The Death of Christian Britain

— The Death of Christian Britain —
in his data, with the figure being over 70 per cent in 20 out of 30 data
points for thirteen Huddersfield congregations), 45 it is striking how strong
is the obverse argument – namely, that congregations provided intensely
local foci for the vast majority of churchgoers as the scale of urban communities
grew in the late nineteenth century.
Overall, the factors so far considered are poor predictors of churchgoing
levels in the population. Social class appears as notionally significant
in correlation for some places (notably London) but poor in others, whilst
everywhere it is a hopeless determinant in regression analysis. The working
classes made up the majority of churchgoers in virtually every denomination
in every period from 1800 to the 1960s, with the skilled working class
of artisans and tradesmen being particularly numerous in congregations.
The unskilled were far less numerous, and indeed were the least
churchgoing of all social classes in most places (though, as the Black
Country may indicate, not all). However, evidence from churchgoing
censuses that lower proportions of the working classes (skilled and
unskilled) attended worship compared to the middle classes may be the
result of different attendance patterns – such as less frequent Sunday attendance,
and more attendance at under-recorded weekday and non-regular
religious gatherings – and not of being any more ‘unchurched’ than the
bourgeoisie. Equally, the data from 1800 to the 1960s fail to identify a
period in which there was a working-class haemorrhage from congregations,
tending to undermine the notion that working-class evacuation of
the churches led secularisation at any point. With the whole picture complicated
by regional variation, and by the possibility of increased male
industrial employment having a positive influence upon working-class
churchgoing, we are left with the conclusion that social class on its own
fails to explain church decline in Britain between 1800 and the 1960s.
GENDER AND RELIGIOSITY
Women have tended to dominate church memberships and churchgoers
during the last three centuries. In the membership of Baptist and
Congregationalist churches between 1650 and 1980, women outnumbered
men by a factor of two to one, though by somewhat less within
Nonconformity as a whole. In Bradford in 1881, 71 per cent of members
in twelve Nonconformist congregations were female. In West London in
1902–3, 68 per cent of Church of England morning worshippers were
women and 69 per cent of evening worshippers. In the whole of the capital
in those years, with the inclusion of children, adult men made up only 23.9
per cent of Anglican worshippers, whilst women made up 60.8 per cent of
all adult churchgoers to all denominations. 46 However, in Stirling between
1849 and 1908 women made up only 59 per cent of communicants, the
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