Christianity in Britain Since 1914
Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000
Edited by David Goodhew and Mark Smith
Palgrave Macmillan, 331 pages, $159.99
Towards the tip of their Introduction, the editors of this guide summarize the image that they consider emerges from the 12 detailed research it assembles: “Trendy British Christianity has dramatically declined in some ways. Nevertheless it has additionally proven hanging resilience. British Christianity has each grown and shrunk, died and risen once more. Any depiction of contemporary British Christianity which focuses both on decline or on development is a severe distortion.”
The proof for development is positioned principally within the second a part of the guide, which considers the interval from 1970 to at the moment. Goodhew and Smith counsel on the outset that “Arguably, the most important shift in British Christianity within the final fifty years will not be a lot secularisation as its dramatic ethnic diversification.”
This theme involves the fore in two research, one of many unfold of the Redeemed Christian Church of God throughout Britain, and the opposite of the 110 new church buildings began in Glasgow between 2000 and 2016. In each instances, the worldwide Pentecostal motion can also be a related issue, as it’s once more for Sam Jeffrey’s chapter on the Newfrontiers community of church buildings that emerged from the Home Church Motion in Britain within the Seventies, and the affect of its transnational connections.
Inevitably, maybe, it’s not simple to convey into focus a broader image from the six native research introduced right here, some comparatively slender of their scope (4 Cambridge lecturers, or contributors within the Ceremony of Christian Initiation for Adults in a single Catholic diocese). The query of how far new church buildings have relied on their attraction to outdated (present) Christians to drive their numerical development is raised at varied factors however in a roundabout way addressed.
The essays in Half 1, protecting 1914–70, have a relatively totally different character. 4 of them represent one thing of a set inside the guide, in that they use cautious evaluation of fixing patterns of spiritual observe and affiliation in a particular space to touch upon broad-brush sociological hypotheses about secularization and its causes.
Alistair Beecher illustrates how an “Anglican hegemony” in rural Hampshire had survived comparatively intact when the First World Warfare broke out; Mark Smith finds little proof that its trauma exercised profound results upon the church buildings in Oxfordshire, whereas reflecting on the doubtless long-term implications of the priority that emerged amongst many Anglican clergy throughout this era to extend the variety of weekly communicants and due to this fact the frequency of Communion companies.
Grant Masom’s examine of Slough between the wars enhances each by mapping the gradual lack of affect of clerical and lay church leaders on civic life there, as they struggled to place themselves successfully on questions on enabling particular person selection, notably on leisure actions, versus upholding social norms.
Ian Jones argues that after the Second World Warfare, church buildings in Birmingham have been energized by a give attention to “first, the renewal of the native church … second, the renewal of the Christian residence and the lively participation of households in church; and third, the cultivation of group life,” but the cultural buy of this agenda ebbed away within the a long time that adopted.
One of many strengths of this assortment is the number of its elements, in areas chosen and methodologies adopted, although the reader might not discover each chapter equally compelling and will often puzzle on the relation between them. I used to be left, nonetheless, each with a chastened sense of the complexities concerned in making generalizations concerning the trajectory of Christian religion in Britain, and with a deep sense of gratitude for all those that have sought to answer the challenges of its perceived decline since 1914 with faithfulness, power, and creativeness.
The Rev. Dr. Jeremy Worthen is the Group Rector of Ashford within the Diocese of Canterbury. He beforehand labored in ministerial formation and in supporting nationwide ecumenical and theological work.
