The Doyle Engaging Difference Program - Georgetown University

To study in Edinburgh is to inhabit a living, open-air museum of Scotland’s religious history. The winding, cobbled streets of the Old Town reveal a microcosmic mosaic of the country’s story. I see pagan symbols interwoven with Christian ones, engraved in sacred stones. I see Catholic cathedrals reborn as Presbyterian kirks, alongside mosques and synagogues built by immigrant communities. The political banners, the bagpipe tunes, even the rowdy chants of football hooligans stumbling out from the pub—they all display layers of Scotland’s curious religious life.

My study of religion had previously been, for the most part, a classroom endeavor in history, scriptural exegesis, and systematic theology. It still is—I took two divinity courses at the University of Edinburgh and am completing a minor in theology and religious studies. But more than just studying religion as a defined subject, I discovered also a pervasive presence of faith woven into the very fabric of Scottish culture and social identity.

One of the most striking themes to emerge for me was the persistent and embodied legacy of religion in Scotland’s secularizing context. While over half the population identifies as non-religious, the nation’s religious history is undeniably baked into its very DNA. This is particularly visible in Edinburgh’s architectural aesthetic.

My divinity classes took place in New College, a magnificent Healy Hall-esque building, now an academic hall but originally a prominent theological college for clergy. In its front stands a statue of a stern-faced John Knox, leader of the Scottish Reformation which saw the country break away from the Catholic Church to found the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Historic churches punctuate nearly every block of the Old Town: many were erected as Catholic churches and remain so; many kept their Catholic skeletons but now house Protestant denominations. Many still have been repurposed into secular community spaces, museums, or even residential complexes. This physical transformation of sacred spaces into civic ones strikes me as a poignant metaphor for Scotland’s broader societal shift toward secularism.

Likewise, the Celtic cross reflects the historical interplay between pagan antiquity, Christian dominance, and perhaps even a secular present reality. The symbol is ubiquitous in Scotland, seen everywhere from graveyard headstones to tattoos to jewelry. Its intricate knotwork and interlaced patterns echoes pre-Christian symbolism, artfully superimposed upon the Christian cross. The Celtic cross has come to transcend purely Christian symbolism to embody Scottish Celtic identity; for some the symbol holds a cultural, rather than a religious, significance.

The constant visual presence of a powerful, yet seemingly receding, Christian heritage in Edinburgh compelled me to reflect on how a society navigates its faith-filled past when its present is increasingly defined by secularism. I remain wondering if Scotland can ever truly divorce its secularizing present from such an omnipresent, albeit often repurposed, religious history.

Another crucial theme that continuously fascinated me was how religious heritage shapes collective and individual expressions in unexpected ways. This phenomenon was most vividly illustrated in Scotland’s passionate football rivalries, which quickly became an insightful window into the country’s social fabric and fault lines.

My first encounter with this was in an Edinburgh pub during a Hearts-Hibs match, the city’s premier rivalry. The so-called Edinburgh derby was a visceral lesson in the intertwined nature of religious identity and football allegiance: Protestant heritage tending to inform support for Hearts, while Catholic heritage, often tied to Irish-Scots roots, typically aligns with Hibs. That evening, a group of impassioned Hearts fans were delighted to engage me, “the Yank,” as I was endearingly dubbed, in some amusing banter about Hibs fans, the Pope, and the IRA. I quickly learned that their chants, generously colored with expletives, walked a blurred line between cheerfully comical and pointedly derogatory.

What truly struck me was how these weren’t just football matches; they were public performances of deeply held affiliations, where the echoes of the Reformation and subsequent societal divisions still reverberate, defining “us” and “them” in contemporary social dynamics. These aren’t merely expressions of sporting animosity; they are a manifestation of deep-seated historical grievances and political tensions.

While overt sectarianism is rightly condemned and efforts are made to curb football hooliganism, the fervor surrounding these events powerfully reveals the enduring, often uncomfortably explicit, influence of historical religious identity on Scotland’s social fabric. My vivid engagement with the football rivalries fundamentally changed my perception of how lived religious identities, beyond formal institutions, can manifest as powerful forces for both social cohesion and deep division.

The lessons I’ll carry forward from my experience abroad are profound. My time in Scotland cemented my understanding that secularization doesn’t erase deeply-embedded legacies of faith, rather it reconfigures how those legacies manifest in public life. I’ve also learned the immense value of engaging with “lived religion”: experiencing religious life with boots on the ground, through the customs, communities, and conflicts it shapes. This newfound passion for seeking out the lived religious realities of a place and its people has made the world a richer place for me to discover as I continue my travels.

My journey abroad has fundamentally changed how I engage with difference, both domestically and internationally. I’m now more attuned to the religious undercurrents that shape contemporary political debates, social divides, and cultural expressions in the United States. Internationally, this experience has equipped me to approach new cultures with a greater awareness of their historical-religious heritage, to seek out the informal, popular expressions of identity, and to appreciate the adaptive nature of belief systems. It has fostered in me a greater empathy for the complex identities that individuals and communities hold—preparing me to navigate and understand a world where faith’s footprint is as pervasive as it is intricate.