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Religion in the City

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Hugh McLeod
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Extract

Interpretation of the role of religion in the cities of Europe and America during the last one hundred and fifty years has been dominated by a single issue: the relationship between urbanization and secularization, which recent writings continue to amplify.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History Yearbook , Volume 5 , May 1978 , pp. 7 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1. See Boulard, F., Introduction to Religious Sociology (English translation, 1960).Google Scholar

2. Wirth, L., ‘Urbanization as a way of life’, American Journal of Sociology, xliv (1938–1939), 15.Google Scholar

3. Park, R. E.,Burgess, E. W., McKenzie, R.D, The City (Chicago, 1925), 130.Google Scholar

4. Drake, St. C. and Cayton, H. R., Black Metropolis (rev. edn New York, 1970), 653.Google Scholar

5. Houtart, F., L'eglise et la pastorale des grandes villes (Brussels, 1955), 13.Google Scholar

6. Charpin, F., Pratique religieuse et formation d'une grande ville (Paris, 1964).Google Scholar

7. Winnington-Ingram, A. F., Work in Great Cities (1896), 22,Google Scholar as quoted by Inglis, K. S., Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England (1963), 3.Google Scholar

8. Charpin, op. cit., 271–301.

9. Pin, E., Pratique religieuse et classes sociales (Paris, 1956), 213, 219–31.Google Scholar

10. Ibid., 220; Mol, H. (ed.), Western Religion (The Hague, 1972), 77, 92–4, 132, 180, 520.Google Scholar

11. Pierrard, P., La vie ouvrière a Lille sous le Second Empire (Paris, 1965), 366–7, 375–6, 381–2.Google Scholar

12. For instance, the Bulgarian and Yugoslav contributors to Mol's symposium describe the recent economic and social transformations in their countries in very bland terms, with no reference to any upheavals or dislocations that may be involved. The Yugoslav contributor (Mol, op. cit., 592) explains higher rural than urban rates of religiosity in his country as follows: the urban population is ‘connected with a more advanced form of production (which gives less support to religious phenomena)’; higher levels of education in the towns; the greater concentration of priests and church buildings in the country.

13. Luckmann, T., The Invisible Religion (English translation, New York, 1967), 29.Google Scholar

14. Brenan, G., The Spanish Labyrinth (2nd edn, 1950), 53Google Scholar; Mol, op. cit., 331; Chadwick, O., The Secularization of the European Mind (1975), 95–6Google Scholar; Agulhon, M., La Républic au village (Paris, 1970)Google Scholar; Boulard, op. cit., 29; the 1851 religious census showed that in both England and Scotland rural church attendance was lowest in the remoter counties of north and west (the reverse of the French pattern).

15. The most comprehensive collection of contemporary statistics is probably in Mol, op. cit.. See also Boulard, F. and Rémy, J., Pratique religieuse urbain et régions culturelles (Paris, 1968).Google Scholar For the nineteenth century: fairly detailed English evidence is available (see McLeod, H., ‘Class, community and region: the religious geography of nineteenth-century England’, in Hill, M. (ed), Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain, 6 (1973), 29–72)Google Scholar; for Scotland, Howie, R., The Churches and the Churchless in Scotland (Glasgow, 1893).Google Scholar Elsewhere figures seem to be scarce and scattered. Low rates of Protestant practice in several German towns are quoted by Latourette, K., Christianity in a Revolutionary Age (1962), 64–5, 96–7.Google Scholar The most detailed figures I have seen are of Lutheran communicants in Sweden, given in Gustafsson, B., Socialdemokraten och Kyrkan, 1881–90 (Stockholm, 1953)Google Scholar, which, to judge from the English summary, seems to be a very useful study: this shows that the proportion of adult males communicating in Stockholm dropped from about 35 per cent to 11 per cent between 1850 and 1880.

16. Mol, op. cit., 297–8, 410; McLeod, op. cit., 46–7; de Paor, L., Divided Ulster (2nd edn, 1971), 142Google Scholar; Chélini, J., La ville et l'Eglise (Paris, 1958), 64–75Google Scholar.

