Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Belonging

  • Chapter
Britain’s Last Religious Revival? Quantifying Belonging, Behaving, and Believing in the Long 1950s

Part of the book series: Histories of the Sacred and the Secular 1700–2000 ((HISASE))

  • 62 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter considers the two main dimensions of religious belonging: religious affiliation and church membership. In the absence of census data for this period, religious affiliation statistics can be derived only from contemporary and retrospective sample surveys. These are summarized, with breaks by key demographic variables. Church membership data are more plentiful, but there are many gaps and many problems of comparability. Actual and estimated church membership statistics are provided for all denominations and faiths (including organized irreligion), noting short-term movements within the decade, where appropriate. These include Sunday school data in the case of Protestant Churches, thereby ensuring a level playing field with the Roman Catholic Church, which defined its membership in terms of its baptised population.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 49.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 64.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. C.D. Field, ‘Measuring Religious Affiliation in Great Britain: The 2011 Census in Historical and Methodological Context’, Religion, 44 (2014), pp. 357–82;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. A.J. Christopher, ‘The Religious Question in the United Kingdom Census, 1801–2011’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 65 (2014), pp. 601–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. A.E.C.W. Spencer, ‘Numbering the People: Should the Census Ask about Religion?’, The Tablet, 22 April 1961.

    Google Scholar 

  4. J. Gould and S. Esh, eds, Jewish Life in Modern Britain (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964), p. 135.

    Google Scholar 

  5. M. Stacey, Tradition and Change: A Study of Banbury (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 57–73;

    Google Scholar 

  6. S. Bruce, ‘A Sociology Classic Revisited: Religion in Banbury’, Sociological Review, 59 (2011), pp. 201–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. W.S.F. Pickering, ‘The Place of Religion in the Social Structure of Two English Industrial Towns (Rawmarsh, Yorkshire and Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire)’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 1958), chapter VI;

    Google Scholar 

  8. W.S.F. Pickering, ‘Quelques résultats d’interviews religieuses’, in Conférence Internationale de Sociologie Religieuse, Vocation de la sociologie religieuse: sociologie des vocations (Tournai: Casterman, 1958), pp. 54–76;

    Google Scholar 

  9. W.S.F. Pickering, ‘“Religious Movements” of Church Members in Two Working-Class Towns in England’, Archives de Sociologie des Religions, 11 (1961), pp. 129–40.

    Google Scholar 

  10. T.M. Owen, ‘Chapel and Community in Glan-llyn, Merioneth’, in E. Davies and A.D. Rees, eds, Welsh Rural Communities (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1960), p. 228.

    Google Scholar 

  11. For example, E. Lewis-Faning, Report on an Enquiry into Family Limitation and Its Influence on Human Fertility during the Past Fifty Years (Papers of the Royal Commission on Population, 1, London: HMSO, 1949), p. 46.

    Google Scholar 

  12. M.E.J. Wadsworth and S.R. Freeman, ‘Generation Differences in Beliefs: A Cohort Study of Stability and Change in Religious Beliefs’, British Journal of Sociology, 34 (1983), pp. 421–2.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. J. Highet, ‘Scottish Religious Adherence’, British Journal of Sociology, 4 (1953), p. 144;

    Google Scholar 

  14. W.S.F. Pickering, ‘The Churches’, in A.K. Cairncross, ed., The Scottish Economy: A Statistical Account of Scottish Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), p. 299.

    Google Scholar 

  15. R.D. Macleod, ‘Church Statistics for England’, Hibbert Journal, 46 (1948), pp. 351–7.

    Google Scholar 

  16. I. Cassam, ‘An Analysis of Church Affiliations in Wales’, Western Mail and South Wales News, 30 January 1953.

    Google Scholar 

  17. R. Currie, A.D. Gilbert, and L. Horsley, Churches and Churchgoers: Patterns of Church Growth in the British Isles since 1700 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), p. 32.

    Google Scholar 

  18. P.W. Brierley, ed., UK Christian Handbook, Religious Trends, No. 2, 2000/01 Millennium Edition (London: Christian Research, 1999), p. 8. 17.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Other versions of this table (with slight variations) appear in P.W. Brierley, A Century of British Christianity: Historical Statistics, 1900–1985 (Bromley: MARC Europe, 1989), p. 26;

    Google Scholar 

  20. P.W. Brierley, Religion in Britain, 1900 to 2000 (London: Christian Research, 1998), p. 3;

    Google Scholar 

  21. P.W. Brierley, ‘Religion’, in A.H. Halsey and J. Webb, eds, Twentieth-Century British Social Trends (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 654–5.

