Popular religion in decline : A Study from the Black county

Journal of Ecclesiastical History

Volumn 56, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 287-306

  Sykes, Richard ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 66249127246     PISSN: 00220469     EISSN: 14697637     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0022046904003173     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. James Obelkevich, Religion and rural society in South Lindsey, 1825-1875, Oxford 1976;
2. Jeffrey Cox, The English Churches in a secular society: Lambeth, 1870-1930, Oxford 1982;
3. S.J. D. Green, Religion in the age of decline: organisation and experience in industrial Yorkshire, 1870-1920, Cambridge 1996;
4. Callum G. Brown, Religion and society in Scotland since 1707, Edinburgh 1997;
5. Alan Bartlett, 'The Churches in Bermondsey, 1880-1939', unpubl. PhD diss. Birmingham 1987.
6. Callum G. Brown, 'Did urbanization secularize Britain?', Urban History Yearbook (1988), 1-14;
7. 'The mechanism of religious growth in urban societies: British cities since the eighteenth century', in Hugh McLeod (ed.), European religion in the age of great cities, London 1995, 239-62;
8. 'A revisionist approach to religious change', in Steve Bruce (ed.), Religion and modernization: sociologists and historians debate the secularization thesis, Oxford 1992, 31-58;
9. and The death of Christian Britain: understanding secularisation, 1800-2000, London 2001, ch. vii.
10. S. Williams, Religious belief and popular culture in Southwark, e. 1880-1939, Oxford 1999.
11. Cox, English Churches, 95.
12. Brown, Death of Christian Britain, 2.
13. Richard Sykes, 'Popular religion in Dudley and the Gornals, c. 1914-1965', unpubl. PhD diss. Wolverhampton 1999.
14. Eamon Duffy, The stripping of the altars: traditional religion in England, 1400-1580, London - New Haven 1992, 1-4.
15. John Kent, Wesley and the Wesleyans: religion in eighteenth-century Britain, Cambridge 2002, 1-30.
16. For example, on the seventeenth century, see J. Maltby, '"By this book": parishioners, the Prayer Book and the Established Church', in K. Fincham (ed.), The early Stuart Church, 1603-1642, Basingstoke 1993;
17. on the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries see Mark Smith, Religion in industrial society: Oldham and Saddleworth, 1740-1865, Oxford 1994;
18. on the nineteenth century see Frances Knight, The nineteenth century Church and English society, Cambridge 1995;
19. and on the twentieth century see Grace Davie, Religion in Britain since 1945: believing without belonging, London 1994.
20. J. Gregory, 'Popular religion and the Church of England from the 1560s to the 1960s: issues and interpretations', unpubl. paper, Popular Culture and Religion Conference Series, University of Northumbria, May 2002.
21. Gerald Parsons (ed.), The growth of religious diversity: Britain from 1945, I: Traditions, London 1993, 48-9.
22. David L. Edwards, Christian England, III: From the 18th century to the First World War, London 1985, 362.
23. Jay Winter, Sites of memory, sites of mourning: the Great War in European cultural history, Cambridge 1995, 80-2.
24. Alan Wilkinson, The Church of England and the First World War, London 1978, 176-8.
25. DH, 18 Nov. 1916. For the growth of interest in spiritualism during the Great War see Jay Winter, 'Spiritualism and the First World War', in R. W. Davis and R.J. Helmstadter (eds), Religion and irreligion in Victorian Society, London 1992, 185-200, and Sites of memory, 54-77;
26. David Cannadine, 'War and death, grief and mourning in modern Britain', in Joachim Whaley (ed.), Mirrors of mortality: studies in the social history of death, London 1981, 187-242 at pp. 227-34.
27. Sykes, 'Popular religion', 268-81;
28. M-O A, FR1315, 'Report on death and the supernatural', 18 June 1942, 5
29. and M-O A: 'The supernatural', Bulletin n.s. v (Jan. 1947), 1;
30. Geoffrey Gorer, Exploring English character, London 1955, 263.
31. See, for example, B. Turner and T. Rennell, When daddy came home: how family life changed forever in 1945, London 1995.
32. A. J. P. Taylor, English history, 1914-1945, Harmondsworth 1970, 384-5.
33. Elizabeth Roberts, Women and families: an oral history, 1940-1970, Oxford 1995, 142-3.
34. Sociologists would regard this as a shift from a working-class 'traditional' collectivist model of enculturation to a middle-class 'developmental' individualist one: M. L. Kohn, 'Social class and parent-child relationships', in Michael Anderson (ed.), Sociology of the family, Harmondsworth 1971, 323-38 at p. 328.
35. On the generational shift from learning to live by the rule to living more by personal moral standards see Frank Mort, 'Social and symbolic fathers and sons in post-war Britain', Journal of British Studies xxxviii (July 1999), 353-84.
36. Sec, for example, St Edmund, Dudley, parish magazine, June 1964, and St Francis and St Christopher parish magazine, May 1964. Robin Gill, The myth of the empty church, London 1993, 201-6, notes that after World War II, for the first time the majority of children were not regular Sunday Scholars and concluded that as a result 'a broad spectrum of Christian beliefs in any recognisable form is unlikely to persist in the general population'.
37. See, for example, St Luke's PCG minutes, 9 Feb. 1954.
38. The Messenger, June 1969.
39. Sec George H. Gallup (cd.), The Gallup international public opinion polls: Great Britain, 1937-1975, I; 1937-1964, New York 1976, 341. This is not, of course, a trend exclusive to the post-war years, but does seem to have accelerated during these years.
40. For similar accounts see Elizabeth Roberts, 'Neighbours: north west England, 1940-70', Oral History xxi (1993), 40
41. and Women and families, 200, 226-8;
42. R. Durant, Watling: a summary of social life on a new housing estate, London 1939, 21.
43. For a more optimistic view of life on council estates see Mark Clapson, 'Working-class women's experiences of moving to housing estates in England since 1919', Twentieth Century British History x/3 (1999), 345-65.
44. T. S. Simey, Social aspects of a town development plan: a study of the county borough of Dudley, Liverpool 1951, 42-3, 156-8.
45. The Messenger, Sept. 1964.
46. Joanna Bourke, Working-class cultures in Britain, 1890-1969: gender, class and ethnicity, London 1994, 22-5. Bourke also provides (pp. 156-9) a useful check to any temptation to romanticise pre-war working-class communities by reminding us of how status-ridden and divided they could be.
47. Cf. John Wolffe, 'The religions of the silent majority', in Parsons, Growth of religious diversity, 304-46 at p. 329.
48. A group of 11-15 year olds, surveyed in a Birmingham parish in 1964, suggested that churches should be 'equipped more like a cinema, with comfortable furnishings and a sloping floor': Jones, 'The local church and generational change', 249.
49. Cf. Brown, Religion and society, 161-2.
50. cf. John Munscy Turner, Modem Methodism, 1932-1998, Peterborough 1998, 54.
51. By 1966, 487 % of the skilled and 26.5 % of the semi- and unskilled working class owned a car: A. H. Halsey, Trends in British society since 1900, London 1974, 551.
52. St Thomas, Dudley, parish magazine, May 1960.
53. St Like's, Dudley, parish magazine, July 1964.
54. See, for example, The Messenger, July 1968; RPMSI, D13, G20.
55. Sec C. R. Lewis, 'A stage in the development of the industrial town: a case study of Cardiff, 1845-75', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers iv (1979), 129-52.