The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
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— Personal Testimony and Religion 1800–1950 —<br />
he would go into the priesthood – a pr<strong>of</strong>ession ‘that was drilled in you’<br />
as ‘something out <strong>of</strong> the ordinary’ and due ‘a very great respect’. However,<br />
self-doubt that ‘I wouldn’t make the grade’ led to him turning down the<br />
<strong>of</strong>fer to join a priest going to South Africa, a decision he clearly regretted.<br />
He recalled instead his religious life outside the priesthood in the Catholic<br />
Young Men’s Society, Sunday evening concerts, and his continuing work<br />
for the church: ‘And you think to yourself, well, I must make the grade.<br />
I must save my soul if I can.’ His testimony then changes gear as he moves<br />
into many pages <strong>of</strong> uninterrupted recollections <strong>of</strong> war service, standing<br />
as an alternative and consummated identity that he delivers with vigour<br />
and free from doubt or regret – an area <strong>of</strong> identity where he did ‘make<br />
the grade’. 92<br />
In evangelical households, boys were strongly encouraged to look<br />
upon clergymen as heroes to emulate. Caradog Wells, born in 1903 in the<br />
Rhondda, was told by his mother to model himself on his uncle from<br />
farming stock, who ‘turned out eventually to be a local preacher’ with the<br />
Wesleyans. ‘And she used to – always – when it came to be a question <strong>of</strong><br />
referring to anybody who we should follow and grow up and act like, it<br />
was always my uncle Emmanuel.’ 93 From 1800 to the early twentieth<br />
century, young boys in Wales and in the Scottish Highlands were known<br />
to play at being preachers, by exhorting to dogs and livestock in the manner<br />
<strong>of</strong> their favourite pastors. 94 Clergy were sometimes affectionately satirised.<br />
Dolly Scannell’s family played a Christmas game called ‘Confessions’ in<br />
which her brother ‘dressed up as a vicar, and as each person entered the<br />
room he had to kneel in front <strong>of</strong> the priest and confess his sins, and when<br />
the priest bent to give him absolution so <strong>of</strong> course he would be soaked<br />
with water’. 95<br />
One <strong>of</strong> the main attractions <strong>of</strong> the Church <strong>of</strong> England for young boys<br />
was singing in a choir. Anglican choirboys were paid, and even those with<br />
non-churchgoing parents were to be found in a choir. Lazarus Cox from<br />
Oxford went to church three times on Sundays because he sang in the<br />
choir, ‘and then that was a farthing a time, and if you mis-behaved yourself<br />
you was in the chancel. <strong>The</strong> old vicar used to say, when we got down:<br />
“sixpence <strong>of</strong>f your money Cox, for talking”.’ 96 Thomas Upton, born 1904,<br />
sang a great deal in church choirs: ‘I used to enjoy that thoroughly, but I<br />
don’t think that made me particularly religious, but it took me to church.’ 97<br />
Music was an important religious connection for working- and middleclass<br />
men. In the Church <strong>of</strong> England, a surprising number <strong>of</strong> male oral<br />
interviewees were bell-ringers, while an even larger group were in the<br />
church choir as men and boys. Many in the working classes were in brass<br />
bands, where religious and temperance music was located in an all-male<br />
venue. But even more important was the vital familiarity which workingclass<br />
neighbourhoods had with religious music. Before 1920, temperance<br />
bands, works bands, club and lodge bands, and Salvation Army bands were<br />
137