    Google Scholar 

  22. C.G. Brown, ‘Religion and Secularisation’, in T. Dickson and J.H. Treble, eds, People and Society in Scotland, III, 1914–1990 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1992), pp. 48–54, 79;

    Google Scholar 

  23. C.G. Brown, ‘A Revisionist Approach to Religious Change’, in S. Bruce, ed., Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 42–6;

    Google Scholar 

  24. C.G. Brown, Religion and Society in Scotland since 1707 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), pp. 61–6, 158–9;

    Google Scholar 

  25. C.G. Brown, Religion and the Demographic Revolution: Women and Secularisation in Canada, Ireland, UK, and USA since the 1960s (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012), pp. 90–3.

    Google Scholar 

  26. R. Gill, The ‘Empty’ Church Revisited (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 13, 124.

    Google Scholar 

  27. J. Williams, Digest of Welsh Historical Statistics (2 vols, Cardiff: Welsh Office, 1985), ii, pp. 257–8;

    Google Scholar 

  28. D.D. Morgan, The Span of the Cross: Christian Religion and Society in Wales, 1914–2000 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999), p. 189.

    Google Scholar 

  29. D.A. Martin, ‘Interpreting the Figures’, in M. Perry, ed., Crisis for Confirmation (London: SCM Press, 1967), pp. 106–15.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Table 2.1; A.E.C.W. Spencer, ‘Catholics in Britain and Ireland: Regional Contrasts’, in D.A. Coleman, ed., Demography of Immigrants and Minority Groups in the United Kingdom (London: Academic Press, 1982), p. 228.

    Google Scholar 

  31. A.E.C.W. Spencer, Report on the Parish Register, Religious Practice & Population Statistics of the Catholic Church in Scotland, 1967 (Harrow: Pastoral Research Centre, 1969), pp. 5–7.

    Google Scholar 

  32. A.E.C.W. Spencer, ‘Demography of Catholicism’, The Month, 2nd New Series, 8 (1975), pp. 102–5;

    Google Scholar 

  33. A.E.C.W. Spencer, ‘Alienation in English Catholicism, 1958–1972’, in A.E.C.W. Spencer and P.A. O’Dwyer, eds, Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference, Sociological Association of Ireland, Dublin, 4–5 April 1975 (Belfast: Department of Social Studies, Queen’s University of Belfast, 1976), pp. 115–34.

    Google Scholar 

  34. A.E.C.W. Spencer, ‘The Demography and Sociography of the Roman Catholic Community of England and Wales’, in L. Bright and S. Clements, eds, The Committed Church (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966), pp. 73–7;

    Google Scholar 

  35. R.-C. Chou and S. Brown, ‘A Comparison of the Size of Families of Roman Catholics and Non-Catholics in Great Britain’, Population Studies, 22 (1968), pp. 51–60.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. E. Chesser, The Sexual, Marital, and Family Relationships of the English Woman (London: Hutchinson’s Medical Publications, 1956), p. 269.

    Google Scholar 

  37. A.E.C.W. Spencer (M.E. Daly, ed.), Arrangements for the Integration of Irish Immigrants in England and Wales (Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 2012);

    Google Scholar 

  38. A.E.C.W. Spencer, Services for Catholic Migrants, 1939–2008: Background Data from the Archives and Databank of the Newman Demographic Survey and the Pastoral Research Centre (Taunton: Russell-Spencer, 2008).

    Google Scholar 

  39. More generally, see J.A. Jackson, The Irish in Britain (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), pp. 135–51;

    Google Scholar 

  40. E. Delaney, The Irish in Post-War Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 129–69.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  41. For background, see D.M. Thompson, The Decline of Congregationalism in the Twentieth Century (London: Congregational Memorial Hall Trust, 2002).

    Google Scholar 

  42. C.D. Field, ‘Adam and Eve: Gender in the English Free Church Constituency’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 44 (1993), pp. 63–79;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. C.D. Field, ‘Zion’s People: Who Were the English Nonconformists? Part 1: Gender, Age, Marital Status, and Ethnicity’, Local Historian, 40 (2010), pp. 91–112.

    Google Scholar 

  44. C. Hill, West Indian Migrants and the London Churches (London: Oxford University Press, 1963);

    Google Scholar 

  45. S.C. Patterson, Dark Strangers: A Sociological Study of the Absorption of a Recent West Indian Migrant Group in Brixton, South London (London: Tavistock Publications, 1963), pp. 252–62, 349–62, 438–9;

    Google Scholar 

  46. R.B. Davison, Black British: Immigrants to England (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 128–9;

    Google Scholar 

  47. C.R. Taylor, ‘British Churches and Jamaican Migration: A Study of Religion and Identities, 1948 to 1965’ (PhD thesis, Anglia Polytechnic University, 2002);

    Google Scholar 

  48. C.R. Potter [née Taylor], ‘Is Home Where the Heart Is? Jamaican Migration and British Churches, 1948–1965’, Wesley Historical Society of London and the South East Journal, 80 (2011), pp. 4–13.

    Google Scholar 

  49. M.J.C. Calley, God’s People: West Indian Pentecostal Sects in England (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 43–4.

