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Religion and Reproduction among English Dissenters: Gloucestershire Baptists in the Demographic Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Albion M. Urdank
Albion M. Urdank
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Extract

The growth of English Nonconformity during the era of the demographic revolution (circa 1750–1850) has long been regarded as an impediment to the reconstruction of reproductive behavior. Historical demographers have relied heavily on Church of England registers of baptisms, burials, and marriages, while treating Protestant dissenters from the Church of England secondarily, as a factor of underestimation in the Anglican record. Such treatment suggests that religious culture played no independent role in determining population growth. This assumption seems problematic, however, considering the central role that social historians have assigned evangelical dissent to the emergence of modern English society and the somewhat greater place that religion has occupied in demographic studies of populations in continental Europe, the United States, and the third world.

Type
Acts of Kinship
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , July 1991 , pp. 511 - 527
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1991

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References

1 Between 1800 and 1840, for instance, membership in evangelical Nonconformist churches (not counting the number of less formal hearers) rose from 2.8 to 6.0 percent of a population that had itself increased by 72 percent during the same interval. See Gilbert, Alan, Religion and Society in Industrial England: Church, Chapel and Social Change, 1740–1914 (London, 1976), 39,Google Scholar fig. 2.2; and Wrigley, E.A. and Schofield, R.S., The Population History of England, 1540–1871: A Reconstruction (Cambridge, Ma., 1981), 94–102,Google Scholar 136–8ff on the problem of Nonconformity in English population history and 534–5 and table A3.3 for population estimates (the estimated population in 1800 was 8,606,033 and in 1840, was 14,797,488).

2 For the classic statements regarding the place of evangelicalism in the transition to liberal industrial society, see Halevy, Elie, The Birth of Methodism in England, Semmel, Bernard, trans, and ed. (Chicago, 1971);Google ScholarThompson, E.P., The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1963),Google Scholar ch. XI; for more recent work, cf. Obelkevich, James, Religion and Rural Society: South Lindsey, 1825–1875 (Oxford, 1976);Google ScholarValenze, Deborah, Prophetic Sons and Daughters: Female Preaching and Popular Religion in Industrial England (Princeton, 1985);Google ScholarLovegrove, Dereyck, Established Church, Sectarian People: Itinerancy and the Transformation of English Dissent, 1780–1830 (Cambridge, 1988);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Urdank, Albion M., Religion and Society in a Cotswold Vale: Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, 1780–1865 (Berkeley, 1990).Google Scholar

3 Chesnais, Compare Jean-Claude, La Transition Démographique: etapes, formes, implications économiques: Etude de séries temporelles (1720–1984) relative à 67 pays (Paris, 1986), 321–2;Google ScholarLeon, P., Levy-Leboyer, M., Armengaud, A., Broder, A., Bruhat, J., Daumard, A., Labrousse, E., Laurent, R., and Souboul, A., Histoire Économique et Sociale de la France, III/1 (Paris, 1976), 162–4, 192–6;Google ScholarKnodel, John E., Demographic Behavior in the Past: A Study of Fourteen German Village Populations in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge. 1988),CrossRefGoogle Scholar 24 (table 2.1) and 314–7; Kertzer, David I. and Hogan, Dennis P., Family, Political Economy and Demographic Change: The Transformation of Life in Casalecchio, Italy, 1861–1921 (Madison, WI 1989), 118–21, 174–5ff;Google ScholarGutmann, Myron P. and Fliess, Kenneth R., “Determinants of Fertility Decline in the American Southwest” (manuscript, 04 1989), 8–11;Google Scholar and Westoff, Charles F., “The Blending of Catholic Reproductive Behavior,” in The Religious Dimension: New Directions in Quantitative Research, Wuthnow, Robert, ed. (New York, 1979), 236–8.Google Scholar Jean-Claude Chesnais regards the slow spread and gradual maturation of enlightenment values among the French population (as measured by rising literacy rates) and the parallel retreat of religious sentiment prior to the revolution of 1789 as the main reason for France's early fertility decline. Pierre Leon and his collaborators, on the other hand, emphasize the predominance in pre-1789 France of a natural population regime influenced partly by religious sentiment; evidence of contraception remained highly fragmentary for this period and appears only with the advent of the revolution; cf. Etienne Van De Walle, who examines only the socioeconomic determinants of the French fertility transition, in “Alone in Europe: The French Fertility Decline until 1850,” in Historical Studies of Changing Fertility, Tilly, Charles, ed. (Princeton, 1978), 257–88.Google Scholar The weakening of religious sentiment, correspondingly, appears as a post-1810 development, part of “l'ensemble de phénomènes économiques, sociaux et culturels que Ton désigne sous le terme de progres de la civilisation” (p. 195, emphasis added). David Kertzer and Dennis Hogan have emphasized the importance of the symbolic and ritualistic aspects of Catholicism to marriage in Casalecchio, Italy rather than its direct impact on fertility; and with respect to fertility, they argue for the primacy of the family's economic circumstances. John Knodel, Demographic Behavior in the Past, minimizes the differences between Protestant and Catholic fertility in his recent study of fourteen German villages: Catholics had a marginally higher number of children per couple than did Protestants (4.8 compared to 4.4); and in 1890, on the eve the fertility transition for rural areas, Protestant pastors who were surveyed denied the existence of any significant use of birth control, affirming Knodel's quantitative findings and implying little difference between religious denominations in this respect. Myron Gutmann and Kenneth Fliess, “Determinants of Fertility Decline,” arrived at a different finding for late nineteenth-century German immigrants to the American Southwest; they suggest that higher fertility rates among Catholics were caused by a combination of stronger pronatalist views and distinctive breast-feeding customs carried over from Europe. Charles Westoff, “The Blending of Catholic Reproductive Behavior,” also records higher fertility rates among American Catholics nationally in the post-World War II era but shows that by 1975 the differential with respect to Protestant fertility rates fell virtually to zero as Catholics became more fully secularized. Chamie, Compare Joseph, Religion and Fertility: Arab Christian-Muslim Differentials (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)Google Scholar for a similar contemporary discussion within a third-world context.