17. Mol. op. cit., 533–5.

18. Hilaire, Y. -M., ‘Les ouvriers du Nord devant l'Eglise Catholique (XIXe et XXe siecles)’, in Bédarida, F. and Maitron, J. (eds), Christianisme et monde ouvrier (Paris, 1975), 233Google Scholar; Gustafsson, op. cit., 181–3, and passim. Gustafsson, who associates the alienation of Swedish workers from the Lutheran church in the later-nineteenth century with growing class-consciousness, and a consequent rejection of the church's conservatism, and avoidance of contacts with members of other social strata, notes the uneven development of these phenomena. The first to be affected were artisans whose relatively good position was undermined by technological changes. In the 1880s these were more radical and less devout than textile factory workers drawn from an agricultural background, who saw their present position as a step forward. The former, he argues, continued with church marriage and baptism when they gave up attending weekly services, because these brought them into contact only with family and friends, and not with social ‘superiors’.

19. Mol. op. cit., 403–25; Davies, E. T., Religion in the Industrial Revolution in South Wales (Cardiff, 1965).Google Scholar

20. For the concept of ‘churches of the disinherited’, see Niebuhr, H. R., Social Sources of Denominationalism (New York, 1929), 30–1.Google Scholar Notable studies include, d'Epinay, C. Lalive, Haven of the Masses (English translation, 1969)Google Scholar; Fauset, A. H., Black Gods of the Metropolis (Philadephia, 1944).Google Scholar

21. Latourette, op. cit., 64–5; Mol, op. cit., 136, 496; Freytag, J. and Ozaki, K., Nominal Christianity: Studies of Church and People in Hamburg (1970).Google Scholar

22. Cf. Thompson, D. M., ‘The churches and society in nineteenth-century England: a rural perspective’, in Cuming, G. J. and D. Baker (eds), Studies in Church History, 8 (1972), 170CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McLeod, op. cit.

23. McLeod, H., Class and Religion in the Late Victorian City (1974), 288–9Google Scholar; Luckmann, op.cit.,30.

24. I have reviewed this at greater length in Victorian Studies, xxi, No. 2 (Winter, 1977).Google Scholar

25. Chapin, R. C., The Standard of Living among Workingmen's Families in New York City (New York, 1909), 209.Google Scholar

26. Yeo, S., ‘On the uses of “apathy”,’ Archives Européennes de Sociologie, XV (1974), 279–311.Google Scholar

27. Browne, H. J., One Step above Hell's Kitchen: Sacred Heart Parish in Clinton (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; Dolan, J. P., The Immigrant Church (Baltimore, 1975).Google Scholar Also to be noted are Tomasi, S., Piety and Power: The Role of the Italian Parishes in the New York Metropolitan Area, 1880–1930 (New York, 1975)Google Scholar; Murnion, P. J., ‘Towards theopolitan ministry: the changing structure of the pastoral ministry, New York, 1920–1970’, (Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 1972).Google Scholar

28. Masur, G., Imperial Berlin (1971), 299.Google Scholar

29. Pin, op. cit., 400–1.

30. Osofsky, G., Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto (2nd edn, New York, 1971), 143Google Scholar; McCabe, J. D., Lights and Shadows of New York Life (Philadelphia, 1872), 664.Google Scholar

31. A series on German city life published around 1905 included a volume on spiritualism, mainly stressing the more exotic aspects of the subject. But it included an account of the ‘consultations’ held each afternoon by a Berlin carpenter's wife with a reputation as a medium, at which she advised ‘the servant-girls of the neighbourhood, lovelorn shopgirls, mourning widows, anxious mothers’. Friemark, H., Moderne Geisterbeschwörer und Wahrheitssucher (Grossstadt-Dokuments, Band 38, Berlin, n.d.), 51.Google Scholar

32. An autobiography of an S.D.F. activist which brings out very clearly the ‘religious’ aspect of the socialism of this period is Jackson, T., Solo Trumpet (1953), 48–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also the comments of a sympathetic observer (later member) of the S.P.D.: Göhre, P., Three Months in a Workshop (English translation, 1895), 108–9.Google Scholar

33. Mol, op. cit., chapters on Bulgaria and Yugoslavia (which express this view stridently), and on Czechoslovakia and Hungary (more cautiously).