    Google Scholar 

  50. J.N. Wolfe and M. Pickford, The Church of Scotland: An Economic Survey (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1980), pp. 80–6;

    Google Scholar 

  51. C.D. Field, ‘Joining and Leaving British Methodism since the 1960s’, in L.J. Francis and Y. Katz, eds, Joining and Leaving Religion: Research Perspectives (Leominster: Gracewing, 2000), pp. 57–85.

    Google Scholar 

  52. For a Methodist case study, see C.D. Field, ‘Demography and the Decline of British Methodism: I. Nuptiality’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, 58 (2012), pp. 175–89;

    Google Scholar 

  53. C.D. Field, ‘Demography and the Decline of British Methodism: II. Fertility’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, 58 (2012), pp. 200–15.

    Google Scholar 

  54. C.D. Field, ‘Demography and the Decline of British Methodism, III: Mortality’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, 58 (2012), pp. 247–63.

    Google Scholar 

  55. Lapsed Members in the Manchester District’; J.R. Butler, ‘A Sociological Study of Lapsed Membership’, London Quarterly and Holborn Review, 191 (1966), pp. 236–44;

    Google Scholar 

  56. B.E. Jones, Family Count: A Study Pamphlet About Methodism Today (London: Methodist Church Home Mission Department, 1970), pp. 8–9.

    Google Scholar 

  57. P.J. Yalden, ‘Association, Community, and the Origins of Secularisation: English and Welsh Nonconformity, c. 1850–1930’, Journal ofEcclesiastical History, 55 (2004), pp. 296–300.

    Google Scholar 

  58. I.L. Holt and E.T. Clark, The World Methodist Movement (Nashville: The Upper Room, 1956), p. 137.

    Google Scholar 

  59. C.D. Field, ‘Gradualist or Revolutionary Secularization? A Case Study of Religious Belonging in Inter-War Britain, 1918–1939’, Church History and Religious Culture, 93 (2013), p. 91.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  60. N. Stanton, ‘From Sunday Schools to Christian Youth Work: Young People’s Engagement with Organised Christianity in Twentieth Century England and the Present Day’ (PhD thesis, Open University, 2013), pp. 85–96.

    Google Scholar 

  61. D. Rosman, ‘Sunday Schools and Social Change in the Twentieth Century’, in S. Orchard and J.H.Y. Briggs, eds, The Sunday School Movement: Studies in the Growth and Decline of Sunday Schools (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007), p. 159.

    Google Scholar 

  62. D. Wright, Attitudes towards the Church in Wellingborough (Leicester: Department of Adult Education, Leicester University, 1965), p. 24.

    Google Scholar 

  63. Independent Television Authority, Religious Programmes on Independent Television (London: the Authority, 1962), p. 55.

    Google Scholar 

  64. G.E.S. Gorer, Exploring English Character (London: Cresset Press, 1955), pp. 246–7, 454–5.

    Google Scholar 

  65. T. Cauter and J. Downham, The Communication of Ideas: A Study of Contemporary Influences on Urban Life (London: Chatto & Windus, 1954), pp. 54–5.

    Google Scholar 

  66. C. Peach and R. Gale, ‘Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs in the New Religious Landscape of England’, Geographical Review, 93 (2003), p. 479;

    Google Scholar 

  67. H. Ansari, ‘The Infidel Within’: Muslims in Britain since 1800 (London: Hurst, 2004), pp. 50–1;

    Google Scholar 

  68. S. Gilliat-Ray, Muslims in Britain: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 44–52.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  69. G. Singh and D.S. Tatla, Sikhs in Britain: The Making of a Community (London: Zed Books, 2006), pp. 49–52, 59.

    Google Scholar 

  70. C.B. Campbell, ‘Membership Composition of the British Humanist Association’, Sociological Review, 13 (1965), pp. 327–37;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  71. C.B. Campbell, ‘Humanism in Britain: The Formation of a Secular Value-Oriented Movement’, in D.A. Martin, ed., A Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain, 2 (London: SCM Press, 1969), pp. 157–72;

    Google Scholar 

  72. C.B. Campbell, Toward a Sociology of Irreligion (London: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 83, 88, 92–3;

    Google Scholar 

  73. S. Budd, ‘The Humanist Societies: The Consequences of a Diffuse Belief System’, in B.R. Wilson, ed., Patterns of Sectarianism: Organisation and Ideology in Social and Religious Movements (London: Heinemann, 1967), pp. 366–405;

    Google Scholar 

  74. S. Budd, Varieties of Unbelief: Atheists and Agnostics in English Society, 1850–1960 (London: Heinemann, 1977), p. 181;

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Birmingham, UK

    Clive D. Field

Authors
  1. Clive D. Field
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2015 Clive D. Field

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Field, C.D. (2015). Belonging. In: Britain’s Last Religious Revival? Quantifying Belonging, Behaving, and Believing in the Long 1950s. Histories of the Sacred and the Secular 1700–2000. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137512536_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137512536_2

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-50632-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-51253-6

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation