"This book tests the rhetoric with historical and social scientific data, describing and explaining the changing pattern of relations between Catholics and Protestants over the 20th century. It concludes that Catholic integration in Scotland has been far more successful than most commentators would have us believe. While there were once deep social, political, economic and cultural division, these have now all but disappeared. In Scotland's increasingly secular society, religious identity has steeply declined in social significance." "Sectarianism in Scotland is informed both by a considerable body of evidence from new historical research and major social surveys, and by the authors' understanding of what the mixing of religion and politics looks like elsewhere - in America, Australia and New Zealand, as well as in Ulster."--BOOK JACKET.