4 See Gloucester Record Office [hereafter G.R.O.], Shortwood Baptist Church Collection, D2424/3 (membership roll) and D2424/10 (marriage and birth register); and the Shortwood burial register, which is in the possession of Mrs. Betty Mills, Newmarket House, Nailsworth, Stroud, Gloucestershire, England. This theme is being explored further in a larger family reconstitution study that draws on both Nonconformist and Anglican sources.

5 Nailsworth's local life tended to center on Horsley, despite formal boundary divisions. Horsely also remained more industrial than did Avening; and within the contraints of a local study, it was important to base the analysis on the most industrial environment possible. Minchinhampton was in fact the most industrialized of all three parishes, but its local life centered on the old wool town of the same name, which was too far removed from Nailsworth to have appreciably affected the latter's residents (see Urdank, Religion and Society, ch. 1).

6 See Everitt, Alan, The Pattern of Rural Dissent: The Nineteenth Century, Occasional Papers, 2nd series, no. 4 (Leicester: Department of English Local History, University of Leicester, 1972).Google Scholar

7 See Urdank, Religion and Society in a Cotswold Vale, chs. 3 and 9.

8 On the sect-denomination dichotomy, see Wilson, Bryan R. “An Analysis of Sect Development,” in Patterns of Sectarianism: Organization and Ideology in Social and Religious Movements, Wilson, Bryan R., ed. (London, 1967)Google Scholar; for a refinement of Wilson's sect typology, see Welch, Michael R., “Quantitative Approaches to Sect Classification and the Study of Sect Development,” in Religious Dimension, Wuthnow, , ed., 93–109.Google Scholar Also see Valenze, Prophetic Sons and Daughters, chs. 4, 12 et passim; and Urdank, Religion and Society, chs. 3, 8 and 9 for historical treatments of religious sectarianism.

9 G. R. O., D2698/2/3, Newman Family Papers, Letter of Thomas Fox Newman, January 19, 1832. “I long to see the day when all who hold Christ the head will welcome each other to the Lord's Table,” Newman had written his former congregation upon a ssuming the pastorate of Shortwood. “You may easily conceive that when I have an opportunity of settling among a people who do not refuse to admit Poedobaptists to the Lord's Table, I should be predisposed to give due attention to their call.”

10 See Urdank, Religion and Society, 138–52.

11 For event-history data organization, see Blossfeld, H-P., Hamerle, A. and Mayer, K.U., Event History Analysis: Statistical Theory and Application in the Social Sciences (Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1989),Google Scholar ch. 2; Alter, George, Family and the Female Life Course: The Women of Verviers, Belgium, 1849–1880 (Madison, 1988),Google Scholar especially ch. 2, and the discussion below.

12 G.R.O. P181 IN I'I–10, 12, 13, Horsley Registers; P217 IN.jfif. Minchinhampton registers; P 26 IN ff. Avening Registers.

13 One mother was very likely a Baptist, however, since both her husband and several of her children could be found in the membership roll; nonetheless, for the sake of caution, she was coded as a hearer.

14 Because the event-history analysis below requires discrete intervals between births, the mean interval between marriage and first birth was rounded off to two years.

15 Allison, Paul D., Event History Analysis: Regression for Longitudinal Event Data (Beverly Hills, CA.: Sage University Papers, 1984), 16–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Alter, Family and the Female Life Course, 13.

17 For the use of intervals between events in the analysis of repeated events, see Allison, Event History, 51–57.

18 There may be some loss of precision as a result, but not very much: Allison, Event History, 22; Alter, Family and the Female Life Course, 45–46. Calculations of coefficients and t-values were made with S.A.S., a standard statistical package, using the procedure Proc PHGLM (Proportional Hazard General Linear Model); see Allison, Event History, 75–77.

19 See Malmgreen, Gail, “Domestic Discords: Women and the Family in East Cheshire Methodism, 1750–1830,” in Jim Obelkevich, et al., Disciplines of Faith: Studies in Religion, Politics and Patriarch (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987),Google Scholar 60 for a similar pattern of pluralism of religious affiliation within early Methodist families.

