The Death of Christian Britain

— Notes to pages 213–216 —
70 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. 164–5.
71 The distinctive pattern of religious decline in Wales is raised in Brown, Religion
and Society, pp. 155–7, and Morris, ‘Strange death,’ p. 974. See also the sociological
case studies in P. Chambers, Religion, Secularization and Social Change
in Wales, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2005.
72 Currie et al., Churches and Churchgoers, pp. 134–5.
73 McLeod, Religious Crisis, p. 38.
74 This argument is further explored in Brown, Religion and Society, pp. 177–223.
75 David Voas thinks this is a freak ‘spike’ and that the decline is really from the
1930s. But so many data, measuring different religious indicators, ‘spike’ in the
1950s suggesting something far more than a freak baptism figure. D. Voas,
‘Intermarriage and the demography of secularization’, British Journal of
Sociology, vol. 54, 2003, pp. 83–108, at p. 89.
76 McLeod, Religious Crisis, p. 40.
77 A.D. Gilbert, Religion and Society in Industrial England: Church, Chapel and
Social Change, 1740–1914, London and New York, Longman, 1976, pp. 188–9.
78 Some oral history evidence from the Netherlands tends to suggest that the
1950s were ‘more religious and churchly’ than the 1930s. See P. van Rooden,
‘Oral history en het vreemde sterven van het Nederlands christendom’,
Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, vol.
119, 2004, pp. 524–51, available online as ‘Oral history and the strange demise
of Dutch Christianity’, at www.xs4all.nl/~pvrooden/Peter/publicaties/oral%20
history.htm.
79 M. Grimley, ‘The religion of Englishness: Puritanism, providentialism, and
“national character”, 1918–1945’, Journal of British Studies, vol. 46, 2007,
pp. 884–906, at p. 906. See also M. Grimley, ‘Civil society and the clerisy:
Christian elites and national culture, c.1930–1950’, in J. Harris (ed.), Civil Society
in British History, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 231–47.
80 Figures calculated from data in Z. Layton-Henry, The Politics of Immigration:
Immigration, ‘Race’ and ‘Race’ Relations in Post-war Britain, Oxford, Blackwell,
1992, p. 13.
81 D. Hilliard, ‘The religious crisis of the 1960s: the experience of the Australian
churches’, Journal of Religious History, vol. 21, 1997; P. van Rooden, ‘Secularisation,
deChristianisation and reChristianisation in the Netherlands’, in H.
Lehmann (ed.), Dechristianisierung und Rechristianisierung im neuzeitlichen
Europa und in Nordamerika: Bilanz und Perspektiven der Forschung:
Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte 130, Göttingen,
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997, pp. 131–53, and online at www.xs4all.nl/
~pvrooden/Peter/publicaties/1997a.htm.
82 Pasture, ‘Christendom’, p. 113.
83 S. Macdonald, ‘Death of Christian Canada? Do Canadian church statistics support
Callum Brown’s timing of church decline?’, Historical Papers: Canadian
Society of Church History, 2006, pp. 135–56; M. Gauvreau and O. Hubert,
‘Beyond Church history: recent developments in the history of religion in
Canada’, in M. Gauvreau and O. Hubert (eds), The Churches and Social Order
in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century Canada, Montreal, McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 2006.
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