The Death of Christian Britain

— The Death of Christian Britain —
population; if adjusted for individuals making multiple visits to church, and
if children are excluded, something like 40 per cent of adults attended
church on that one Sunday. In Scotland, the figures were marginally higher
despite a markedly higher number of non-returns from enumerators. 54
Given that some people were ill or detained by family matters, the numbers
of regular attenders would have been higher. By the known standards of
churchgoing in mainland Britain for all periods of history, the results of
this census showed a high level of Sunday worship. Levels in the previous
fifty years may well have been lower; reasons included the paucity of
churches in upland and island areas of the Scottish Highlands, the rapidity
of urban and population growth, and the sluggishness with which new
churches were erected in rising industrial centres. After 1851, rates may
well have continued to rise for a decade or two as church building blossomed,
financed by the mid-Victorian boom. 55 But there is some evidence
of decline. Evidence from a variety of local censuses – in Dundee, Bath,
Bristol, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham, Bradford, Liverpool and several
others – suggested a decline in the region of 20–30 per cent between 1851
and 1881. 56 However, evidence from other places showed little change
over thirty years, and in the case of Bradford it has been suggested that
the proportion of individuals attending church rose. 57 Evidence for decline
in churchgoing after the 1880s is stronger, though decline in double
attendances on a Sunday accounts for some proportion of it. Nonetheless,
all the evidence suggests a fall in churchgoing from before 1900 which was
sustained at a steady, though not spectacular rate, until the 1940s. 58
However, given the strong indications that much of the decline until the
mid-twentieth century may have been caused by individuals attending
church less frequently, the astute observer should refrain from equating a
decline in churchgoing with a rise in the number of non-churchgoers.
Church membership is a different measure of the people’s attachment to
the churches, and it provides a wider availability of time series data. It is
not really until the 1850s that sufficient data on church affiliation becomes
available from British churches, and even then major denominations (notably
the Church of England) only collected usable national data from later and
the quality was poor. Even when data was collected earlier by some denominations,
the concept of church affiliation (or ‘membership’ or ‘adherence’
as different churches called it) was still in its infancy as the notion of churches
as discrete ‘clubs’ was still developing. In this way, we are highly limited in
what can be deduced from such data. In the case of most churches, adherence
or membership is measuring some form of ‘passive’ association with a
church rather than an active one like churchgoing. Nonetheless, church
adherence is an important form of religiosity, a measure in itself which
churches regarded as important and which, as plentiful oral evidence suggests,
many ordinary worshippers regarded as indispensable. It became all
the more important during the twentieth century.
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