20 In larger populations, say of 10,000, it might be more usual to draw a relatively smaller sample of, say 10 percent. But even here, where subcategories may be involved in the analysis, a minimum of twenty to fifty units is recommended in order to gaurantee the adequacy of tests of statistical significance. See Willigan, J. Dennis and Lynch, Katherine A., Sources and Methods of Historical Demography (New York, 1982), 195,Google Scholar 199.

21 The adjustment was made by subtracting the year the couple married from the ending date of each interval to arrive at the number of years at risk for each observation, then dividing the duration by this figure.

22 The t-values for the coefficient of occupational status in the two Hazard models were, respectively, 0.044 and 0.325; the usual minimum acceptable t-value is 1.96, which indicates a 95-percent probability of statistical significance. The “middling sort” included all artisan occupations and those socially above them, so that a strict dichotomy could be established between the middle and laboring classes; but even when artisans were categorized as members of the laboring class (as a control), occupational status still failed badly to pass the test of statistical significance. This result seems surprising in light of the great emphasis given to the proletarian demographic model in recent demographic literature (see Levine, David, Reproducing Families: The Political Economy of English Population History [Cambridge, 1987]Google Scholar, 88ff, 119, 137ff, 158–9). Wrigley and Schofield have emphasized the importance of rising real wages, and their greater availability generally, as a spur to reproduction. But in contrast to Levine's model of “industrial involution,” their formulation stresses the salutary effect of economic growth for all classes of the population their principal measure is rising per capita income). For a good summary of their argument, see Wrigley, E.A., “The Growth of Population in Eighteenth-Century England: A Conundrum Resolved,” Past and Present, no. 98 (1983), 121–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 This result is consistent with Wrigley and Schofield's general observation that for England and Wales marital fertility rates tended to decline with the advance of age (see Wrigley and Schofield, Population History of England, 254).

24 In the smaller data set, the t-value for Mother's Religion was 0.869; in the larger data set, the t-value equalled 0.941. The Father's Religion was similarly insignificant in both data sets.

25 Wrightson, Compare Keith and Levine, David, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 1525–1700 (New York: Academic Press, 1979),Google Scholar ch. 3, passim, for the family reconstitution findings, and p. 165, where Terling is described as “probably one of the most strongly nonconformist parishes in an area swarming with religious dissidents.”

26 Wells, Robert V., “Family Size and Fertility Control in Eighteenth-Century America: A Study of Quaker Families,” Population Studies, XXV (1971), 173–182;Google Scholaridem, “Quaker Marriage Patterns in Colonial Perspective,” in A Heritage of Her Own, Cott, Nancy F. and Pleck, Elizabeth H., eds. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 99.Google Scholar Compare D. E. C. Eversley and Richard Vann's forthcoming study on British and American Friends in the demographic transition for further explication of this theme.

27 For explication of this theme, see especially Underdown, David, Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603–1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).Google Scholar

28 Abelove, Henry, “The Sexual Politics of Early Wesleyan Methodism,” in Jim Obelkevich, et al., Disciplines of Faith, 86–89;Google ScholarValenze, Deborah, Prohetic Sons and Daughters: Female Preaching and Popular Religion in Industrial England (Princeton, 1985), 58–59.Google Scholar The great literary example of this propensity, of course, is the character of Dinah Morris in George Eliot's Adam Bede. Cf. Brown, Kenneth D., A Social History of the Nonconformist Ministry in England and Wales, 1800–1930 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 171,Google Scholar who shows statistically that most of Wesley's (male) ministers chose to marry, despite his admonition to think twice before doing so.

29 Ibid., 92–94. The theme of sexual abstinence can be traced back to the early Church (see Brown, Peter, The Body and Society: Men and Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity [1988]).Google Scholar

30 Malmgreen, “Domestic Discords,” 61–63.

31 Valenze, Prohetic Sons and Daughters, 59; idid., 63–64; Brown, Nonconformist Ministry, 174.

32 G.R.O. Newman Family Papers, D2698/2/13, Sermon “To The Young,” Ps: XC: 14, January 5, 1845; idid., Sermon from Matthew XXI:9, December 13, 1840; D2698/2/14, Sermon from Matthew XVHI:10, 11, “Sunday School,” August 4, 1850.

33 See Urdank, Religion and Society, 292, the example of Daniel Gill.

34 Idid., 31. Economic factors may have predominated in affecting the decisions of working people to marry and procreate, but recent scholarship has suggested that these choices were also determined by a wide range of considerations that transcended the impact of wages on the mean age at marriage. See Hill, Bridget, “The Marriage Age of Women and the Demographers,” History Workshop Journal, 28 (Autumn 1989), 129–30;CrossRefGoogle Scholar see also Levine, Reproducing Families, 130.

35 Cf. Knodel, Demographic Behavior, 410–15; Alter, Family and the Female Life-Course, 184–5, 193–201.