Land, Faith and the Crofting Community

This book probes the deep-rooted links between the land, the people and the religious culture of the Scottish Highlands and Islands in the nineteenth century. The responses of the clergy to the social crisis which enveloped the region have often been characterised as a mixture of indifference, deference or fatalistic passivity. Seeking to lay bare the existing myths by a wide-ranging analysis of all the denominational, theological and social factors at play, this study boldly overturns the received scholarly and popular interpretations. Here, in the first comprehensive study of this important subject, we see more clearly the centrality of religion in the experiences of Highlanders during the upheavals of the clearances and the crofters' war.

Allan MacColl, a native of Lochaber, was educated at the Universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge and is currently a student for the ministry in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. His research has focused on the interplay of religion and culture in the Gaelic world. Dr MacColl's forthcoming publication Sith na Doire is the long-anticipated edition of the Gaelic poetry of the late Donald MacColl, Acharacle, Argyll.

A pioneering re-assessment of Christian social teaching in the Highlands and islands during the later nineteenth century. Northern History This book, then, is simultaneously an important addition to historical scholarship and an intriguing contribution to current debate as to how Highland society came to be the way it is. That is why, in the Highlands especially, Allan MacColl deserves the widest possible readership! This is an outstandingly good book. -- James Hunter, UHI Centre for History Scottish Historical Review A pioneering re-assessment of Christian social teaching in the Highlands and islands during the later nineteenth century. This book, then, is simultaneously an important addition to historical scholarship and an intriguing contribution to current debate as to how Highland society came to be the way it is. That is why, in the Highlands especially, Allan MacColl deserves the widest possible readership! This is an outstandingly good book.