Over time it became obvious that political success rested upon managing the balance between those two identities, between the institutional tenets of Scottish identity – religion, education and law – and a broader British state that derived its strength from empire, protestantism and defence.
Gavin Robinson, 29, is the new, more progressive voice of the Democratic Unionist party; a politician who broke the mould of tub-thumping, hardcore Protestantism by attending a same-sex wedding as lord mayor of Belfast, and who – whisper it softly – is even known to have gay friends.
Crudely, Ireland remained majority Catholic while England embedded Protestantism in the very nature of its state.
Modern English identity (and, in more complex ways, a later British identity) was tempered in the crucible of embattled Protestantism.
The author of a new book prophetically called The Fall of the House of Paisley might agree that this dynasty, founded on the twin stones of fundamentalist Protestantism and "no surrender" unionism, is already slouching off the public stage.
Well, of course it's an Irish problem: the Irish inherited from the tangled history of our archipelago a deep identification of Irishness with Catholicism, and of Britishness with Protestantism.
Those tented revival meetings that were such a feature of southern Protestantism were not intended to win converts so much as to purify and strengthen beliefs that were already there.The Southern Baptist movement, which is strongly associated with the "values voters" who favour the Republicans, has its origins in support for slavery.
But judging from past events, it seems to me that those who want to prophesy the imminent end of America's unique global role have a harder case to make than those who think we will limp on for a while, making a mess of things as usual.DIA: In the book, you say that Protestantism encouraged capitalism, leading to dynamic, open societies in both Britain and America, which allowed them to thrive.
Among Scottish Catholics, who account for about 16% of the population, there used to be a lingering fear that an independent Scotland would enhance the privileges of the Protestant church; but as Protestantism wanes, that fear has less reason to exist.
Weekly attendance is now 80,000, which its officials say is the most in El Salvador.The evangelical Protestantism preached within its walls (and on screens outside) has taken off in Central America.
It involved delving deep into the devotional and doctrinal resources of Catholicism to withstand the challenges of Protestantism, the scientific revolution and the onset of modernity.
