The Death of Christian Britain

— Notes to pages 7–10 —
15 Statistics in this paragraph are from, or calculated from, R. Currie, A. Gilbert
and L. Horsley, Churches and Churchgoers: Patterns of Church Growth in the
British Isles since 1700, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1977, pp. 223–9; Population
Trends, 95 (1999), p. 57; Annual Report of the Registrar General, Scotland,
1997; Church of England Yearbook, 2000; Church of Scotland Yearbook, 1999;
C.G. Brown, ‘A revisionist approach to religious change’, in Bruce (ed.),
Religion and Modernization, pp. 40–9.
16 Key texts in the ‘pessimist’ school are: E.R. Wickham, Church and People in
an Industrial City, London, Lutterworth, 1957; K.S. Inglis, Churches and the
Working Classes in Victorian England, London, RKP, 1963; B. Wilson, Religion
in Secular Society, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1966; P.L. Berger, The Social
Reality of Religion, London, Longman, 1969; O. Chadwick, The Secularization
of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1975; Currie et al., Churches and Churchgoers; D. Martin, A
General Theory of Secularization, Oxford, Basil Blackwood, 1978; A.D.
Gilbert, The Making of Post-Christian Britain: A History of the Secularization
of Modern Society, London, Longman, 1980; S. Bruce, Religion in the Modern
World: From Cathedrals to Cults, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996.
17 Amongst specialists, see R. Wallis and S. Bruce, ‘Secularization: the orthodox
model’, and B.R. Wilson, ‘Reflections on a many sided controversy’, in Bruce
(ed.), Religion and Modernization; A.D. Gilbert, ‘Secularization and the future,’
in S. Gilley and W.J. Sheils (eds), A History of Religion in Britain, Oxford,
Basil Blackwell, 1994.
18 H. McLeod, Class and Religion in the Late Victorian City, London, Croom
Helm, 1974, and J. Obelkevich, Religion and Rural Society: South Lindsey
1825–1875, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1976; E.T. Davies, Religion in the
Industrial Revolution in South Wales, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1965;
R. Moore, Pit-men, Preachers and Politics: The Effects of Methodism in a
Durham Mining Community, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1974;
and S. Yeo, Religion and Voluntary Organisations in Crisis, London, Croom
Helm, 1976.
19 Leading the way was J. Cox, The English Churches in a Secular Society:
Lambeth 1870–1930, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1982, followed by
C.G. Brown, ‘Did urbanisation secularise Britain?’, Urban History Yearbook,
1988; R. Gill, Competing Convictions, London, SCM, 1989; C.G. Brown,
‘A revisionist approach to religious change’, in Bruce (ed.), Religion and
Modernization; M. Smith, Religion in Industrial Society: Oldham and Saddleworth
1740–1865, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994; C.G. Brown, ‘The
mechanism of religious growth in urban societies: British cities since the eighteenth
century,’ in H. McLeod (ed.), European Religion in the Age of Great
Cities 1830–1930, London, Routledge, 1995; and S.J.D. Green, Religion in the
Age of Decline: Organisation and Experience in Industrial Yorkshire 1870–1920,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
20 K.J. Christiano, Religious Diversity and Social Change: American Cities
1890–1906, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987; R. Finke and R.
Stark, ‘Evaluating the evidence: religious economies and sacred canopies,’
American Sociological Review, 1989, vol. 54; R. Finke, ‘An unsecular America’,
in Bruce (ed.), Religion and Modernization; L. Hölscher, ‘Secularization and
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