The Death of Christian Britain

— The Statistics of ‘Christian Progress’ 1800–1950 —
British working classes of the period 1800–1950 were significantly more
alienated from the churches or Christianity than the middle or upper
classes. 67 Instead, the interaction of gender with social class emerges as the
central determining factor. The privileging of female piety in evangelical
discourse underlay women’s centrality to churchgoing patterns, and the
resilience of that discourse ensured the continued strength of popular religiosity
in Britain until the 1950s. Certainly, there was change during the
period to the balance of ways in which that religiosity was expressed.
Churchgoing declined after the 1880s, but this was counterbalanced down
to the mid-twentieth century by the popularity of female-centred rites of
passage (marriage, baptism and churching), by children’s continued and
almost obligatory Sunday school enrolment, and by the affirmation of a
Christian identity conferred by church membership. Christian Britain
survived into the 1950s with a medley of well-observed rites, some of which
were stronger than they had been in 1800 or 1850. A vibrant Christian
identity remained central to British popular culture, retaining a capability
to explode in fulsome self-expression.
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