The Death of Christian Britain

Percentage
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
— The Death of Christian Britain —
Easter Day communicants Parochial Easter communicants
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Figure 7.1 Church of England communicants as percentage of total
population, 1900–95
Sources: Figures calculated from R. Currie, A. Gilbert and L. Horsley, Churches and Churchgoers:
Patterns of Church Growth in the British Isles since 1700, Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1977, pp. 128–9; Church of England Yearbook, 1979–2000; B.R. Mitchell and P. Deane,
Abstract of British Historical Statistics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1962, pp.
12–13; Office of Population Censuses and Surveys; Office of National Statistics, Annual
Abstract of Statistics 2000.
striking: in England, Scotland and Wales, the historic established churches
experienced an almost identical set of trends of roughly level membership
status from 1900 until the mid-1950s, and then declined at roughly identical
rates to the end of the century.
The scale of decline in overall church membership between 1904–5 and
1950 was relatively minor. From a high of 19.3 per cent in 1910 for church
membership in the British population as a whole, the figure fell to 19.1 in
1920, recovered to 19.2 in 1930, and then fell to 18.1 in 1930 – a fall
sustained to 17.6 by 1950. This gives a figure for the net fall in church
adherence per capita of only 7.9 per cent in Britain over the period 1910–50,
with a slightly higher proportion of this fall seeming to come from highmembership
zones like Scotland where the loss was 11.1 per cent. 62
What was happening to church affiliation between the 1910s and 1950s was
far from clear-cut. Year-on-year data indicates short periods of decline
and growth succeeding each other within each decade, with the detailed
data from Scotland indicating that adherence grew in years of economic
downturn and declined in years of economic recovery. The two world
wars had caused disruption to many churches as men and women left their
own congregations through wartime service, but there were signs of clear
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