RELIGION, AS WE SEE IT!

Siol nan Gaidheal takes the view that Religion is a cultural activity and that this offers the only realistic, modern and yet sympathetic interpretation of an often damaging theme. Our proper indigenous religion has long since been eclipsed by the florid Christian ethos which has subsequently elaborated layer upon layer of its creed by means of evangelisation and at the reformation of unhappy memory, by force; to its eventual arrival at our current level of division and uncertainty.

In spite of all the resultant confusion and the legacy of sectarian bitterness, we are strongly inclined towards religious tolerance, believing that the wounds of the past will heal naturally with general cultural renewal and that since this is an area of activity which fulfils a very strong instinctive drive, it consequently offers simple comfort to many.

Further to this, religion has something to recommend it by its essential altruism. In other words, we condone the benefits to be drawn from the nurturing of a sense of spirituality, as a counter to overt materialism.

We accord credibility to the meanings and social and aesthetic significance of religion while recognising the truth of none of it.

Additionally, we concede that the significance which we allocate to the all embracing concept of culture is itself directly nourished by the forces of metaphysics and of disinterest derived from this specific dynamic, or at any rate, from the drives which power it. This is to say that with McDiarmid, "we believe in Scotland's hidden powers".

God did not make man in his own image and likeness. Man makes his Gods, and remakes them periodically, in his own image and likeness. Our pragmatic response to such understanding concerns the fostering of sound ethnic integrity in whatever deity or deities our people may choose to focus upon.