The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation, 1800-2000

Description

The author Callum Brown is an oral historian based at the university of Strathclyde. The overall thesis of the book is that contrary to the prevailing secularisation paradigm rooting British religious decline in the enlightenment Britain remain Christian until relatively recently; it was the post-1960s era that spelled the death of Christian Britain and the advent of vigorous secularisation. Consequently there is an emphasis on working-class religion and its mass popularity/propogation (ie. evangelicalism). By Christian Britain therefore, Brown does not mean the religious affiliations or otherwise of the statute makers and policy formers but primarily that of the working classes. Consequently Brown offers a vigorous analysis of both religious and secular media to highlight the prevalence of evangelical moral assumptions in forming the parameters of `respectability' for population at large. An important analysis is his two chapters on gender roles in Britain's religious life showing that Britain's women sustained the moral (Christian) worldview of evangelical/Victorian Britain more than its men. Consequently the realignment of women's sensibilities in post-1960s Britain has spelled the death of Christian Britain. Overall this book should prove interesting for all those interested in the secularisation of Britain, Church history, the history of interaction of gender and religion/society and those interested in the history of evangelicalism. Read in Conjunction with Shaw and Kreider (Eds) Culture and the Nonconformist tradition this is a useful book. However, whilst I understand the need why the book basically comprises of three-quarters pre-amble before one reaches the actual point (ie the 1960s and secularisation) which at times did grate. Also, it would have been interesting to see a wider ecclesiastical survey than the evangelicalism offered. For instance, to have seen a discussion on the more radical movements such as Quakerism and Pentecostalism (although this would, admittedly only have been a early 1900s phenomena) with their more overtly egalitarian emphasis. This said, however, The Death of Christian Britain is an interesting book that usefully counterbalances the prevailing assumptions of the securalisation paradigm as applied to the British context.