The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
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— <strong>The</strong> Statistics <strong>of</strong> ‘<strong>Christian</strong> Progress’ 1800–1950 —<br />
churchgoing in 1851. <strong>The</strong> census compiler, Horace Mann, told parliament:<br />
‘more especially in cities and large towns it is observable how absolutely<br />
insignificant a portion <strong>of</strong> the congregations is composed <strong>of</strong> artizans’. 5 Socialscience<br />
scholars <strong>of</strong> the 1960s used the census data to support the same<br />
interpretation. Pickering grouped towns according to their level <strong>of</strong> churchgoing<br />
in 1851, and deduced that ‘within given bounds, church-going is<br />
broadly inversely correlated with the size <strong>of</strong> an urban population’. 6 Perkin<br />
carried out a similar exercise and came to the same conclusion. 7 McLeod<br />
produced various statistical exercises which showed that English towns had<br />
lower rates <strong>of</strong> churchgoing than rural ones, and that industrial zones had<br />
lower rates <strong>of</strong> churchgoing than agricultural zones. 8<br />
More recent revisionist work has, however, challenged this enduring<br />
interpretation. For while the 1851 census’ published data showed that<br />
churchgoing was higher in rural than urban places in England as a whole<br />
(but not in Scotland), detailed research (including on unpublished data<br />
which can allow more precise distinguishing <strong>of</strong> rural from urban) tends to<br />
show results <strong>of</strong> low significance. This is certainly the case in the English<br />
north Midlands (Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Rutland and<br />
Nottinghamshire) where the correlation <strong>of</strong> churchgoing with level <strong>of</strong><br />
urbanisation produced a low negative correlation (r = –0.157) and an even<br />
lower positive correlation with level <strong>of</strong> ruralisation (r = 0.147). 9 <strong>The</strong>se indicate<br />
that urban and rural conditions were not determining factors in<br />
churchgoing levels in the north Midlands; if the correlations are turned into<br />
regressions, each produces statistically insignificant figures (in each case,<br />
R 2 = 0.02). In Scotland, towns had higher churchgoing rates than rural areas<br />
and virtually all large cities had higher attendance rates than their surrounding<br />
rural counties. 10 Revisionist research results are not limited to<br />
regional case studies. <strong>The</strong> present author undertook regression analysis on<br />
all the urban data (for 116 towns) in the published 1851 census, and found<br />
that in England and Wales there was no statistically significant relationship<br />
between town size, or rate <strong>of</strong> growth <strong>of</strong> towns over ten or fifty years, upon<br />
churchgoing rate (R 2 = 0.04, t statistics = –1.61, –1.35, –0.65). However, in<br />
Scotland rate <strong>of</strong> growth <strong>of</strong> a town over fifty years explained a quarter <strong>of</strong><br />
variations (R 2 = 0.26, t statistic = –4.21). 11 <strong>The</strong>se results were challenged<br />
by Bruce, who used a 56 per cent sample <strong>of</strong> towns from the census, but<br />
despite employing methods to improve his results (log 10 arrays and omitting<br />
the outlier London), he showed that even at its best only 14 per cent<br />
<strong>of</strong> the variations in churchgoing rate amongst his sample towns could be<br />
accounted for by town size. 12 Admittedly, church attendance rates for<br />
English cities in the nineteenth century generally compared unfavourably<br />
to those <strong>of</strong> country areas, but there were largely unrecognised, in-built<br />
reasons exaggerating this. First, urban church services – especially between<br />
the 1850s and the 1930s – were much more spread out amongst a variety<br />
<strong>of</strong> types <strong>of</strong> places <strong>of</strong> worship which enumerators, frankly, had difficulty in<br />
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