Faith and religion in Scotland

A young blonde woman in a black dress, her toenails painted pink, is singing a power ballad about Jesus Christ walking with her through fire. When she reaches the chorus – "I trust in you!" – several of the 60-strong congregation punch the air and sing along. A 16-year-old with a tattoo on her neck looks lost in reverie. A Burberried boy is lit with joy. Children dance in the aisles. A middle-aged woman has her eyes closed and tears on her cheeks.

This is the Hope United Church, established two years ago and operating under the slogan, "Live God Loud". Dedication to volume has brought problems. In September the church made headlines following complaints from nearby residents. Two police officers arrive shortly before the service begins, responding to a further complaint about the noise. Earlier, someone had thrown a brick at the church.

Speaking to the congregation, Pastor Mark Ralston is defiant. "Ah just wish that thae folk that phone the polis would come here," he says to calls of approval. "Nae angry neighbour's gonnae stop us reaching the lost, huh?"

Ralston is 39, a roofer to trade. His vision is that Hope United should be "church for folk who don't go to church". There are plenty of those people out there. During his sermon, built around Jeremiah 17, Ralston says: "Guys, this is one of the fastest growing churches in Scotland. Churches are dying. Yet see when you go to Ikea on a Sunday, it's choc-a-bloc. As somebody once said, 'At least you get something useful in Ikea.'"

According to the non-denominational research group Christian Research, in 2010 church attendance in Scotland will drop below 10 per cent of the population for the first time since records began; by 2015, it is expected to have decreased to 8.9 per cent. The only churches expected to enjoy an increase in attendance over the next five years are independents such as Hope United. Other faiths, including Islam and Buddhism, appear to be on the rise.

According to Ralston, the way to grow a church is to meet need in the community. He uses rock and dance music, movie clips and YouTube to reach troubled young people. Within Scotland, North Lanarkshire is second only to Glasgow in terms of multiple deprivation. In the neighbourhood of Hope United, almost a quarter of the population are officially "income deprived". Hospital admissions for alcohol misuse are more than double the Scottish average. Eleven per cent of locals have been prescribed drugs for anxiety, depression or psychosis.

Within this bleak context, Ralston's approach seems to be working. When Shevonne Cullen, 25, discovered Hope United, she had a six-week-old baby and was in despair. Her upbringing had been difficult, blighted by alcoholism and domestic abuse. She first got pregnant at 17. "I hated myself and everything about my life," she says. "My relationship with my husband wasn't good. I didn't have a great relationship with my son because I felt so upset that I was so young when I had him. But when I walked into this church I heard that I was worth something. I've not missed a service since. This place is my life."

Speaking so quietly that it's hard to hear her over the music, Ashleigh, 16, says she had no religious faith before coming to Hope United; it simply wouldn't have occurred to her to attend a traditional church. But she now believes in God. "Everything's changed for me," she says. "You don't need tae fill your life with drink and drugs. That's no' the answer any mair."

Joanne, also 16, nods and says: "I'm a Catholic and I still go to mass but this is much better. I'm no' really into my auld religion now. What the Pastor talks about is just so real. He knows what it's like to be wan ae us."

Ralston is stocky with short dark hair, jeans and a leather jacket. You wouldn't look twice at him on the street, but he's a charismatic talker with an unvarnished style. In conversation he's open about the difficulties of his own life – the alcoholism, self-harm and even a suicide attempt. While giving sermons he's somewhere between professional comedian and preacher; Billy Graham meets Billy Connolly.

He got sober in 1999 after attending Alcoholics Anonymous. Then, three years later, he went on a Christian retreat and it changed his life. He felt "saved by the grace of God". Two years ago, he started a Christian discussion group in his Bellshill home, and from this Hope United grew.

Outreach programmes are key to its expansion – feeding the homeless, visiting the elderly and arranging football and games of pool for kids. "We're trying to break the myth of what church is," Ralston says. "If you mention church, people will say 'spire', 'steeple', 'stained glass'. But we don't live in the 18th century. If Jesus was walking on earth today, he widnae be talking about sheep and shepherds."

Walking out into the chill Motherwell night, it is hard to imagine anywhere less in need of a shepherd. High flats crowd the skyline, and Hope United itself is hidden away behind a tangle of barbed wire and rotting rosehips. In this visual context, the banner on the gate hardly seems necessary. "21st Century Church," it reads. "No Perfect People Allowed."

