A spirited approach to faith

In a little yellow room in a brown-harled carbuncle, a Wee Free minister is holding forth. He is a big man with a friendly face, and his words are not harsh.

Iain MacAskill is the Free Church of Scotland minister who is leading a revival in Catholic South Uist. He is putting the "Free" back into the church. He doesn’t wear a dog collar. He doesn’t say "don’t".

He’s decried by his detractors as a "liberal" but, while there’s truth in the accusation, he prefers "evangelical". He likes a good laugh. He supports Kilmarnock FC.

Recently, he turned down an invitation from two American senators to attend a prayer breakfast with George W Bush, preferring to stay on the island to raise money for a proper place of worship and to continue the fight against what he sees as the island’s biggest problem. Drink.

"If you like pancakes, then you’re in the right place," MacAskill tells his flock at the South End community centre in Daliburgh. He is speaking of the comestibles available to the righteous after the Sunday service. In the yellow room, decorated with posters of black Africans carrying a cross (caption: "Rescue the oppressed"), 22 adults and seven children sit in five rows. It’s a healthy turnout, though two families are off with flu.

At the front, MacAskill pulls words from the air with grasping hands as a shaft of sunlight spears the window and sends his shadow dancing - shameless thing - behind him.

That Sunday in South Uist was beautiful. At first grey-skied by the standards of Torremolinos, a white sun discernible behind the clouds shyly sent out shafts of light which glaze the land in an ethereal sheen. Then the sun emerged fully and the land lit up, the sort of meteorological phenomenon that makes folk think of God and makes them see the light.

Here, they are singing a psalm, about being "rescued from the slimy pit". The reading is from John: "In the beginning was the word."

Though MacAskill is a powerful speaker, his words conjure neither fire nor brimstone, but are lent passion and rhythm by his soft Hebridean accent.

Every so often, he peers down closely at his notes, then emerges from behind the brown-painted wooden lectern to stand at his full height and declaim: "John is not an academic. John is a fisherman, an unlettered man who wrote arguably the world’s greatest piece of literature."

A child runs forward with her mouth full of chocolate biscuit. The rest of the congregation sits in rapt attention. MacAskill is speaking directly to them.

The sermon lasts 20 minutes, rather than the full hour notoriously attributed to the Free Kirk. Indeed, the whole service is over in an hour, apart from the pancakes and tea.

It all seems mild and pleasant and worthy, not perhaps what one expects from the Free Church. But MacAskill is daring to be different. It may raise eyebrows among the traditionalists, but it is working, and it is firing MacAskill’s dream to build a new church in South Uist.

Shona MacDonald, 32, who runs a travel agency, explains what brought her to his door. "I was converted. I was a Catholic before. My husband is Catholic. But it wasn’t a case of changing from Catholic to Protestant. It was a question of being born again.

"You warm to Iain, regardless of religious persuasion. You feel he is praying to the glory of God and not the glory of Iain MacAskill. There are people of Iain’s generation coming through who are not hard-line. This congregation is different. It is liberal in a way but not to the extent of being happy-clappy."

You can’t understand the Wee Frees without understanding the islands. The Uists, with Barra, form the southern half of the Outer Hebrides, lands of lochans, beaches and boggy moors.

People say the Wee Frees, bowing before both gales and God, reflect their environment, which, despite our sunlit Sunday, can be grim as hell in January. But a sunlit day here benignly affects the soul.

Here, the soul is not exclusively Protestant. The Catholic tradition remains strong and, arguably, more at ease with itself, able to sit back and watch the Wee Free schisms. Now, though, it has to watch MacAskill’s modernisers gaining ground in one of its territories.

The difference runs north to south. North Uist (population 1,800) is Protestant. Benbecula (1,800), in the middle, is mixed. South Uist (2,300) is demonstrably Catholic. Mariolatry proclaims itself from the roadsides, with colourful shrines to Mother Mary, Our Lady of the Isles, giving the place a Mediterranean or Balkan feel.

Everyone tells me there is no sectarianism, though I heard of one fellow who had "1690" written on his teeth. MacAskill converted him to more moderate ways. He also counts Celtic supporters among his congregation.

Some conversions take place at the Christian Resource Centre, in Benbecula. The grey concrete building was formerly a Naafi off-licence. Now it’s a meeting place for the church’s Road to Recovery programme for alcoholics.

The room is packed for a prayer meeting. It might seem a strange way to spend a Saturday afternoon, but it’s no stranger than the Hibs match I’d been following on the car radio, which was more accurately described as "a dour and grim affair".

As the meeting ends, a kind lady hands me leaflets "for my wife". I explain I’m not religious - and I don’t have a wife. "That’s all right," she says, beaming.

The reverend and I repair to the nearby Stepping Stone caf. MacAskill, 40, is cool and relaxed, wearing a black crewneck jersey and a donkey jacket.

