Christianity in Britain, R. I. P

Sociology of Religion, Summer, 2001 by Steve Bruce

Steve Bruce *

Rodney Stark has again claimed that secularization is a myth based on exaggerating the rcligious vitality of the past and under-estimating that of the present. This article takes issue with the first point briefly but concentrates on showing that, in the case of Britain, even if we confine ourselves to comparisons of religiosity in 1851, 1900 and 2000, the evidence is of clear and dramatic decline. Recently gathered data on church membership and church attendance are presented. They show that unless long-stable trends arc reversed, major British denominations will cease to exist by 2030. While we may legitimately argue about the causes and timing of secularization, no amount of supply-side revisionism will change that fact that organized Christianity in Britain is in serious trouble.

INTRODUCTION

In his contribution to this journal's recent special issue on the secularization debate, Rodney Stark has, with his customary panache, again claimed to find no evidence for the secularization approach to religious change (1999). He argues that the claim that religion in Western Europe has declined in popularity is a mistake made possible by an exaggeration of the strength of religion at some point in the past and an under-estimation of its present importance. Doubtless others will respond for other European countries; in this brief reply I will consider the case for Britain. As the argument between the secularizationists and Stark's supply-siders is now well documented, I confine myself to presenting information which may not be familiar outside Britain. Recently gathered data on church membership and church attendance show that unless trends are reversed, major British denominations will cease to exist by 2030. 'While we may legitimately argue about the causes and exact trajectory of secularization, no amou nt of supply-side revisionism will change that fact that, if we can legitimately extrapolate from well-established trends, organized Christianity in Britain is in serious trouble.

STARK THEORY

In 1966, when Bryan Wilson published Religion in secular society it was, to borrow from Jane Austen, 'a truth universally acknowledged' that Britain was less religious than it had been a hundred years earlier. That remained the consensus until the late 1970s and 1980s. In each of those decades Stark discovered a compelling reason why the consensus must be wrong (for a comprehensive list of sources see the bibliographies of Stark 1999 and Bruce 1999).

His first reason for denying secularization came from the theory he developed with William Sims Bainbridge (Stark and Bainbridge 1987). According to their complex reasoning about the links between rewards and compensators, humankind will always need religion. Desires (if only the desire for immortality) always outstrip rewards. In the absence of rewards, people seek compensators. Religion is superior to secular providers of compensators because it can play the God trump card. Invoking the supernatural increases the attractiveness of compensators and reduces their vulnerability to refutation. In the absence of inheriting anything in this world, the meek will want to be told they will inherit the earth in the next life. Hence the demand for religion should be pretty well universal and stable. If one form of religion declines, another should take its place. Enduring secularization is impossible.

The second reason for Stark to deny secularization is that, in the British case, it would run counter to the expectations of the supply-side model of religious economies to which he became attached in the 1980s. For a variety of reasons that sound rather like propaganda for laissez-faire capitalism, competitive free markets are supposed to be better at meeting not only material but also spiritual needs. Religious monopolies (especially state-supported ones) dampen the demand for religious products. Competitive free markets produce a wide variety of religious products at low costs and thus increase consumption. Hence there should be a strong positive correlation between religious diversity and religious vitality. The religious history of Britain, conventionally understood, is a problem. Before the Reformation there was one church, organized on a national parish structure, which glorified God on behalf of, and provided religious offices for, the entire people. With the Reformation, the religious cultures of Sc otland, Wales and England diverged. Each national church also fragmented internally, to create a large number of competing organizations. By the middle of the nineteenth century, about half the population worshipped outwith the state churches of England, Wales, and Scotland. Since then pluralism has increased further with the growth of non-Trinitarian sects and Pentecostalism. There are interesting technical arguments about exactly how one measures diversity but no-one questions that the last two hundred years have seen a considerable increase in its extent. Few Britons are far from a major urban area and for most of the twentieth century it has been possible to find almost every imaginable variant of Christianity on offer in British cities. According to Stark, the increase in diversity and the gradual removal of constraints on competition (such as supporting the state churches with public funds and denying government office to dissenters) should have created an increase in religious vitality. Britain of the 1990s should be more religious than Britain of the 1890s or 1790s or 1690s.