IT IS A BRIGHT, COLD afternoon in the west end of Glasgow, and the queue at KRK Continental Food, a halal butcher, snakes out of the door. Today is Eid Ul-Adha, the Islamic festival commemorating the prophet Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to Allah. Muslims are supposed to mark this by arranging for lambs to be slaughtered – an act known as Qurbani – and donating meat to the poor.

Members of the Scottish-Islamic Foundation have arranged to pick up lamb and give it to asylum seekers who would not otherwise be able to celebrate Eid. It is, at once, an act of devotion and social justice. The SIF is a not-for-profit organisation seeking to demonstrate the good that Muslims can bring to Scotland.

Inside the butcher's, people shout orders over the whine of the band-saw. This scene feels ancient and elemental. Seven men are working in a small meat-smelling space. One wears a chain-mail glove to protect his hand from the knife. Carcasses, headless and hoofless, are carried in from a van, cut off the bone into fat-free bite-size pieces, then bagged and boxed.

These lambs were killed yesterday, in Paisley, by Shaukat Ali Faisal, a 65-year-old who slaughtered 1,015 in a single day. With the knife poised on each animal's throat, he said the name of the person who had arranged the Qurbani and a blessing in the name of Allah.

The butchers take extra care when preparing this meat. It's a devotional ritual important to the community. KRK has been trading on Woodlands Road since 1979, founded by a family from Pakistan. Around three-quarters of Scotland's Muslims live in Glasgow. According to the 2001 census, there were 42,557 in Scotland, but it is estimated that the figure is now around 60,000, a rise due in part to the arrival of asylum seekers and refugees.

Their cars loaded with meat, the SIF team drive to Kingsway Court, an estate of multi-storey blocks. Outside the community centre, people are queuing for food. They are from Afghanistan, Kurdistan and Somalia, among other countries. Some survive on 5 a day.

The Qurbani is handed out in blue bags, together with rice and ginger. There is liver and other innards for those who want them, but the kids running about seem more interested in the jumbo tins of Quality Street.

Distribution is being co-ordinated by Gail Lythgoe of the SIF. Lythgoe is a striking and strikingly intelligent 21-year-old in the final year of a law degree. She converted to Islam in January 2008. She was raised as a Christian, but began to lose that faith in her teens; she remembers her maternal grandmother's funeral as the turning point. The minister's sermon didn't ring true. She became an atheist, but a period of depression led her to feel that something was missing from her life.

She began reading up on different religions. Islam didn't occur to her at first. It seemed so distant from the life of an independent-minded young woman in the west. But following the destruction of the World Trade Centre, Islam became much more part of the public discourse and she began to explore it. As a faith, it seemed to fit better with how she saw herself and the world.

When Lythgoe talks about her conversion it sounds almost as though she thought her way towards Islam, arriving at religious belief by a completely rational and analytical process. But she insists there was also a leap of faith and passion. "You have to love Allah," she says. "The way that I came to love Islam was by learning about it."

Earlier, she had made her afternoon dhuhr prayer, kneeling and placing her forehead on the floor, mouthing her praise of Allah. It was a very still moment. She loves the structure and moments of reflection that the five daily prayers give to her life. She wrapped her gold and green scarf round her head before she prayed.

Other than when she prays, she doesn't wear hijab – the head covering of Muslim women. "No, not yet," she says. "I'm still finding out what the Quran says, what the Hadith of the Prophet says, to find out if it is 100 per cent required of me. My mum and dad, and my family and friends, won't accept it unless I've thought it through properly."

She says that, historically, it was better for Muslim women to cover themselves as it meant they would be treated with more respect. But she recognises that, now, on the cusp of a career in the 21st century, life could be worse for her if she does. "I live a very public, active life and I think, 'How do I do this?' Because people won't give me jobs when I wear it, or they'll treat me differently, or think I am some weak idiot who lets men rule. They won't know my own story."

Her journey into faith is fascinating. One might think that a white feminist social activist would be an unlikely candidate for conversion to Islam. Yet it clearly means a lot to her and she speaks about it very eloquently. She shows courage, too, in embracing a religion which, post-9/11, is often hated and feared. Yet when Lythgoe talks about her faith, she sounds at peace; in fact she sounds in love.

"I wouldn't be able to go back to not being a Muslim," she says. "I love what Islam brings to my life and I don't think I could ever disobey the God that I love."

