The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
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— <strong>The</strong> Problem with ‘Religious Decline’ —<br />
or local power <strong>of</strong> the state church: the exertion <strong>of</strong> influence in poor relief,<br />
education, moral control and so on. As established churches, the Church<br />
<strong>of</strong> England and the Church <strong>of</strong> Scotland exerted their power most effectively<br />
over the people directly, with the parish church the focus <strong>of</strong><br />
considerable formal control over parishioners’ lives. <strong>The</strong> rise <strong>of</strong> Methodism<br />
and Protestant dissenting churches in the eighteenth and early nineteenth<br />
centuries challenged that power and threatened the status <strong>of</strong> the vicar or<br />
minister. 3 Religious apathy or indifference also threatened that power, but<br />
only if the numbers <strong>of</strong> people got out <strong>of</strong> hand. Secularism, the concerted<br />
attachment to religious unbelief, was a similar threat. But <strong>of</strong> the three, established<br />
churchmen feared dissenters the most because they vastly<br />
outnumbered secularists and because they gave the indifferent the excuse<br />
not to submit to parish authority.<br />
If established churchmen had immediate cause to shout loudly about<br />
religious decline, their message had a resonance with others. <strong>The</strong> ‘establishment’<br />
– the political and social elites – were frequently heard joining<br />
in the clamour. Landowners relied on a combination <strong>of</strong> economic power<br />
(over tenants, tradesmen and the families reliant on them) and social power,<br />
and the latter depended significantly on the symbolic role <strong>of</strong> the parish<br />
church. <strong>The</strong> parish church and the manor house were the twin seats <strong>of</strong><br />
local power, and the vicar and the lord or laird were the joint holders <strong>of</strong><br />
that power. <strong>The</strong> parish churches were heavily dependent on the landowners<br />
for construction and maintenance, and the clergyman was usually selected<br />
by a member <strong>of</strong> the landowning classes (or by the Crown, which meant<br />
the same), and the minister relied for income derived from English tithes<br />
or Scottish teinds upon the produce <strong>of</strong> the land. 4 Church and land were<br />
tied together, whilst in towns municipality and church were also closely,<br />
though more complexly, bound. This made Sunday service immensely<br />
symbolic <strong>of</strong> local power. <strong>The</strong> English lord sat in his front-row boxed pew<br />
(and his Scottish equivalent in the ‘laird’s l<strong>of</strong>t’ at the back or side <strong>of</strong> the<br />
church), the clergyman was in his pulpit, and the parishioners sat in ranked<br />
pews allocated, rented or bought according to social and economic status. 5<br />
To attend church was to participate in a parade <strong>of</strong> power, to submit symbolically<br />
to God and to Mammon. <strong>The</strong> two were not at odds, but in cahoots.<br />
Any threat to the one was a threat to the other, and for this reason the<br />
landed elites had immediate cause to wish their people in obedience to the<br />
church as they would have them in obedience to themselves. 6<br />
This system started to crumble in the eighteenth century. <strong>The</strong> disintegration<br />
was a slow process, and extended in some places until the middle<br />
decades <strong>of</strong> the nineteenth century. In a few places, such as the Highlands,<br />
Hebrides and Northern Isles, the eighteenth century actually witnessed the<br />
rise <strong>of</strong> the parish state as these inaccessible areas were brought within the<br />
national church and the national economy. 7 But elsewhere, <strong>Britain</strong> was<br />
being changed by new wealth, by increasing trading and manufacturing,<br />
17