34. Volume IX, Life and Leisure (1935) could be taken as equivalent in Smith, H. Llewellyn (ed.), New Survey of London Life and Labour, to 3rd Series, ‘Religious Influences’ (1902–1903)Google Scholar in C. Booth (ed.), Life and Labour of the People in London. In some ways the later volume is broader in scope, giving as it does systematic treatment to such subjects as drink and gambling. But it is also duller and more superficial. Organized religion is excluded, which may be justified, but neither is there much of the rich discussion of mentalités that enlivens such contemporary American works as Zorbaugh, H. W., The Gold Coast and the Slum (Chicago, 1929).Google Scholar

35. Anderson, M., Family Structure in Nineteenth-Century Lancashire (1971), 93, 124–15.Google Scholar

36. Cf. Mol, op. cit., 331; Hobsbawm, E. J., Primitive Rebels (2nd edn, Manchester, 1971), 147.Google Scholar

37. Davies, R. and Rupp, G. (eds), A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain (1965-) 1, 56–60.Google Scholar

38. Drake and Cayton, op. cit., 650–4 and passim; Locke, B., ‘The community life of a Harlem group of Negroes,’ (M.A.thesis, Columbia University, 1913), 22–5.Google Scholar The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Paperback edn, 1968), 125ff.Google Scholar gives a vivid description of his confrontation with Boston in the 1940s, as a preacher's son from a small town: ‘I spent my first month in town with my mouth hanging open.’

39. Gilley, S., ‘The Catholic faith of the Irish slums’, Dyos, H. J. and Wolff, M. (eds), The Victorian City (1973), II, 837–53.Google Scholar

40. Hollenweger, W., The Pentecostals (1972), 75–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar; West, M., Bishops and Prophets in a Black City (Cape Town, 1975)Google Scholar; Gerloff, R., ‘Black Christian communities in Birmingham. The problem of basic recognition’, in Bryman, A. (ed.) Religion in the Birmingham Area: Essays in the Sociology of Religion (Birmingham, 1975), 61–84.Google Scholar

41. Cf. Gilbert, A. D., Religion and Society in Industrial England (1976), 87–93Google Scholar; Lalive d'Epinay, op. cit., 130.

42. Göhre, op. cit., 144–88.

43. Charpin, op. cit., passim.

44. For a useful summary of the present situation, Glazer, N. and Moynihan, D. P., Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City (2nd edn, Cambridge, Mass., 1970)Google Scholar; for a historical study that emphasizes the continuing influence of the immigrant's Sicilian background: McLaughlin, V. Y., ‘Like the fingers of the hand: the family and community life of first-generation Italian Americans in Buffalo, New York’, (Ph.D. thesis, SUNY, Buffalo, 1970).Google Scholar

45. The close relationship between religion and politics in the history of Marseille is frequently noted by Charpin, e.g., 51–2,187–9, 215–39. Other studies that emphasize the role of political factors in rooting established churches in some sections of the population and alienating them from others include: for Spain, Sanchez, J. M., Reform and Reaction (Chapel Hill, 1964)Google Scholar; for Finland, Mol, op. cit., 143–73; for Sweden, Thomasson, R. F., ‘The religious situation in Sweden’, Social Compass, XV (1968), 493.Google Scholar

46. For Wesleyan Methodism: Ward, W. R., Religion and Society in England, 1970–1850 (1972), chapter 4Google Scholar; for the French church after the Separation: Siefer, G., The Church and Industrial Society (English translation, 1964), 28–40.Google Scholar Bruneau, T., The Political Transformation of the Brazilian Catholic Church (1974)Google Scholar describes the rise and decline of one such alliance, and the emergence of an alternative strategy; Hadden, J. K., The Gathering Storm in the Churches (Garden City, 1968)Google Scholar describes the conflicts in the USA in the 1960s between conservative congregations and progressive ministers in which some of the latter lost their pulpits.

47. Jones, G.Stedman, Outcast London (1971)Google Scholar shows how the industrial structure of pre-1914 London led to the formation of a very large sub-proletariat; Handlin, O., Boston's Immigrants (2nd edn, Cambridge, Mass, 1959) chapter 4Google Scholar, describes the living conditions and culture of the poor Irish in the nineteenth century, but probably exaggerates the extent of the church's influence (cf. Dolan, op. cit., chapter 3); for present-day American cities: Lewis, O., ‘The culture of poverty’, Scientific American, ccxv (1966), 19–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For ‘lift’, see Gilbert, op. cit., 159–62, 181.

48. McLeod, ‘Class, community and region’.

49. Boulard and Rémy, op. cit., 59, Tableau A; Chélini, op. cit., 75.

50. For which see Berger, P., The Social Reality of Religion (1969)Google Scholar, one of the best attempts at an historically rooted sociology of contemporary secularization.