The Death of Christian Britain

— Postscript —
an older concept of sociology, even civil religion) and in so doing, whilst the
decline of conventional forms and measure of religion has to be acknowledged,
there is a mutated vicarious religion surviving. 149
This search for new models of religion is something that is strongest and
most diverse amongst Christian scholars (both sociologists and historians).
Many are adhering to the concept championed by Charles Taylor of the rise
since 1945 of the popular and cultural search for religious ‘authenticity’, in
which tradition and rules in Christianity were interrogated (and in many
cases bypassed) in a drive which amongst other things spawned new age
spirituality both within and outwith the Christian churches. 150 In this, as
Mathew Guest has started to explore, the congregation itself has heightened
the drive for ‘authenticity’ – searching for new forms of meeting, ranging
from small house churches to larger ‘mega-churches’ – in which the liturgy
and experience resonated more with people than did tradition and older
ritual; this may even signal at one extreme the formation of the temporary
congregation in what is mostly a ‘churchless faith’. 151
Some sociologists of religion, such as Steve Bruce, remain sceptical of such
arguments. 152 And I do too. The extent and observable trajectory of de-
Christianisation in British society since the 1960s needs, it seems to me, to be
restated vigorously in the light of the most recent evidence. Churchgoers,
church members and religious rites of passage have all continued to dive since
2000, sustaining straight-line graph gradients of declension in formal
Christian religion in Britain. A study in 1999–2000 examining the religious
lives of three generations born in 1946, 1958 and 1970 showed a steep decline
in observance; by the turn of the century, only 8 per cent of 42-year-olds
attended church weekly, and 5 per cent of 30-year-olds, with more women
than men attending. 153
Finally, there is a moral dimension to Christian critiques of secularisation.
Some have sensed from my book that I took it that the loss of Christian
culture in the 1960s introduced a moral vacuum, or as some would have it
pejoratively as a ‘moral relativism’. Some commentators criticised me for not
attempting to tot up the moral losses of de-Christianisation – alleged to
include growing violence, crime, suspicion and selfishness; some accused me
of succumbing to ‘the relativistic spirit of our age . . . evident in the conduct
of Brown’s own argument’. 154 In this sense, some have falsely approved of
my thoughts, because I do not and did not subscribe to this ‘moral vacuum
hypothesis’. In the first place, I have argued elsewhere that relativism is a
moral good of enormous proportions – something to be gloried in, fought
for and utilised by the historian, and something whose absence poses enormous
dangers for democracy, reason and tolerance (including in the history
profession). 155 In the second place, even David Herbert, who otherwise has
a very good and insightful understanding of how my work relates to that
of others, has possibly misunderstood me on this issue. I do not see the
1960s as undermining morality or moral narratives in British or European
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