The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
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— Postscript —<br />
grammar school for girls in Stockport, quickly fell into the sexually adventurous<br />
atmosphere <strong>of</strong> the town – including the homosexual culture surrounding<br />
King’s College. But, when she and her boyfriend moved to London<br />
in 1954, it was quite impossible to gain lodgings together: ‘no landlady would<br />
rent a flat, no hotel would let a room to a couple which hadn’t evidence <strong>of</strong><br />
marriage’. 120 Even in metropolitan, avant garde London, which was to be the<br />
forefront <strong>of</strong> sexual liberation in the 1960s, it was quite impossible to share<br />
lodgings with a man whilst unmarried in 1954 and 1955, and this was also the<br />
case in Glasgow. 121 <strong>The</strong> repressive moral environment <strong>of</strong> the 1950s was<br />
inescapable, except, it seems, in Oxbridge. For the majority, churchgoing and<br />
pre-marital sex were two opposing life choices. This seems to be supported<br />
by the result <strong>of</strong> correlating the illegitimacy rate against Anglican Easter Day<br />
communicants 1947–73 (the data from Figure 10.1), which produces a figure<br />
<strong>of</strong> –0.8081, suggesting a strong inverse link between these two variables.<br />
Thus, there is every reason to believe that sexual activity and churchgoing<br />
had a causative connection; the moral and ethical climate in which churchgoers<br />
moved before the 1960s tended to make them more likely to not have<br />
sexual intercourse until marriage or, at the least, until a pregnancy might run<br />
to term after a wedding date.<br />
But things were changing after 1960. In Figure 10.1, there is a very marked<br />
increase in illegitimacy from 1960 to 1968 (at the very same time that Easter<br />
Day communicants start to decline as a proportion <strong>of</strong> population). Hera<br />
Cook rightly takes this as indicative <strong>of</strong> rising pre-marital sexual intercourse.<br />
By 1968, the rate <strong>of</strong> 8.5 per cent was the highest figure for the whole century,<br />
with the exception <strong>of</strong> one year, 1945. <strong>The</strong> level <strong>of</strong> sexual activity was<br />
now into new territory. <strong>The</strong>n in 1969 the surge halts – with a figure <strong>of</strong> 8.4<br />
per cent at which it stays until 1972, when the figures start to rise again. <strong>The</strong><br />
cause <strong>of</strong> this was the removal in 1968 <strong>of</strong> the BMA’s restriction upon British<br />
doctors prescribing the pill to unmarried women. <strong>The</strong> flattening <strong>of</strong> the line<br />
in this graph is the product <strong>of</strong> the arrival <strong>of</strong> the pill. In short, the sexual revolution<br />
in relation to pre-marital sex was well underway by 1968, before the<br />
pill. <strong>The</strong> pill did not start, did not instigate, the surge in pre-marital sex. It<br />
was already happening.<br />
What was going on had a pr<strong>of</strong>ound impact on organised <strong>Christian</strong>ity.<br />
By 1968, the newspapers and the television screens <strong>of</strong> <strong>Britain</strong> were full <strong>of</strong><br />
commentary from conservative <strong>Christian</strong>s, clergy and laity alike, about the<br />
rise <strong>of</strong> permissiveness. <strong>The</strong> ‘promiscuous girl’ was at the forefront <strong>of</strong> discussion<br />
– including in the Church Times, where the leader pages contained<br />
almost weekly items on churchmen criticising sexual behaviour. 122<br />
<strong>The</strong> control <strong>of</strong> female sexual activity must be the subject <strong>of</strong> a different<br />
paper, but I adhere to Linda Woodhead’s statements in this regard. She has<br />
written that it is only in the modern period that sex has ‘assumed such<br />
central and universal prominence in a <strong>Christian</strong> agenda’, a reaction against<br />
permissiveness, the privatisation <strong>of</strong> <strong>Christian</strong>ity, and the historical <strong>Christian</strong><br />
225