The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
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— <strong>The</strong> 1960s and Secularisation —<br />
membership in the 1955–59 period for virtually all British Protestant<br />
churches. Marking the mood, religious revivals spread across <strong>Britain</strong>, aided<br />
by new technology and new forms. <strong>The</strong> Billy Graham crusades <strong>of</strong> 1954–56<br />
were especially noteworthy, producing mass audiences in football stadia,<br />
military barracks and nightly congregations <strong>of</strong> tens <strong>of</strong> thousands in large<br />
indoor arenas, with remoter congregations participating in cinemas and<br />
churches by the development <strong>of</strong> closed-circuit radio and television. Radio<br />
evangelism was also permitted in the early and mid-1950s on BBC radio.<br />
Accompanying all <strong>of</strong> this was a revival <strong>of</strong> tract distribution and district<br />
visiting on a scale not witnessed since the late Victorian and Edwardian<br />
periods. 14<br />
<strong>The</strong> demographics <strong>of</strong> those most affected by this resurgence <strong>of</strong> organised<br />
religion are most instructive. <strong>The</strong> gross numbers attending crusade<br />
events were enormous: 1.9 million people in the 1954 London crusade, and<br />
a further 1.2 million in the 1955 Scottish crusade. Yet, the numbers making<br />
‘decisions for Christ’ or coming forward for spiritual counselling were<br />
minute: only 36,431 (2.1 per cent) in London and 26,457 (2.2 per cent) in<br />
Scotland. <strong>The</strong> evidence is overwhelming that it was the young – those who<br />
were between 5 and 20 years <strong>of</strong> age at some point during the period 1945<br />
to 1956 – who participated most fully. And amongst this age group, it was<br />
girls and young women who made up those most deeply affected. Of those<br />
who ‘came forward’ in London in 1954, 65 per cent were women and over<br />
50 per cent were under nineteen years <strong>of</strong> age; in Scotland the following<br />
year 71 per cent were women, 73 per cent were under the age <strong>of</strong> thirty<br />
years, and 11 per cent were under twelve years. 15 <strong>The</strong> events were culturally<br />
extremely important. Children were accompanied by adults, especially<br />
women, many <strong>of</strong> whom were dressed in their best fur coats and tippets. 16<br />
Accompanying adults may even have discouraged children from going<br />
forward; one boy in his early teens at a packed Billy Graham meeting at<br />
Tynecastle football stadium in Edinburgh was prevented from going<br />
forward when his aunt put a restraining arm in his way, saying: ‘Don’t be<br />
so silly.’ 17 For many attenders these were spectacles in the midst <strong>of</strong> austerity;<br />
for a small number, especially the young, they induced considerable anxiety.<br />
This was a return to an older evangelical discursive state.<br />
It would be foolish to overstate the direct impact <strong>of</strong> church growth and<br />
revivalism upon Britons in the fifties. Few were converted and church<br />
membership started its decline in the two years after Billy Graham’s visits.<br />
But the sheer numbers attending were vast, and in this the events both<br />
reflected and reinforced discursive and institutional <strong>Christian</strong>ity. Attendances<br />
at the Greater London crusade in 1954 represented 21.2 per cent<br />
<strong>of</strong> the resident population, whilst attendances in Glasgow represented 73.7<br />
per cent <strong>of</strong> the city’s population. 18 Even allowing for significant travelling<br />
from outside areas (especially to Glasgow) and multiple attendances, the<br />
figures show that the events had a powerful resonance to 1950s <strong>Britain</strong>.<br />
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