Clive Field is the leading authority on the statistics of British religion in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. But his impressive body of publications also covers earlier periods, going back to the seventeenth century. His main interest is in those aspects of religion which can be counted, notably church membership and attendance and participation in rites of passage. He is not so concerned with less tangible measures of religiosity or secularity. In the latest addition to his series of volumes on British religion since around 1880 he focuses on the last fifty years. The central theme of the series has been secularisation, and the period since 1970 offers rich material on this theme. In addition to statistics of membership provided by Britain's many Christian denominations and the counts of church attendance organised by Peter Brierley, there is now census data covering all religions as well as evidence of public attitudes derived from polls. The latter cover a huge range of issues ranging from frequency of prayer to prejudice against adherents of other religions, and to respect or lack of respect for the clergy. The focus is mainly on Christians and on those with no religion, though there is some material on Muslims and Jews. The large statistical appendix will provide an invaluable resource even for those who never read the text, but the extended commentary evaluates the figures while also placing them in historiographical context.
The book focuses on individual religion or irreligion, and Field's central theme is a remorseless process of secularisation. This had already gone far by 1970, but it has gone a lot further since. Field is dismissive of what he calls ‘the so-called religious crisis of the 1960s’, as he thinks equally important changes have taken place in the 1990s and 2010s. He has identified eighteen measures of religiosity, and his figures suggest a downward trend in fifteen of these. He notes the similarities between his findings and those of Steve Bruce, the leading exponent of the ‘secularisation thesis’, but he refuses to identify himself with any of the theories of secularisation. It would be hard to dispute his interpretation of the general trends in respect of the ‘performance indicators’ which he has chosen. As regards church attendance, for example, he estimates that in the years since 1970 Anglican Church attendance has fallen by 55 per cent, Methodist by 63 per cent and Catholic by 67 per cent. There have also been major falls in the proportion of children being baptised and of marriages conducted with religious ceremonies. The most intriguing section relates to the decline in the number of religious funerals, though here there is less hard evidence. Meanwhile, polls reveal a decline in the number of people praying or reading the Bible. The key to secularisation, in Field's view, lies in the declining religious socialisation of the young. He does not try to explore in any detail the reasons for this, but he lays special stress on the decline of the ‘British Sunday’ and the opening up of numerous alternative possibilities for spending the day in ways that in earlier times would have been stigmatised or not even possible.
The book will remain an essential point of reference for anyone interested in British religion in these years. None the less there are significant parts of this religion which are not on his agenda, as well as some points where his arguments are open to debate. To begin with the first point: while no one would deny that there has been a substantial decline in individual belief and practice, there are other dimensions of religion or secularity which cannot readily be counted. For example, in spite of Bryan Wilson's famous definition of secularisation as the process by which religion declines in social significance, I would suggest that the social significance of religious institutions remains considerable. For example, although Field is rather dismissive of ‘faith schools’, it is clear from the stratagems adopted by parents to get their children into such schools that the demand for them considerably exceeds the supply. And, while I cannot speak of any national figures, in the city where I live most of the work to assist asylum-speakers appears to be done by those who are religiously motivated; the Churches have also provided night shelters and advice centres for those who are homeless. Numerous food banks are located in churches.
While Field has shown impressive energy in gathering the findings of polls, I would suggest that the results are of uneven value. The information on what people have done or claim to have done and on what they believe is unquestionably valuable, but I am more sceptical of the value of polls which try to measure opinion on issues which many of the respondents may never have thought about. As Field, with his keen attention to methodology, points out, a lot may depend on the wording of the question. When presented with an abstraction – ‘Should the Church intervene in politics?’ – most people will say ‘No’. When presented with something more concrete – a series of quotations from Justin Welby – most people say that Welby was right. In practice I think that most people are grateful for church interventions, provided of course that they agree with what the Church is saying. There is intriguing material on religious prejudice. Polls suggest that prejudice against Muslims is rife; that prejudice against Catholics and Jews has declined but not disappeared; and that prejudice against atheists has largely disappeared. It would be useful here to have more information on who is prejudiced. Field sees the overall decline in prejudice as a form of secularisation, but it may be more complicated. Research in Switzerland found that anti-Muslim prejudice was higher than average (presumably for different reasons) among Evangelicals and those with no religion, below average among Catholics or members of the Protestant state Churches. And while I would agree with Field that secularisation should be seen in the long term, going back to the nineteenth, and even to the eighteenth century, this should not preclude recognition of the specific significance of particular periods, including, not least, the 1960s.