It is time for her to pray again – the Maghrib prayer offered at sunset. A freezing fog veils the tops of the tower blocks, and as Lythgoe walks off to praise Allah, cooking smells drift down from hundreds of kitchens. Already, the Qurbani is being put to good use.

THE BUDDHIST MONASTERY of Samye Ling is visible from a long way off, the golden spire of its Victory Stupa jutting above the treeline, upstaging even the dandyish pheasants that strut through the fields beside the B723. Up close, the towering stupa – a symbol of enlightenment – is even more impressive, particularly when one notices that starlings have built mud nests beneath its dazzling white eaves. But that first glimpse across the Esk valley is magical.

Samye Ling was founded in 1967 by two young Tibetan tulkus, or reincarnated holy men. In those early days, the monastery consisted of a 19th-century farmhouse, but has now grown to include a magnificent temple and other religious buildings. Somehow these foreign structures fit well with the Dumfriesshire countryside: lichen thick as pelt coats the intricate stone carvings; crows caw in oak trees strung with ragged prayer flags; a heron guzzles koi carp from an ornamental lake.

There are still a few Tibetans living here, but the residents are mostly westerners. There are around 20 monks and nuns, plus lay people who have not taken orders but may be on a course or retreat.

Buddhism is a growing faith in Scotland. At the 2001 census the number of Buddhists living in the country was 6,830, but orders across the country have noticed a significant rise in numbers over the decade, with some reporting a spike since the credit crunch. It is estimated that Scottish Buddhists now exceed 10,000.

Ani Lhamo is the Abbot's secretary. She is 53 and, like all the nuns, she has a shaved head and wears maroon robes. Her eyes are pale blue. She took orders 20 years ago, before which she was Edith Hope, a computer programmer living in Glasgow, though originally from Fort William.

In those days, if you wanted to become a nun, you had to make a lifetime vow. Now it is possible to take orders for a year or longer and see how it goes. Still, it is a demanding life; no meat, no sex, no alcohol. The daily routine begins at 6am and includes over three hours of prayer and two of silent meditation.

Yet there is an undeniable sense of peace about the place, no sluggishness or inertia. It's easy to understand why someone feeling pain or sadness, someone sick of their life, would want to spend time here, insulated from the world. "People come here with every problem imaginable," says Ani Lhamo. "Everybody's looking for a solution these days."

She became a nun because she felt "disappointed by life" and hoped to experience the sense of depth she craved. "I had a good job, my own house, a company car. Everything you were supposed to want, but not the thing you need most. In this society we don't have material problems, but we have this inability to be happy. If there's one thing that Buddhism offers, it's the means to deal with that. Perhaps that's why it has such appeal.

"I mean, I'm doing all the things that, according to advertising campaigns, could be a cause of suffering. I've been celibate most of my adult life, I've been living in this out-of- the way place. I've got no money. Most of my clothes are second-hand. But I really do feel free."

On taking orders, the first thing she did was go on retreat for four years, including six months of total silence. Such extremes are part of the Samye Ling culture. Behind the temple there's a small stone building called the Mahakala House, with a door knocker in the shape of a demon. In here, a nun has been on retreat for 12 years. She spends her life saying prayers of protection for the monastery.

The Mahakala House is next to the building site where the monastery is being extended. The workmen are noisy – drilling, hammering, laughing, swearing – but listen carefully and it's possible to hear, from inside the house, the faint insectoid patter of cymbals and drums.

At 4pm each day, in a glass-fronted building known as the Butterlamp House, candles are lit for world peace. The man whose job it is to light them is 33 and from the Glasgow area. He doesn't want his name in the paper. He has a shaved head and hooded top, and has lived here for three years. I ask what he used to do.

"A lot of bad things," he says. "I took drugs for 20 years, chasing heroin all day. I ended up doing robberies. In prison. Then I started reading about different religions. Since I've come here, I don't think I've told a lie. In my old life, every second word out of my mouth was a lie. And when I meditate I feel much less angry. Being here helps me to understand my neuroses and bad actions. You could say it saved my life."

Under his breath, as he lights 1,008 candles, he murmurs a mantra of confession and repentance. By the time the last is lit, night has fallen and flames beam out through the glass. Maybe in 21st-century Scotland this is what faith looks like – a light flickering in the dark and cold, offering hope, heat and a chance of healing. r

This article first appeared in Scotland on Sunday on 3 January, 2010