Catastrophe theory for Christians

THE DEATH OF CHRISTIAN BRITAIN
By Callum G. Brown.
Routledge. 257 pages. £12.99
ISBN 0 415 24184 7

This book offers an alternative to the accepted theory of secularisation and gleefully pronounces the death of the culture of Christianity in Britain.

The usual understanding of secularisation is of a gradual decline in faith which begins at the Enlightenment. The author of this book believes that the facts do not fit this scenario. Rather, instead of a slow process, he posits a kind of catastrophe theory approach with the crucial turning point taking place in the 1960s. The fact that with events like the Billy Graham crusades 'the late 1940s and 1950s witnessed the greatest church growth that Britain had experienced since the mid-19th century' is part of his rebuttal of the accepted wisdom.

Discursive Christianity

Brown's theory is that the Christian culture of Britain was actually dependent on what he calls 'discursive Christianity', that is the Christian/evangelical story line of God, morality, sin and redemption through which people tended to understand their lives and construct their identity. His approach, like many modern social commentators, is to read everything in gender terms (what a surprise?). 'Around 1800, with the fading of coercive religion, religiosity became overwhelmingly discursive, dependent on bringing an evangelical narrative of the life story to the foreground of personal identity.' The evangelical narrative was circulated in many ways, but especially through printed material such as tracts, sermons and Christianised novels. 'Before 1800 Christian piety had been located in masculinity, after 1800 it became located in femininity. Paeans of praise were heaped on women's innate piety while brickbats were hurled at men's susceptibility to temptation.' Here much data is deployed from such sources as the temperance movements of the 19th century. 'In this "system", women were the key, for it was their religiosity that mattered. It was their influence on children and men, their profession of purity and virtue, their attachment to domesticity and all the virtues located with that, which sustained discursive Christianity in the age of modernity.'

Shedding the veneer

However, according to the author, it was around 1960 that the age of discursive Christianity collapsed. He sees it in terms of such things as the rise of rock and roll, the change in women's magazines, but surprisingly not in how the world wars changed women's working lives nor the rise of TV. Women from then on were different. Womanhood shed 'its veneer of piety and respectability, and becoming disjoined from the romance which provided women's personal narrative for femininity and piety. The "promiscuous girl" of 1970, who was morally indifferent to her sexual activity if not proud of it, marked the end of evangelical discourse.' Whereas before 1800 Christianity was male and after 1800 Christian piety was female, now it became nothing in gendered terms. Therefore people could no longer relate to it. Hence the catastrophic decline in the church since the 60s.

Is he talking to us?

What are we to say about it? The book leans very hard on personal testimony from men and women over the last 200 years, and with the best will in the world one wonders how selective the author has been in the choice of his material. Then he attaches his theory to the idea of the influence of discourse. No doubt public discourse has a profound influence upon us all. But one cannot help thinking that such changes in technology as made our lives at home less arduous, and the advent of the contraceptive pill at just about the same time that he sees as the crucial watershed, must also have had a profound impact. One could cynically propound a much simpler theory that up until the pill women 'used' Christianity as a way of protecting themselves from being abused by men. Once the dangers of unwanted pregnancy and the hardship of being a single parent had been reduced by more reliable contraception they no longer had any need for Christianity.

With all this in mind I am not quite sure how relevant Brown's book is to us as evangelicals. Many thousands came to Christ during the 1960s and have since. Further-more he describes existing churches as being full of nothing but old ladies who were brought up in different days. No doubt there are many churches like that, but not many that I know. I live in a town where the Bible churches are full of young people. Also, if one looks into the UK Christian Handbook of Religious Trends 2000/2001 (published by Christian Research), one finds that, far from declining, groups such as the FIEC and the Elim Pentecostals have grown many fold in membership since the 1960s.

No doubt Mr. Brown would have some kind of explanation for that. But it left me feeling that, although what he is saying in this book might have some truth, he is misusing the term 'evangelical', and describing the decline of what many of us would al-ways have seen as pseudo-Christianity rather than the real thing.

Lastly, if Brown is right about the influence of public discourse on the nation generally in at least making people open or not to hearing the gospel then it raises a challenge. What are we doing to seek to recapture an influence in public discourse?

JEB