The Death of Christian Britain

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140 120 100 80 60 Percentage 40 20 0 1900 1906 1912 1918 1924 1930 1936 1942 1948 1954 1960 1966 1972 1978 1984 1990 1996 Church of Scotland: new communicants in year n as % of baptisms in n–18 Church of England: confirmations in year n as % of baptisms in n–14 Figure 8.1 The churches’ success in recruitment, 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. 167–70; Church of England Yearbook, 1984–2000; Church of Scotland Yearbook, 1971–99.
— The Death of Christian Britain — as a place to baptise their children, as an institution to send their children for Sunday school and church recruitment, and as a place for affiliation. The next generation, which came to adulthood in the 1970s, exhibited even more marked disaffiliation from church connection of any sort, and their children were raised in a domestic routine largely free from the intrusions of organised religion. The broken, abrupt, dismissive and disinterested responses of young oral interviewees of the 1980s become explicable. They just had no discursive, associational or institutional link with Christianity. If churchgoing, church recreation, church membership and religious rites of passage started declining in sequence between the 1880s and 1960s, their accelerated fall from the 1960s is probably starting a fifth phenomenon: the decline of Christian belief. Steve Bruce has recently suggested that from the 1960s faith itself – in God, in the afterlife, in the supernatural – has been in decline. 62 Certainly, some social-survey data seems to show not only decline in personal piety (private and daily prayer for instance), but also a fall in the proportion of people who claim to believe in the basic supernatural tenets of Christianity (such as belief in the existence of God, and the existence of heaven and hell). 63 For the generations growing up since the 1960s, new ethical concerns have emerged to dominate their moral culture – environmentalism, gender and racial equality, nuclear weapons and power, vegetarianism, the well-being of body and mind – issues with which Christianity and the Bible in particular are perceived as being wholly unconcerned and unconnected. At the same time, the social implications of conventional religious culture – respectability, sobriety, observance of social convention, observance of the Sabbath – have been rejected en bloc. Even where a moral goal appears to have survived (as with sobriety, especially in relation to driving), this has been remoralised in discourse in a form completely divorced from religiosity and Christian ethics. The result has been that the generation that grew up in the sixties was more dissimilar to the generation of its parents than in any previous century. The moral metamorphosis directly affected the churches’ domain: the decline of church marriage, the rise of divorce and remarriage, the rise of cohabitation in place of marriage (notably from the late 1970s), decreasing stigmatisation of illegitimacy, homosexuality and sexual licence, the growing recourse to birth control and abortion, and the irresistible social pressures for government liberalisation of restrictions on drinking, Sunday closing and recreation. The range of the changes in demography, personal relationships, political debate and moral concerns was so enormous that it did not so much challenge the Christian churches as bypass them. Of course, the new cultural environment affected the churches deeply, and transformed them fundamentally. Ecclesiastical change has been enormous: Vatican II and its aftermath, the Honest to God debate, the impact of protest against the Vietnam and Biafran wars, ecumenical discourse, feminism, the rise of environmentalism, and awareness of social and ‘North–South’ issues 190
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The Death of Christian Britain PRA
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‘For anyone who is genuinely inte
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The Death of Christian Britain Und
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Contents List of illustrations ix
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illustrations FIGURES 7.1 Church o
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— Acknowledgements — University
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note on oral history The oral-hist
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Chapter one Introduction This book
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— Introduction — no new credo,
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— Introduction — in 1997 even p
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— Introduction — 365 in 1981 an
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— Introduction — Historians hav
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— Introduction — effect of this
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— Introduction — or a family, o
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— Introduction — in ways no lon
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— The Problem with ‘Religious D
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Chapter three The Salvation Economy
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— The Salvation Economy — It wa
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— The Salvation Economy — evang
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— The Salvation Economy — with
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— The Salvation Economy — and P
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— The Salvation Economy — centr
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— The Salvation Economy — famil
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— The Salvation Economy — Indee
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— The Salvation Economy — and t
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— The Salvation Economy — with
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— The Salvation Economy — broug
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— The Salvation Economy — Every
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— Women in Discourse and Narrativ
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— Men in Discourse and Narrative
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Chapter six Personal Testimony and
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— Personal Testimony and Religion
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Page 156 and 157: — Personal Testimony and Religion
Page 162 and 163: Chapter seven ‘Unimpeachable Witn
Page 164 and 165: — The Statistics of ‘Christian
Page 182 and 183: Percentage — The Statistics of
Page 184 and 185: 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 Percentage Sc
Page 188 and 189: — The 1960s and Secularisation
Page 210 and 211: Chapter nine The End of a Long Stor
Page 212 and 213: — The End of a Long Story — the
Page 214 and 215: — The End of a Long Story — Can
Page 216 and 217: Chapter Ten Postscript: the mortali
Page 218 and 219: — Postscript — intellectual lev
Page 220 and 221: — Postscript — Each can overdo
Page 222 and 223: — Postscript — But Williams the
Page 224 and 225: — Postscript — aged by sociolog
Page 226 and 227: — Postscript — secularisation:
Page 228 and 229: — Postscript — Despite the reac
Page 230 and 231: — Postscript — very much restri
Page 232 and 233: — Postscript — Scotland’s ris
Page 234 and 235: — Postscript — But some Christi
Page 236 and 237: — Postscript — filed Protestant
Page 238 and 239: — Postscript — maturing of femi
Page 240 and 241: — Postscript — the oral contrac
Page 242 and 243: — Postscript — grammar school f
Page 244 and 245: — Postscript — Church confirmat
Page 246 and 247: — Postscript — and the churches
Page 248 and 249: — Postscript — an older concept
Page 250: — Postscript — Christianity has
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— Notes to pages 26-28 — aglow
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— Notes to pages 35-41 — 3 THE
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— Notes to pages 48-54 — 41 Quo
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— Notes to pages 59-64 — 7 B.L.
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— Notes to pages 71-79 — D. Ski
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— Notes to pages 86-90 — 126 Ib
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— Notes to pages 96-100 — 47 R.
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— Notes to pages 104-112 — 98 C
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— Notes to pages 118-128 — 10 Q
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— Notes to pages 133-139 — 75 S
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— Notes to pages 144-149 — betw
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— Notes to pages 154-157 — vol.
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— Notes to pages 164-173 — 62 C
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— Notes to pages 176-185 — 32 M
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— Notes to pages 194-201 — 2 On
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— Notes to pages 205-209 — 29 S
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— Notes to pages 213-216 — 70 R
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— Sources — ---- , About My Fat
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— Sources — Reports to the Gene
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— Sources — Wilson, J.H., A Bri
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— Sources — ---- , ‘Popular c
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— Sources — Cressy, D., Birth,
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— Sources — ---- , ‘Seculariz
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— Sources — Layton-Henry, Z., T
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— Sources — ---- , Reconstructi
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— Sources — Chadwick, R.E., ‘
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Campbeltown 20-1 Camporesi, Piero 1
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Girl Guides 131 Girl’s Own Paper
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Plymouth Brethren see Brethren poet
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women: and evangelicalism 42; and f
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The Death of Christian Britain

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