The Death of Christian Britain

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— The 1960s and Secularisation — Table 8.1 Confirmations in the Church of England, 1900–97 (a) Numbers of confirmations 1900–97: 1900 181,154 1960 190,713 1910 227,135 1970 113,005 1920 199,377 1980 97,620 1930 144,323 1990 59,618 1940 142,294 1997 40,881 1950 142,294 (b) Confirmations by sex per 1,000 of population aged 12–20 years: Males Females Males Females 1956 28.1 40.8 1968 16.9 26.1 1957 n/a n/a 1969 15.9 24.8 1958 27.6 40.6 1970 15.3 24.2 1959 n/a n/a 1971 14.6 23.4 1960 27.6 40.9 1972 13.8 22.4 1961 26.7 39.3 1973 12.8 20.7 1962 24.7 36.7 1974 12.1 19.6 1963 22.0 32.0 1975 12.0 19.1 1964 20.7 31.3 1976 11.3 18.3 1965 19.1 29.5 1977 11.1 18.4 1966 18.8 27.8 1978 11.1 18.6 1967 17.7 27.6 1979 10.7 18.2 Sources: R. Currie, A. Gilbert and L. Horsley, Churches and Churchgoers: Patterns of Church Growth in the British Isles since 1700, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1977, pp. 167–8; Yearbook of the Church of England, 1974, 1980–2000, and 1984, Statistical Supplement, p. 41. (including the recent church involvement in the movement to eradicate Third World debt). 64 These developments have been important, but have had little success in putting the Christian back into British public morality. Since the 1960s, the churches have become increasingly irrelevant in the new cultural and ethical landscape. One example is hostility to abortion, which between the 1960s and late 1980s was perceived almost exclusively as a Christian (and mainly Roman Catholic) restatement of ‘traditional’ values, thereby uniting socialists, liberals and feminists as an act of faith in the new secular morality (in this case, of a woman’s right to choose); by the 1990s, anti-abortion sentiment was developing as a secular and close to environmentalist credo in which the ‘sacredness’ of life should be protected from human interference just as the planet required protection from global warming. The greatest impact of the dechristianisation of British morality has been upon women. The residue of Christian female piety, which by the 191
— The Death of Christian Britain — late 1940s and 1950s had been deposited in the extremely vigorous representation of the respectable wife, mother and young girl, was washed away in the cultural revolution of the 1960s. British women secularised the construction of their identity, and the churches started to lose them. The exodus started with the young. As Table 8.1(a) shows, in the Church of England the number of confirmations (usually occurring between the ages of 12 and 18) was still extremely strong as late as 1960 and then started to fall steeply and unremittingly. Table 8.1(b) indicates that female confirmations were always higher than males, but it was in 1961–3 that the proportion of girls taking this ceremony started to fall steeply, halving in the period 1961–74. Even though male confirmations were also falling (and indeed at a faster rate), the critical fact here is that female confirmation was still extremely high in the 1950s whilst male confirmation was already low and falling. Male alienation from religion certainly seems to have been more progressive than female alienation, and men’s membership links with churches in the twentieth century may have been held in place in large part as a propriety – in deference to the more resilient religiosity of wives and mothers. Men were partners to religious respectability; when women no longer needed to be ‘chaperoned’ to church, and indeed did not want to go at all, men no longer had ‘to keep up appearances’ in the pews. Victorian evangelicals were probably right: when women stopped identifying with church, so did men. The British schoolgirl of the mid-1950s faced playground taunts for proclaiming atheism; by contrast, the ‘atheist’ schoolgirl of the mid-1960s was rapidly becoming the norm. 65 Freed from religious constraints on ‘female respectability’, the secularisation of the form of marriage and child baptism (domestic occasions orchestrated conventionally by women) arose from the early 1970s onwards by negotiation between females of different generations (principally between mother and adult daughter). The religious alienation of the next generation of children followed. If this analysis is correct, the keys to understanding secularisation in Britain are the simultaneous de-pietisation of femininity and the de-feminisation of piety from the 1960s. 192
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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 158 and 159: — Personal Testimony and Religion
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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 206 and 207: 140 120 100 80 60 Percentage 40 20
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
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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
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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 35-41 — 3 THE
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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 — Norman, E.R., Churc
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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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