Journal Articles

Proportional Prayers: Time for Reflection in the Scottish Parliament

---

Time for Reflection (TFR) was designed at the inception of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, as an alternative to Westminster Anglican prayers, to provide a weekly opportunity for representatives of religions and belief systems to address the Parliament. Appearances are designed to reflect the diversity of belief in proportion to relative support in the country as evident in the 2001 census. Christian contributions predominate and the Church of Scotland yields places to other mainstream Christian denominations but even then the full diversity of Christian belief is not accommodated as pentecostal churches tend to be excluded. Non-Christian religions appear far more frequently than their population justifies statistically and secular and humanist belief is greatly under-represented. Significant guidance and restrictions exercised over religious expression in TFR suggest the emergence of a wide but bounded national state civil religion which is not fully sensitive to the much wider variety of religious and related belief in Scotland. Results from the 2011 census will in 2012 provide an opportunity to reassess its organisation and the relative contributions of denominations, religions and other belief systems to TFR.

---

Availability

No copy data

Detail Information

Series Title

Parliamentary Affairs

Call Number

-

Publisher

Oxford : Oxford University Press., 2013

Collation

-

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

0031-2290

Classification

-

Content Type

-

Media Type

-

Carrier Type

-

Edition

Volume 66 Issue 4 October 2013 p. 816-834

Subject(s)

Parliament

Specific Detail Info

-

Statement of Responsibility

-

Other version/related

File Attachment

Comments

---

You must be logged in to post a comment