Faith and belief

Question 1

Gilbert’s thesis

Answer 1

Secularisation can be traced to the Industrial revolution and even further back

Question 2

Brown’s rough thesis

Answer 2

Emphasises the short-term nature of secularisation, main cause is loss of female religiosity

Question 3

Davie questioning definitions

Answer 3

Questions direct link between religiosity and churchgoing due to the persistence of non-institutional religion in Britain

Makes ‘secularisation’ a more problematic term

Question 4

McLeod religion definition

Answer 4

‘belief in an all-powerful and benevolent creator’

Goes against historic arguments emphasising the institutional nature of religion

Question 5

Rough assessment of Brown

Answer 5

Makes compelling points, but thesis is unconvincing

Narrow methodology and analysis, but also monocausal explanation

Question 6

Brown’s date for the ‘death of Christian Britain’

Answer 6

Rapid transformation of religiosity from 1963

Considers church attendance decline before 1960s to be counteracted by rise in other metrics like baptisms

Suggests 1945-59 saw sustained religious growth

Question 7

Brown - reason for church decline

Answer 7

Failure of ‘discursive Christianity’, which related to subscription of personal identities derived from Christianity

Had to lose its power before secularisation could take place

Foundational to failure was a ‘short sexual revolution’ liberating women from the church

Question 8

Brown - role of men

Answer 8

Had only attended ‘in deference to the more resilient religiosity’ of wives and mothers

Question 9

Brewitt-Taylor point

Answer 9

Newspapers showed many pessimistic assessments 1961-64 which were ‘speculative assumptions of mass atheism’ from a few elite clergy

Apparent ‘sense of crisis’ in 1963 was not matched by actual decline

Problematises discursive sources

Question 10

Monolithic nature of ‘discursive Christianity’

Answer 10

Neglects regional variations - higher in Wales and Scotland

Also neglects sectarian tensions in Christianity, e.g. Catholicism and Evangelism shown as the same

Question 11

Brown’s understanding of the ‘death’ of Christianity

Answer 11

Believes 1960s heralded a time when religion no longer played a substantial role in the construction of personal identity

Question 12

Davie’s argument for persistence of Christianity

Answer 12

Speaks of ‘pervasive currents of latent religiosity’ far beyond 1960s which were not accompanied by institutional attendance

Question 13

Leeds interviewee responses

Answer 13

1990 - 71% believed in a God

Question 14

How ‘privatised religion’ was shaped (Davie)

Answer 14

Shaped as much by the surrounding culture as by individual belief

This fundamentally questions ‘discursive Christianity’ arguments

Question 15

Day - questioning of Christianity

Answer 15

Suggests ‘performative Christianity’ allowed non-religious individuals to assume a Christian identity for social belonging

‘unchurched believers’ argument overstated

Question 16

2001 census contradiction

Answer 16

Many of those answering ‘Christian’ went on to explain they did not believe in Christianity

Chose term due to the manner in which they were raised

Question 17

Thompson - change to Christian symbols

Answer 17

Rather than die out, they simply adapt and mutate over time

Question 18

Brown’s importance in chronology

Answer 18

Good to reject inevitable long-term secularisation thesis

Question 19

Gilbert’s link of secularisation

Answer 19

Associates it inexorably with the rise of urbanisation (and therefore modernism)

Suggests industrialisation was ‘bound to influence the evolution of British life at all levels’

‘organisational and institutional decay’ occurred over several centuries

Question 20

Brown urbanisation article

Answer 20

Broke the link between urbanisation and the decline of churches

Suggested that urbanisation alone could not decline for the decline of churchgoing

C20 developments more important

Question 21

Morris - criticism of Brown’s timeline

Answer 21

‘grossly oversimplified’

Condenses a multi-layered process of institutional attenuation into too short a space of time

Question 22

Green’s timeline

Answer 22

1920-1960 saw crucial ‘dissolution’ of Christianity during the rise of the Labour movement

Cautions against identifying Protestant implosion without looking at long-term trends

Question 23

Brown condensation

Answer 23

Single year of ‘remarkably sudden’ change neglects phenomena and is too simple

Question 24

Importance of women

Answer 24

Made up a significant number of attendees, but also played symbolic role in maintenance of religion reinforced through discourse on traditional evangelical story

Question 25

Women attendance stat

Answer 25

Baptist and Congregationalist church membership 1650-1980, women outnumbered men 2 to 1

Question 26

McLeod - emphasis of women

Answer 26

Crucial in intergenerational transmission of beliefs and practices

Took children to Sunday School and taught them prayers

Question 27

Whyte - questioning of discourse revolution in 1960s

Answer 27

Suggests magazines like ‘Jackie’ did little to change discourse on domesticity, instead producing more neurotic femininity

Question 28

Whyte - criticism of Brown’s masculinity presentation

Answer 28

‘apparently unchanging masculinity’ that remains ‘spiritually peripheral’ is wrong

Question 29

Delap - questioning of one masculinity

Answer 29

‘highly individualised, localised and multifarious’ nature of masculinity

Different scripts of Anglican masculinity

More examination of gender needed

Question 30

Oral history evidence on women

Answer 30

Suggests most common reason to abandon church in 60s and 70s was ‘marriage to a non-church-going man’

Question 31

Chapman - erosion of discussion of Christianity causes

Answer 31

Due to declining position of Britain in the international community

Also actions of whites in Africa who made ‘the language of Christian civilisation and Christian nationhood toxic’ through apartheid regimes

Question 32

Chapman - wider decline of christian order

Answer 32

‘anglophone international order’ declined, eroding the popular image of Christianity

Question 33

Non-christian numbers

Answer 33

There were 800,000 non-Christians in 1975, rising to over 1 million in 1985

Brought their own religion

Question 34

Impact of other religions

Answer 34

Created a pluralist view of British religiosity

Legislation from 1970s emphasising multiculturalism and plurality weakened rhetorical grip of Protestantism on the public

Question 35

Weakness of Christian language (Chapman)

Answer 35

Could no longer make the ‘weighty appeal to a shared cultural consciousness’ it once had

Question 36

Influence of black churches

Answer 36

Complicates the picture of decline

BMCs highly successful in membership, but also played a role in the establishment through ecumenism and cooperation

Question 37

Maiden - BMC partnership

Answer 37

1979 ‘Unity and Love’ celebration reflecting ‘wider development in British race relations’

Question 38

Significance of other cultures

Answer 38

Diminished overall Christian influence, but also altered in many ways

This limits the potency of a narrative which does not account for ethnic variations in faith

Question 39

2001 - Brits considering themselves to have ‘no religion’

Answer 39

14%

Question 40

Day - new terminology needed

Answer 40

Not ‘religious’ or ‘secular’

Rather, ‘multidimensional, interdependent orientations’