1918–39—The Depression Years

The inter-war years are a comparatively neglected period of British religious history. Yet, on the measure of ‘active church adherence’ used in this book, they emerge as far more significant in Britain’s secularization journey than the intensively studied 1960s. Between 1918 and 1939, there was a marked shift away from religious commitment and participation towards nominalism, especially in the Free Churches. Although Protestant church membership recovered after the First World War, it peaked in England and Wales around 1927 and dropped absolutely thereafter. There was no such post-war recovery in churchgoing, rather an acceleration of decline, partly because people worshipped less regularly. This fall was fuelled by a weakening Sabbatarian culture and competition from Sunday cinema and religious broadcasting. Congregations were also ageing and take-up of Anglican baptismal and marriage services diminishing. A further 2 million Sunday scholars were lost, while the number of religious ‘nones’ rose by 1 million.

1914–18—Keeping the Spiritual Home Fires Burning

The First World War has traditionally been thought to have had a catastrophic and long-standing impact on organized religion in Britain, but this bleak picture has been qualified in recent historiography. By seriously disrupting the Churches’ work and Sunday observance, and broadening the range and affordability of secular leisure opportunities, the war proved an ‘accelerant’ rather than a novel agent of secularization. Religious allegiance held fairly steady, although the Free Churches continued to lose ground, there was (speculatively) some increase in religious ‘nones’, and growth in Spiritualism. One million Sunday scholars were permanently lost during the war, partly as a consequence of the falling birth rate. In Protestant Churches, there was a short-lived surge in attendance at the start of the war, fuelling hopes of religious revival, but it quickly gave way to ongoing decline, which was not reversed after the conflict. There were modest rises in Catholic and Jewish populations.

Before 1880—The Long Prelude

This chapter summarizes what is known about religious allegiance and churchgoing during the long eighteenth century and the early Victorian era, with reference to statistics (noting methodological difficulties, especially affecting the 1851 religious census). There are separate analyses for England and Wales and Scotland. The dominant trend in religious allegiance was towards voluntaryism and pluralism, the established Churches of England and Scotland losing their near-monopoly of religious affiliation in the face of Dissent’s rapid advance. The nineteenth century witnessed sustained church growth, absolute and relative, in members and Sunday scholars. Despite the continued existence of legislation requiring churchgoing, its enforcement was infrequent and often ineffective. Absenteeism was a growing problem from the eighteenth century. It remains unclear whether there was any general rise in attendance during the early nineteenth century. By 1851, two-fifths of Britons may have worshipped, Wales being the most devout of the home nations, but churchgoing declined thereafter.

Introduction—Historiography and Sources

This chapter provides essential context by outlining the recent historiography of secularization in Britain and the sources of religious statistics, on which subsequent chapters are largely based. The work of leading contributors to the debates about British religious change is summarized, notably Steve Bruce, Hugh McLeod, Callum Brown, Jeffrey Cox, Jeremy Morris, and Simon Green. In this book, secularization is used as a convenient shorthand descriptor for the waning social significance of religion, rather than an invocation of the classic theory of secularization as a by-product of modernization. Specifically, the focus is on secularization in relation to the individual, particularly religious allegiance (subsuming affiliation and membership of churches and Sunday schools) and churchgoing, being the two performance indicators of religious belonging and behaving most susceptible to long-term quantification. Data on them were variously gathered by the state (comparatively little), the Churches, and social investigators (including local religious censuses).

Conclusion—Periodizing Secularization

Since most chapters contain individual summaries, they are not reproduced in the conclusion. Rather, there is a holistic overview of religious allegiance and churchgoing across seven micro-periods between 1880 and 1980, with reference to a hybrid measure of adult ‘active church adherence’ relative to population. This declined continuously and gradually, undermining arguments for ‘revolutionary’ secularization in the 1960s. A second section considers six dimensions of ‘diffusive religion’, a basket of alternative performance indicators cited by some scholars who contend religion has not declined but simply changed, moving away from institutional expressions. Such claims are not judged evidentially strong. The third section updates secularization’s historiography, critiquing previous work on the alleged religious crisis of 1890–1914, the religious impact of the world wars, and the so-called religious revival of the 1950s and crisis of the 1960s. The causation of secularization is discussed, and weakening Sabbatarianism and religious socialization of children are emphasized.

1939–45—Puzzled People?

Analysis of the Second World War’s impact on religious allegiance is affected by data gaps and doubts about the accuracy of opinion polling and the rigour of membership roll revision. But the Church of England lost some market share, the Free Churches slid further towards nominalism, and the number of ‘nones’ grew, absolutely and relatively, more than in the First World War. Church membership losses were greatest in 1939–42. There were 1 million fewer Sunday scholars. Unlike the First World War, there was no temporary revival of churchgoing at the start of the Second World War, only continuous decline in Protestantism, with the index of attendance at ordinary services often reduced to ten or less, half of adults never attending or solely for rites of passage. The decrease is partly explained by wartime disruptions but churchgoing also faced competition from Sunday cinema and the BBC’s enhanced portfolio of religious broadcasts.

1880–1901—The fin de siècle

Since at least the 1970s, historians have traced the origins of the decline of organized religion in Britain to the 1880s and 1890s, some even suggesting there was a ‘religious crisis’. Hitherto, there has been no systematic study of the fin de siècle from a secularization perspective. This chapter investigates religious allegiance, the next churchgoing. There is no strong evidence of a ‘crisis’ in allegiance. Notwithstanding the absence of an official census of religious profession, it does not appear there were dramatic changes during the fin de siècle, and the number failing to identify with a religion remained negligible. However, there were early signs of relative decline among the Free Church and Presbyterian constituencies in terms of both profession and membership, while Episcopalian communicants were reasonably flat. Sunday school growth rates also began to slow, although seven-tenths of children were still enrolled. The Roman Catholic community advanced relative to population.

1901–14—‘The Faith Society’?

Most contemporaries and several historians have assessed the religious state of Edwardian Britain pessimistically, but Callum Brown has recently contended it was ‘the faith society’. The picture is actually mixed. Relative to population, religious allegiance was reasonably stable, apart from the Free and Presbyterian Churches, which lost ground in terms of both members (whose numbers mostly peaked around 1906) and adherents. Sunday scholars, already in relative decline since the fin de siècle, peaked in 1904–10. Churchgoing also continued its relative decrease and sometimes fell absolutely. This reduction in attendances was across the board, affecting all three home nations, rural districts as well as towns and cities, and all social classes. Adjusting for twicing, weather extremities, and undercounts of Catholic Masses, perhaps one-quarter of adults worshipped weekly and two-fifths at least monthly. Attenders were disproportionately female. Observance of rites of passage remained strong, albeit the minority preference for civil marriage grew.

1880–1901—The fin de siècle

The 1880s are often viewed by historians as the turning-point for British churchgoing, ushering in a period of general decrease. In the absence of attendance data from the government (there was no repeat of the 1851 religious census) and Churches, reliance has to be placed upon local religious censuses, typically undertaken by newspapers throughout the fin de siècle, the biggest cluster being in 1881–2. Expressed as an index of attendance, calculated against overall population, churchgoing was generally receding, except in Wales. Although the index ranged widely from place to place, dependent upon several factors, in the aggregate, excluding Sunday scholars but adjusting for twicing, perhaps one-third of people worshipped on an ordinary Sunday in 1881–2, compared with two-fifths (including scholars) in 1851. Rather more did so intermittently or for special occasions, including rites of passage. Variations by denomination (the Free Churches losing most ground), region, gender, and social class are discussed.