What are the implications of the practices we have been examining for Scotland and the wider world? This chapter examines these implications in two ways. We look first of all at the wider picture, setting the practices we have examined in the context of other belief systems. This allows us to suggest some of the ways in which a focus on religion as a social practice revives and redirects the debate raised by Weber's Protestant Ethic thesis. We then turn to look at the consequences for our understanding of the formation of particular forms of Scottish national identity. Some of the limitations of this work are acknowledged, but looking at the legacy of Presbyterian practices, it is argued, forms a valuable corrective and supplement to approaches that have focused on other aspects of Scottish history.

Religion as a social practice

We left the last chapter with Hall's observations about the importance to the United States of Protestant organising practices. Hall goes on to point out that there do appear to be distinctions between the propensities of groups with particular religious traditions to engage in voluntary organised activity. He notes, for example, that voluntary organisation is central to Judaism. Recognising the dangers of ethnic stereotyping, he suggests:

He notes, for example, that in Irish Catholic traditions much organisation ‘tended to be left to ecclesiastical authorities’. A problem here is with the lack of detailed attention to the sort of organising practices that we have been examining for other major belief systems. To take the example of Catholicism, which was the focus of Foucault's lament about the lack of attention to religion as a social practice, there are some limited investigations of particular practices. Foucault himself, in his partial excavation of the techniques of pastoral power, paid particular attention to the confessional. He looked, for example, at the advice given to pastors about the types of question they might ask and on the material artefacts, such as the confession box, that accompanied such guidance.