The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
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— Postscript —<br />
Church confirmations per 1,000 <strong>of</strong> population over twelve years amongst men<br />
and women. This shows two important things. Firstly, it indicates that the<br />
growth in church members in the Church <strong>of</strong> England between 1948 and 1960<br />
was fuelled by young women. In those years, female confirmations rose from<br />
33.6 to 40.9 per 1,000 population (a rise <strong>of</strong> 28 per cent); by contrast, male confirmations<br />
were static at 27.3 and 27.6, showing no meaningful growth whatsoever.<br />
This therefore buttresses considerably the case for young women’s<br />
responsiveness in the 1950s to the last and ferocious blast <strong>of</strong> the traditional<br />
discourse on femininity and piety. Secondly, though from 1960 to 1974<br />
female confirmations fell marginally slower than men’s (a drop <strong>of</strong> 52 per cent<br />
compared with 56 per cent), the male figures showed a continuous decline<br />
since at least 1934 (<strong>of</strong> 61 per cent) whilst female decline only started in<br />
1960–62. 130 A haemorrhage <strong>of</strong> male recruitment had thus been established<br />
for three decades prior to the 1960s, whilst women’s recruitment actually<br />
grew over that period. This was creating an ever-increasing imbalance<br />
towards a ‘woman’s church’ in the Anglican communion in England. Thus,<br />
when decline started, it was the change in female recruitment that was the<br />
significant change, not that in male recruitment (as there had been no change).<br />
This is shown by correlating confirmations against Church <strong>of</strong> England Easter<br />
Day communicants during 1950–70, which produces a higher figure for<br />
women’s confirmations (0.9436) than for men’s (0.8929). 131 In short, figures<br />
for new female recruits correlate better than male recruits with the rise and<br />
then the fall <strong>of</strong> Anglican Church membership in the 1950s and 1960s. This<br />
tends to suggest very strongly that the wider collapse <strong>of</strong> church recruitment,<br />
churchgoing and church membership in the early 1960s was triggered by the<br />
sudden appearance in 1960–62 <strong>of</strong> female defection from church recruitment,<br />
not men’s thirty-year-long continued decline.<br />
By the early 1970s, feminism was clearly an important factor in the continued<br />
changes to women’s lives and identities in <strong>Britain</strong>. Some women<br />
became alienated from organised <strong>Christian</strong>ity as a result <strong>of</strong> their involvement<br />
in the women’s movement, but the far greater impact was to put<br />
many women <strong>of</strong>f from joining churches. Gerald Parsons has commented<br />
that conversion ‘does not appear to be a particularly convincing way <strong>of</strong><br />
describing the decline <strong>of</strong> the core religious culture <strong>of</strong> <strong>Britain</strong>’, whilst Hugh<br />
McLeod has gone further to state from his review <strong>of</strong> oral history archives<br />
that ‘there is no evidence that involvement in the women’s movement had<br />
been the cause <strong>of</strong> their rejection <strong>of</strong> <strong>Christian</strong>ity’. 132 But this evidence is growing.<br />
In Scotland, women attracted to feminism in 1968–75 <strong>of</strong>ten experienced<br />
something akin to the character <strong>of</strong> a conversion experience, and many<br />
came from strong religious backgrounds (<strong>Christian</strong> and Jewish particularly,<br />
including some former nuns) which they were leaving behind. Women’s<br />
consciousness raising groups, the foundational organisation <strong>of</strong> feminism in<br />
the early 1970s, were based on the idea <strong>of</strong> ‘bearing your testimony’, which<br />
was brought to the movement by some who were intentionally rejecting,<br />
227