and reconciliations with
the Church of Scotland, as well as further splits.
The various brands and subdivisions of the Presbyterian Church may appear trivial to outsiders,
but to the churchgoers of Lewis, Harris and North Uist (as well as much of Skye and Raasay) they
are still keenly felt. In part, this is due to social and cultural reasons: Free Church elders helped
organize resistance to the Clearances, and the Wee Frees have contributed greatly to preserving
the Gaelic language . A Free Church service is a memorable experience - there's no set service
or prayer book and no hymns, only biblical readings, psalm singing and a sermon; the pulpit is
the architectural focus of the church, not the altar, and communion is taken only on special
occasions. If you want to attend a service, the Free Church on Kenneth Street in Stornoway has
one of the UK's largest Sunday-evening congregations, with up to 1500 people attending.

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crofters' houses in various stages of abandonment. The landscape is mostly flat peat bog
- hence the island's Gaelic name, from leogach (marshy) - but the shoreline is more
dramatic, especially around Butt of Lewis (Rubha Robhanais), the island's northern-
most tip. The other half of the island's population lives in Stornoway , on the east coast,
the only real town in the Western Isles. To the south, where Lewis is physically joined
with Harris, the land rises to over 1800ft, providing an exhilarating backdrop for the
excellent beaches that pepper the isolated western coastline around Uig .

Brief history
After Viking rule ended in 1266, Lewis became a virtually independent state, ruled
over by the MacLeod clan for several centuries. In 1610, however, King James VI
declared the folk of Lewis to be “void of religion”, and attempted to establish a colony,
as in Ulster, by sending Fife Adventurers to attack Lewis. They were met with armed
resistance by the MacLeods, so, in retaliation, James VI granted the lands to their arch
rivals, the MacKenzies of Kintail. The MacKenzie chiefs - the Earls of Seaforth - chose
to remain absentee landlords until 1844, when they sold Lewis to Sir James Matheson ,
who'd made a fortune from pushing opium on the Chinese. Matheson was relatively
benevolent when the island was hit by potato famine in the mid-1840s, but ultimately
opted for solving the problem through eviction and emigration. His chief factor,
Donald Munro, was utterly ruthless, and was only removed after the 1874 Bernera
Riot (see p.308). The 1886 Crofters' Act greatly curtailed the power of the Mathesons;
it did not, however, right any of the wrongs of the past. Protests, such as the 1887
Pairc Deer Raid, in which starving crofters killed two hundred deer from one of the
sporting estates, and the Aignish land raids of the following year, continued against
the Clearances of earlier that century.