The Death of Christian Britain

— The Death of Christian Britain —
Table 7.1 Proportion of church sittings occupied in Glasgow, 1816–20
Area Population Seats taken
(%)
Central city:
Tron Parish 10,304 28.4
Goose-Dubbs 945 11.2
Part of Saltmarket 387 15.8
Clay-Braes 319 20.1
Part of Bridgegate 209 3.3
Inner suburbs:
Unnamed 875 21.7
Suburbs:
Parts of Barony Parish 2,689 21.7
Source: Figures calculated from data in T. Chalmers, The Christian and Civic Economy of
Large Towns, Glasgow, 1821, pp. 110–13.
and argued that it was ‘the magnitude of those suburb wastes, which have
formed so rapidly around the metropolis, and every commercial city of our
land’ which created a ‘lawless spirit’, ‘the great and the growing distemper’
and ‘families which, from infancy to manhood, have been unvisited by
any message from Christianity’. 3 These were the first widely publicised
figures to be used as evidence of high non-churchgoing in large towns, and
especially in districts dominated by the poor and working classes. Chalmers
said that given the closer distance of people to churches in cities than in
the countryside, there should be a higher rate of attendance:
Let it be premised, that, in a country parish, the number who should
be in attendance upon church, is computed at one-half of the whole
population. In towns where the obstacle of distance is not to be overcome,
a larger proportion than this is generally fixed upon. We think
it, however, overrated at two-thirds, and shall therefore assign the
intermediate fraction of five-eighths, as the ratio which the churchgoing
inhabitants of a town should bear to the total number of them. 4
Setting his expectation at over 60 per cent attendance in urban parishes
but only 50 per cent in rural ones, Chalmers could easily point to churchgoing
rates of around 22 to 28 per cent as confirmation of the rising
irreligion of cities. From a modern statistical standpoint, of course, the data
are highly problematic, are analysed according to quite arbitrary rules, and
do not provide satisfactory ‘proof’ of the hypothesis. The ‘reading’ is highly
partial.
Conclusive statistical proof of the applicability of this argument across
mainland Britain appeared to come from the government’s census of
146