"I took a conscious decision never to wear a dog-collar," he explains, and tells a story about once wearing his collar and stopping to speak to a man in hospital. The man was guarded and respectful. A few weeks later, not wearing his collar, he saw the same patient, who this time was relaxed and chatty - and asked if he was related to MacAskill the minister.

MacAskill the minister needs little prompting to tell his own story. "I am originally from North Uist and Ann [his wife] is originally from South Uist, though we met in a Glasgow pub," he laughs. "I went away to the Nicolson Institute in Stornoway, to hostel life and a bit of freedom - being quite tall, you can get a pint at 15 no bother. A lot of people speak of Lewis still being a land of God but I went the other way."

He returned after his father fell ill, and took a dogsbody’s job - "sending lobsters to Spain one minute and an old lady to Barra the next" - at Benbecula airport. At that age, 17, he was so shy he was scared to announce the flights, or even to answer the phone.

Although brought up in a Christian home, he was not then religious. Ann was Roman Catholic and Iain’s family were Church of Scotland. "And, yes, there was a wee bit of hassle in the families - about where to hold the wedding, and so on. In the end, we just got married in the army chapel here."

MacAskill was developing religious yearnings, so he and Ann tried various churches for one they’d both find comfortable. They didn’t find it. MacAskill stopped bothering and concentrated on the car hire business he’d just set up.

One day, a colleague invited the couple to her Free Church in Bayhead. The minister spoke of Zacchaeus, the wee fellow who climbed a tree to get a better view of Jesus. Iain and Ann were upstairs in the church. Jesus said: "Come down immediately ... The son of man has come to seek and to save what was lost."

MacAskill was gobsmacked: "It was as if the sermon was directed straight at me and speaking to what was in my heart. It passed in a flash. I thought: ‘Something mega is happening here.’ My wife had the same experience. The word went all around Scotland through British Airways: ‘The big man has got religion.’"

Never one to hang about, the big man decided to work full-time for God, which meant learning Greek. MacAskill repeatedly refers to things helpfully falling into place, which probably explains how he met a fellow on the pier, who happened to be a retired classics teacher. He offered to teach him. "It was like something out of Educating Rita," says MacAskill.

His own efforts meant he could take the full Free Church of Scotland course in Edinburgh in three years rather than seven or eight.

Meanwhile, he’d set his heart on buying a disused church in Lochboisdale, South Uist. The church was originally built more than 100 years ago for herring workers from the mainland. But faith went the way of the fishes, and it finally closed in the 1960s.

"I went to the bank manager but, while he would give me a loan for a car, he wouldn’t give me one for a church." Then another of these serendipitous things fell into place. While working in Stromness, Orkney, he discovered an aunt there, whose husband turned out to be a local bank manager. "And that’s how we bought the church." The loan was secured and, later, paid off with money from selling off his car-hire firm. The building cost 12,500.

After finishing his studies in 1997, MacAskill knew exactly what he wanted to do. "I didn’t want the normal thing with a ready congregation and a big manse. I wanted to go to South Uist and evangelise, but there was a freeze on that kind of work because the church was in the red." MacAskill offered to go for nothing but was ultimately offered a stipend and told to generate his own support, "like a missionary going to India".

He continues: "We booked the South End community hall for my first service. We were going to put three chairs out, including one for me and the two other organisers. And, right enough, at 11:55 there were three people. But, just before we started, 23 turned up, most of them probably out of sympathy. We then had a service in Balivanich (in Benbecula) and six turned up. But more and more people started coming; people in their forties, thirties and twenties. People were being converted. Lives were being changed.

"Just about the whole police force converted. There are about seven officers, and four were converted along with three of the wives. When we baptised them, not just the police but the criminals - well, maybe that’s not the word; the regular trouble-makers - came along as well.

"People come along from all religions. We show a video and just let people talk, and see what they want. To you I might say: ‘Rab, you don’t believe. Let’s talk about it.’ I don’t just say: ‘You should believe.’

"We are not way-out. We are not falling over and barking. The people we meet are very shy and retiring. The services are simple, and we have started a course called Christianity Explored. It’s like the Alpha Course, but user-friendly."

The church’s work with alcoholics has been a major focus. MacAskill says: "There is an alcohol problem in the island. I’ve seen people wrecked with alcohol, on their deathbed. "And I can see people we’ve helped: happy families, renewed by the power of God. People can see the proof: ‘There’s that guy who used to be blootered and always causing trouble in the shop. Now he’s changed.’" Gordon MacLeod, 59, of Sollas, was never that bad. But he did need help. He recalls: "At that time I had big problems. My wife had health problems. I had problems with drink. We both ended up in hospital.

"Then Iain started visiting, and I was led back to Christianity. I can honestly say to you that, as soon as I got out of that hospital and made the commitment, I’ve had no drawing towards drink. Iain has drawn a lot of people like me in. He just has the gift of communication."

