The Death of Christian Britain

Percentage
— The Statistics of ‘Christian Progress’ 1800–1950 —
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Church of Scotland 1900 98 and United
Free Church 1900 28 which united in 1929
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Figure 7.2 Church of Scotland communicants as proportion of Scottish
population, 1900–98
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. 133–5; Church of Scotland Yearbook, 1971–99; B.R. Mitchell and P. Deane,
Abstract of British Historical Statistics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1962,
pp. 12–13; Registrar General for Scotland, Annual Reports, 1971–98.
recovery, especially after 1945. 63 In short, despite problems in some
denominations (notably the Methodists), the first half of the twentieth
century witnessed no great haemorrhage of church membership in Britain.
This creates a picture of a twentieth-century society in which churchgoing
was seemingly in decline whilst church affiliation was much more
resilient: a society of religious belonging without high worshipping. However,
the crude data are partly misleading. The oral evidence considered in
the previous chapter showed that church attendance figures were going
down, not because individuals were shedding their church connection,
but because they were going less frequently. Various factors were at work
here. Twicing, or going to church twice on a Sunday, was clearly very high
in the Edwardian period, with as many as 39 per cent of London morning
church attenders also going in the evening. This habit was already in
decline and continued to decline. In addition, there is clear evidence
of a growth of attendance at minor denominations in the inter-war
period, with evangelical missions, the Brethren and unaligned congregations
benefiting considerably. This is clear from Scotland where minor
165