The Death of Christian Britain

— The Death of Christian Britain —
It was only in the 1960s that real sociological techniques of socialcomposition
analysis started to be applied. This has produced a raft of
different studies, often with varying social-classification systems which
makes comparisons a little difficult. Fortunately, the results are sufficiently
clear-cut to override technical problems. Gilbert analysed the occupational
structure of 10,997 English Nonconformists between 1800 and 1837, and
found that 59 per cent were artisans and 17 per cent other manual workers
– a total of almost 77 per cent working class. 31 Hillis showed that 61 per
cent of 3,666 presbyterian church members in Glasgow between 1845 and
1865 were working class, with nearly 50 per cent being accounted by artisans
and other skilled workers. 32 Field and Snell have shown in separate
studies the dominance of the working classes in Methodism – nationally
80 per cent of Wesleyans and 76 per cent of Primitives, and in the north
Midlands between 1800 and 1894 figures of 72 per cent for Wesleyans and
91 per cent for Primitives. 33 In Bradford in the late Victorian period, the
working classes made up the majority of church members in nearly every
congregation, with skilled manual workers the largest single social group
making up from 30 to 45 per cent of the total. 34 In seven Stirling congregations
between 1849 and 1908, an average of 52 per cent of male
communicants and 47 per cent females were skilled working class. 35 In
virtually all of these studies, the skilled working classes dominated, but in
certain churches (such as the Primitive Methodists) and in certain places
the unskilled could make up the majority of churchgoers. Hopkins calculated
that in two Black Country villages in 1851, 42 per cent of the working
classes attended church (or 50.5 per cent if an allowance were made for it
being Mothering Sunday). Moreover, he argued convincingly that those in
dissent were not mainly skilled or even semi-skilled workers but were
nailers, ‘the lowest strata of the working classes, many of them notorious
for their rough and uncivilised mode of life’. 36 Certainly, Jeffrey’s work on
Stirling suggests that we should not underestimate the significance of the
unskilled working class in congregational life: they made up on average 20
per cent of male communicants and 24 per cent of females, and participated
in congregational activities and duties. 37 Dennis’ study of one
Congregational Church in Huddersfield showed that 68.6 per cent of
members were drawn from the working classes (families of tradesmen,
craftsmen, textile workers, servants, laundresses, dressmakers and one
pauper). 38 The evidence from the twentieth century tends to indicate the
same. Seebohm Rowntree considered that the proletarian–bourgeois balance
in York churches was roughly representative of the population of the town
as a whole: a 66:34 split between working and middle classes in 1901, and
a 83:17 split between ‘non-servant-keepers’ and ‘servant-keepers’ in the
1930s. 39 Field showed that the proportion of Methodists who were working
class fell slightly during the twentieth century, but in some congregations
it was the middle classes who declined. 40 In most studies of the 1960s,
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