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 />
and going on to challenge, oppressive religious backgrounds. 133 In England,<br />
there is also testimony to the religious background <strong>of</strong> the women’s liberation<br />
movement. Some feminists had difficult experiences <strong>of</strong> religion in their<br />
youth, including Sheila Rowbotham (who was sent by her Methodist-hating<br />
father to a Methodist boarding school in North Yorkshire) and Lorna<br />
Sage (who at 16 years <strong>of</strong> age was destined for a Church <strong>of</strong> England home<br />
for unmarried mothers). 134 Other feminist autobiographies speak <strong>of</strong> the<br />
guilt <strong>Christian</strong>ity induced in their youth in the 1950s. 135 Issues with their<br />
<strong>Christian</strong> upbringing in the 1940s and 1950s were an important backdrop<br />
to many <strong>of</strong> those who became feminists in the 1960s and 1970s.<br />
All <strong>of</strong> this leaves issues to do with men and masculinity. Though a few<br />
reviewers felt that this book concentrated too much on femininity and too<br />
little on masculinity, parallels outside <strong>of</strong> Europe have been found for the<br />
account <strong>of</strong> how in Victorian discourse men were expected to submit to female<br />
religiosity. 136 But the outcomes <strong>of</strong> gender interactions in the churches may<br />
be complex. In Canada, the Catholic Church lost ground in Quebec after<br />
1965, according to Gauvreau, because <strong>of</strong> a feminist current within Quebec<br />
Catholicism to which conservative forces within the church responded by<br />
insisting after 1945 on radically different gender roles and destinies, fostering<br />
‘a pr<strong>of</strong>ound sense <strong>of</strong> cultural rupture and opposition between men<br />
and women’. 137 Certainly, the old truism that <strong>Christian</strong>ity was a ‘Ladies’<br />
Religion’ (see page 93) still has resonance in the twenty-first century; one<br />
commentator in an Anglican evangelical journal observed that ‘men <strong>of</strong>ten<br />
remain programmed not to habitually attend church’. 138 But since the 1960s,<br />
the loss <strong>of</strong> the pious femininity in <strong>Christian</strong> discourse in <strong>Britain</strong> has left something<br />
<strong>of</strong> a vacuum, being filled from the late 1980s by a greater appearance <strong>of</strong><br />
masculinity expressed as militancy – something happening not just in<br />
<strong>Christian</strong>ity. 139 <strong>The</strong> outcome <strong>of</strong> this is unclear, but the greater expression <strong>of</strong><br />
male religiosity has become something <strong>of</strong> a trend.<br />
IS DEATH THE ONLY STORY? RELIGION IN<br />
MUTATION<br />
<strong>The</strong>re is a growing trend amongst European <strong>Christian</strong> scholars to deny that<br />
secularisation is happening. <strong>The</strong>y generally admit that churchgoing, church<br />
membership and most rites <strong>of</strong> passage (with the exception <strong>of</strong> <strong>Christian</strong><br />
funerals) have been declining greatly for forty years. But they have started<br />
to become very creative in explaining this as anything but secularisation.<br />
Could there be other stories than ‘the death <strong>of</strong> <strong>Christian</strong> <strong>Britain</strong>’, and do<br />
they conflict with it?<br />
This book did not consider in any substantive way other ‘religious narratives’<br />
<strong>of</strong> the 1960s and after. It did not reflect in any depth, for example, on<br />
the rise <strong>of</strong> new age spirituality and its impact upon traditional <strong>Christian</strong>ity<br />
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