Scotland

Image via REUTERS/David Moir/RNS

More than half of the 5.4 million people living in Scotland have no religion, according to a survey published by Scottish Social Attitudes.

12-30-2014
The relationship between our politics, our ethics and our public life remain at the heart of this inequality and poverty story.

Flag of Scotland, painted on barcode surface. Via Shutterstock, by Micha Klootwijk

For the first time on record, the number of Scots with no religion outstrips those who belong to the Church of Scotland.

Figures from the 2011 census released Monday show that 37 percent of Scottish people regard themselves as nonreligious, while 32 percent said they identified with the Church of Scotland, known as the Kirk. Some 16 percent said they were Roman Catholic.

Nicku / Shutterstock.com

David Livingstone - Picture from Meyers Lexicon books written in German language. Nicku / Shutterstock.com

LONDON — When journalist Henry Morton Stanley found the world’s most famous missionary barely alive at the tiny village of Ujiji on the shores of Lake Tanganyika on Nov. 10, 1871, he gave the English language one of its most famous introductions: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

As Britain marks David Livingstone’s 200th birthday on Tuesday, Christians are being reintroduced to one of the greatest missionaries and explorers of the 19th century. A new book, meanwhile, introduces a darker side to Livingstone’s globe-trotting career and the corrosive effect it had on his marriage.

That 1871 meeting in the heart of Africa is the stuff of legend.

In 1864, Livingstone — already one of the world’s most famous men because of his trek across Africa and the 1855 “discovery” of the Victoria Falls that straddles modern-day Zambia and Zimbabwe — mounted an expedition to discover the source of the Nile River.

As months stretched into years, nothing was heard from the famed explorer.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien. Photo courtesy Religion News Service.

Days after pulling out of the conclave to elect the next pope and vowing to fight the charges against him, disgraced Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien admitted Sunday to inappropriate “sexual conduct.”

O’Brien, who until a week ago was the highest-ranking Roman Catholic cleric in England and Scotland, had served as archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh for the last seven years and was made a cardinal in 2003.

Al Webb 8-28-2012
St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland.

St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The Roman Catholic Church has sent a letter to its parishes across Scotland protesting a political race to legalize same-sex marriage.

The letter was read Sunday (Aug. 26) by priests in 500 Catholic parishes urging Scotland's political leaders to "sustain rather than subvert marriage" and to reaffirm that "marriage is a unique, lifelong union between a man and a woman."

Scotland is caught up in a debate over whether it should become the first segment of Britain to legalize gay marriage, ahead of England and Wales.

After the letter was read out in churches Sunday, the Scottish government insisted that it intends to legalize same-sex marriages and religious ceremonies for civil partnerships because "it is the right thing to do."

The issue is still in the consultation stage in England and Wales.

Richard Vernon 5-01-2007

The Scottish district of East Renfrewshire has—along with towns, villages, schools, and more than 1,000 churches throughout Britain—recently secured "fair trade status." Ken Macintosh,

Rose Marie Berger, 3-01-2003

To protest Prime Minister Tony Blair's threat to attack Iraq, two U.K. train drivers refused in January to move a freight train carrying ammunition

Worshippers at St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral, in Glasgow, Scotland, are now sharing pews with Scotland's most avant-garde artists.