MacAskill communicated like a man possessed, at one time doing five impassioned services a day (now three) and, rushing around the isles so much, he wrote off two cars. He sees it as worthwhile, though. Between Benbecula and South Uist, the congregation now numbers around 100, and there are prayer meetings in a dozen villages.

MacAskill believes this "revival" is not purely a South Uist phenomenon, citing similar successes in Inverness, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Portree, Invergordon, Dornoch, as well as more traditional areas like Lewis.

National church membership stands at nearly 6,000, with a further 8,000 "adherents". That isn’t up much on previous years, but signals recovery from the split.

MacAskill's indisputably growing congregation still has no church building, having instead to meet in cafes and community centres. Over 30,000 was raised to renovate the old kirk in Lochboisdale and the money was put into the care of the church in North Uist. Then, on 13 January 2000, the Free Church had a split. In North Uist, it became the Free Church (Continuing) and MacAskill's money was frozen.

"The Free Church (Continuing) in North Uist said they would not give us our money. A lot of the 30,000 was made up of old women putting in 5 a month. That was hard. But now we've raised another 30,000."

Ostensibly, the split involved accusations of impropriety against Professor Donald Macleod, but MacAskill believes there was a wider agenda. "Though the Macleod case was the one that made the news, there were also allegations that we were too liberal. Although they're saying I'm liberal, I would say I'm not. I'm evangelical. A liberal denies the basic truth of scripture.

"The Free Church now backs me 100 per cent. The Free Church then did not. The most hassle we had was from those that had left. And they're still causing hassle by keeping this 30-grand. They're stifling the word of God."

MacAskill's kirk might have more in common with the Church of Scotland, but there is a stumbling-block there too: he won't have women ministers or elders. His defence? "Scripture is quite clear that an elder should be 'the husband of my wife'. We had a woman speaking to us at the prayer meeting today. But ordained ministers? I don't think so."

Such views bring forth unflattering comparisons with fundamentalists, the Taleban, and so on. Taxed with this, MacAskill chooses his words carefully.

"People who talk of Taleban are thinking of those that left in the split. Now, that isn't my opinion. There are good people among those who left. But I know where people thinking that are coming from and, after the split, I believe the Free Church now has a great opportunity to totally replace a caricature that people had in the past.

"People have an image of Wee Frees in their mind: fire and brimstone and a list of 48 don'ts: don't dance, don't do this, don't do that. That's what I've had to fight against. To be honest, the Free Church has made mistakes. But I believe we have the opportunity now to win Scotland for Jesus."

So, does he disapprove of dancing?

"I'm not bothered about that. I just say: 'You follow Jesus and he will tell you what to do and what not to do.' I'm not giving out rules and regulations."

The Free Church is famed for its strict adherence to the Sabbath. One sneeze and you'll burn in hell. But there is more to the convention than meets the eye. MacAskill describes it as "a day just to do something different, just to chill out, a day of rest, a day to praise God".

He recounts the time the local Co-op planned opening on Sunday, just after extending its weekday hours. The mostly Catholic staff came to MacAskill and said: "We're shattered. We need to relax and have time with our families."

So, the big minister wrote to the local manager and put all this to him, adding that it hardly helped the good fight against booze to have the off-licence open a seventh day. The Co-op, an integral part of the isles community, withdrew the proposal.

Similar arguments are made against the Sunday ferry service. Fishermen are forced to work another day to get lobsters to put on the ferries. Commercial pressures kill their day off, and also put big lorries on the roads.

On this Sunday evening, the brightly lit Oasis Cafe in Benbecula, formerly the Naafi pub, is playing host to a congregation of 50 adults (many far from elderly) and ten children.

"We ask you, Lord, to look after those addicted to alcohol. You are the God who can turn alcohol into clothes for children," intones MacAskill. He decries sectarian murder in Northern Ireland, adding: "Take away Orange walks and these things that cause antagonism."

He quotes Bono of U2 about finding what you're looking for and adds: "Sometimes, people get freaked out by this new Jesus thing. But Jesus says: 'I don't want this wishy-washy, half-hearted stuff.'"

He talks of setting out to construct something and wondering how to finish it, mentioning both the Scottish parliament and his own Lochboisdale church.

"We are receiving opposition from people who maybe we didn't expect to oppose our building project ... But hundreds of people used to worship there and I believe people will worship there again."

Earlier, I visited the building with him. The pews had been removed. The would-be church was damp and smelly and full of discarded junk: high chair, washing-machine, chess board, photocopier, bag of cement, several mattresses, musty books in a box.

MacAskill was not dismayed and talked of plans to illuminate the building so it's the first thing visitors see as they arrive at Lochboisdale harbour. As we leave, he turns and says: "I don't think we'll keep the pink door, though. What d'you think?" I think that would be going too far.