The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
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— <strong>The</strong> <strong>Death</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Christian</strong> <strong>Britain</strong> —<br />
represent a people on the move spatially and socially. Evangelicalism in the<br />
eighteenth century ‘came out <strong>of</strong> the closet’ as an expansive force, a partner<br />
to economic individualism, and the spiritual manifestation <strong>of</strong> a new<br />
economic order.<br />
Evangelicalism’s link with the Enlightenment was very important. For<br />
one thing, it made religion a ‘rational’ matter <strong>of</strong> study – not merely<br />
Bible studies and theology, but conversionism itself. <strong>The</strong> Enlightenment<br />
made the conversion and the religious revival objects for study. Instances<br />
<strong>of</strong> revival became studied; cases were recorded, written down, the age, sex<br />
and occupation <strong>of</strong> the converted registered, the economic, social and even<br />
meteorological circumstances <strong>of</strong> the revival recorded. Preachers and clergy<br />
started writing diaries which detailed the religious experiences <strong>of</strong> their<br />
flocks. <strong>The</strong>se were like laboratory reports recording times, dates and<br />
observable physical symptoms. <strong>The</strong>y were written up into learned articles<br />
and books which amounted to a pathology <strong>of</strong> the conversion experience. 8<br />
This made the study <strong>of</strong> religion a social science with clergy and preachers<br />
themselves the social scientists. It was now a measurable phenomenon, with<br />
numbers <strong>of</strong> ‘the saved’ <strong>of</strong> immense interest. <strong>The</strong> Methodists were the first<br />
to produce, from 1767, reliable annual statistics <strong>of</strong> members in each <strong>of</strong> the<br />
constituent countries <strong>of</strong> the British Isles. 9 Other denominations were much<br />
slower – between 80 and 120 years slower – in reaching the same standard,<br />
but other forms <strong>of</strong> religious statistics started to become collected with<br />
increasing mania from the 1790s: parish membership data, numbers <strong>of</strong><br />
people without church seats, numbers <strong>of</strong> pews per head <strong>of</strong> population,<br />
numbers <strong>of</strong> Sunday school attenders, and so on. Numbers started to<br />
represent a new power for the churches, especially for the dissenters and<br />
for the evangelicals who promoted voluntary organisations committed to<br />
evangelisation at home and abroad. 10 Evangelicalism exerted its power by<br />
broadcasting rising statistics <strong>of</strong> ‘the saved’ which, in a context <strong>of</strong> rapid<br />
population growth, was almost inevitable. But in the simple statistical<br />
methods <strong>of</strong> the time, evangelicalism entered almost a century <strong>of</strong> continuous<br />
euphoria with rising numbers.<br />
<strong>The</strong> power being exerted by evangelical numbers was a discursive power.<br />
Religious statistics divided people: into church members and non-church<br />
members, churchgoers and non-churchgoers, those with a church pew<br />
and those without. This challenged established religion. Its condoning <strong>of</strong><br />
personal conversion challenged the established definition <strong>of</strong> religiosity<br />
as conformity, as submission to authority. It was, to use a modern word,<br />
‘democratic’. It was a leveller, tearing the formal expression <strong>of</strong> religiosity<br />
from the serried ranks <strong>of</strong> churchgoers in the landlord’s parish church,<br />
and ceding it to the personal experience <strong>of</strong> high and low wherever they<br />
might feel it. It moved religion out <strong>of</strong> the control <strong>of</strong> civil–ecclesiastical<br />
power. It deregulated religion, in the economic-speak <strong>of</strong> the late twentieth<br />
century, ‘privatising’ it, opening up the saving <strong>of</strong> souls to any passing<br />
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