Church of Scotland

The Church of Scotland is presented through John Rebus’s occasional churchgoing rather than through its organization or wider activities. Its two services in his account offer sharply different religious atmospheres: one seems to promise only sin and repentance, while another replaces that severity with an emphasis on love, joy, and forgiveness. Rebus finds neither experience a reason to become a regular attendee, but his visits later give Superintendent Watson a way to frame a conversation about the city’s social crisis.

Rebus’s Churchgoing

On a Sunday morning, Rebus tries a church near his flat, described as another Church of Scotland offering. He has already found a previous church unbearably cold, with its focus on sin and repentance; the new service feels like an oppressive opposite, seeming to offer love and joy without any clear need for forgiveness. He sings the hymns, then leaves after shaking the minister’s hand and offering a promise of future attendance. The promise does not establish a settled commitment: Rebus’s account is rueful and suggests that he has left without deciding that this church is right for him.

When asked later whether he goes to church, Rebus says he does so sometimes, but not regularly. He recalls that he attended the previous day, confirming that his Sunday visit is part of an intermittent practice rather than a new routine. The denomination is thus linked to a private, tentative habit, and to Rebus’s ambivalence about the different religious moods he encounters.

Watson’s Appeal to Religious Familiarity

Superintendent Watson invokes Rebus’s churchgoing while trying to make him understand the scale of Edinburgh’s drug problem. Watson says that Rebus should know what he means when he describes the city as turning into Hades. He points to the Edinburgh Infirmary’s treatment of addicts as young as eleven and twelve, and to the fact that Rebus’s brother is serving a prison sentence for dealing drugs. Rebus responds with anger, asking what any of this has to do with him.

The exchange does not present the Church of Scotland as an institution directing the response to drugs. Instead, church attendance functions as Watson’s personal point of entry: he uses Rebus’s limited religious familiarity to give moral and religious force to his warning about the city. Rebus’s reaction exposes the gap between Watson’s appeal and the connection he is trying to impose on him.