The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
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— Notes to pages 185–193 —<br />
56 W. Foley, A Child in the Forest, London, Futura, 1977; L. Beckwith, <strong>The</strong> Hills<br />
is Lonely, <strong>The</strong> Sea for Breakfast, London, Arrow, 1972, several others about<br />
the Highlands, and her About My Father’s Business, London, Arrow, 1973<br />
about Cheshire; F. Thompson, Larkrise to Candleford, orig. 1945, Harmondsworth,<br />
Penguin, 1973.<br />
57 V. Massey, One Child’s War, London, BBC, 1983; E. Hall, Canary Girls and<br />
Stockpots, Luton, 1977; M. Hobbs, Born to Struggle, London, 1973.<br />
58 C. Taylor, Sources <strong>of</strong> the Self: <strong>The</strong> Making <strong>of</strong> the Modern Identity, Cambridge,<br />
Mass., Harvard University Press, 1989, pp. 491–2; and advance publicity sheet<br />
for Charles Taylor’s Gifford Lectures at the University <strong>of</strong> Edinburgh, April–<br />
May 1999.<br />
59 L. Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory: <strong>The</strong> Cultural Experience <strong>of</strong> the Turin<br />
Working Class, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987; R. Hutton, ‘<strong>The</strong><br />
English Reformation and the evidence <strong>of</strong> folklore’, Past and Present, 1995,<br />
no. 148, p. 114.<br />
60 R. Towler, <strong>The</strong> Need for Certainty: A Sociological Study <strong>of</strong> Conventional<br />
Religion, London, RKP, 1984.<br />
61 See for instance J. Green, Days in the Life: Voices from the English<br />
Underground 1961–1971, London, Pimlico, 1998.<br />
62 S. Bruce, ‘Religion in <strong>Britain</strong> at the close <strong>of</strong> the 20th century: a challenge to the<br />
silver lining perspective’, Journal <strong>of</strong> Contemporary Religion, 1996, vol. 11, 269–71.<br />
63 (A. Robertson), Lifestyle Survey, Edinburgh, Church <strong>of</strong> Scotland, 1987.<br />
64 See for instance H. McLeod, Religion and the People <strong>of</strong> Western Europe<br />
1789–1989, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997, 134–43; P.A. Welsby, A<br />
History <strong>of</strong> the Church <strong>of</strong> England 1945–1980, Oxford, Oxford University Press,<br />
1984, pp. 97–106; D. Hilliard, ‘<strong>The</strong> religious crisis <strong>of</strong> the 1960s: the experience<br />
<strong>of</strong> the Australian churches’, Journal <strong>of</strong> Religious History, 1997, vol. 21; I.<br />
Machin, ‘British churches and moral change in the 1960s’, in W.M. Jacob and<br />
N. Yates (eds), Religion and Society in Northern Europe since the Reformation,<br />
Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1993; S. Gilley and W.J. Sheils (eds), A History <strong>of</strong><br />
Religion in <strong>Britain</strong>, Oxford, Blackwell, 1994, esp. pp. 467–521.<br />
65 In Falkirk in the 1960s only 40 per cent <strong>of</strong> non-churchgoing teenagers expressed<br />
a belief in God compared to 75 per cent for churchgoers; boys were even more<br />
secularised, with bizarre scores <strong>of</strong> 37 per cent for churchgoers and 47 per cent<br />
for non-churchgoers. P.L. Sissons, <strong>The</strong> Social Significance <strong>of</strong> Church Membership<br />
in the Burgh <strong>of</strong> Falkirk, Edinburgh, Church <strong>of</strong> Scotland, 1973, p. 325.<br />
9 THE END OF A LONG STORY<br />
1 <strong>The</strong> most recent and jarring example <strong>of</strong> this failure is Steve Bruce, who writes:<br />
‘Social historians <strong>of</strong> religion disagree about the precise shape <strong>of</strong> the curve [<strong>of</strong><br />
religious growth and decline] and the placing <strong>of</strong> the peak, but, whatever objection<br />
they may raise to this or that measure, they are agreed that there are now<br />
far fewer church members and church-goers than there were in 1950, 1900,<br />
1850, or 1800.’ S. Bruce, Religion in the Modern World: From Cathedrals to<br />
Cults, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 31.<br />
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