The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
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— <strong>The</strong> <strong>Death</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Christian</strong> <strong>Britain</strong> —<br />
history archives) was either unrepresentative or, more commonly, that my<br />
‘reading’ <strong>of</strong> the oral history and autobiographical material was biased or plain<br />
wrong. Hugh McLeod thinks that oral testimony by those born in the midtwentieth<br />
century and later does not show any <strong>of</strong> the signs <strong>of</strong> reticence and<br />
‘stunting’ <strong>of</strong> conceptions <strong>of</strong> religion that I have suggested. 23 Such difference<br />
<strong>of</strong> interpretation may arise from consulting different testimonies, or ‘reading’<br />
them in different ways, but I feel that the ‘stunting’ is a demonstrable and<br />
analytically fruitful feature in exploring long-term change in ‘religious’ testimony.<br />
Certainly, the incomprehension I explored between the oral history<br />
interviewer and interviewee struck a chord amongst a number <strong>of</strong> readers who<br />
felt that <strong>of</strong>ten the <strong>Christian</strong> position was dismissed because <strong>of</strong> lack <strong>of</strong> understanding<br />
on the part <strong>of</strong> the interviewer concerning the nature and content <strong>of</strong><br />
<strong>Christian</strong> concepts and ways <strong>of</strong> speaking. Two members <strong>of</strong> the clergy wrote<br />
to me acknowledging the validity <strong>of</strong> the notion <strong>of</strong> increasing ‘silence’ on religious<br />
matters in the language and personal narratives <strong>of</strong> people since the<br />
1950s. 24<br />
From the combination <strong>of</strong> discourse analysis and analysis <strong>of</strong> personal testimony<br />
emerged my notion <strong>of</strong> ‘discursive <strong>Christian</strong>ity’. This seems to have<br />
been hated by general readers as jargon, but welcomed by many scholars<br />
who found it one <strong>of</strong> the least problematic innovations in the book. 25 But<br />
even those who warmed to the concept may not have appreciated precisely<br />
what is meant by it in the context <strong>of</strong> modern cultural theory. Sarah Williams<br />
found that I defined discursive <strong>Christian</strong>ity in terms <strong>of</strong> a particular ideal<br />
type <strong>of</strong> evangelicalism – what she felt was a monolithic discourse that failed<br />
to look at differences within it. I agree it had that quality. But she was wrong<br />
to assume that I was looking ‘to what extent a particular church-based discourse<br />
was absorbed by the culture at large’. 26 I was not trying to do that<br />
at all. <strong>The</strong> discourse was not church-authored nor monopolised, but, in common<br />
with all dominant modern discourses, was one refined and hybridised<br />
by hundreds <strong>of</strong> independent <strong>Christian</strong> organisations, through thousands <strong>of</strong><br />
authors writing in church, independent and secular journals, novels and obituaries.<br />
Indeed, there is hardly an <strong>of</strong>ficial church source on the subject consulted<br />
in the book; I didn’t use sermons, and I didn’t use church policy<br />
documents. And the reason I did not use those things is that the <strong>Christian</strong><br />
discourse <strong>of</strong> gendered pieties was never formally formulated by the<br />
churches. Whilst some elements (notably male ‘heathens’) were broadcast<br />
by evangelicals in particular, such discourse was not a policy like church<br />
welfare or poor-relief policy. Nor is discourse the same as ideology.<br />
‘Discursive <strong>Christian</strong>ity’ is like neither <strong>of</strong> these. Discourses, as Foucault and<br />
modern theorists have defined them (and as they have been studied by hundreds<br />
<strong>of</strong> cultural historians) are to do with injunctions on conduct formed,<br />
circulated and hybridised in culture as a whole – popular culture, religious<br />
culture, political culture, but a cultural formation, not a policy one.<br />
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