Religion in the age of decline1996

The seemingly inexorable decline of religion in twentieth-century Britain has long fascinated historians, sociologists and churchmen. They have also been exasperated by their failure to understand its origin or chart its progress adequately. In the light of that failure, a new school of revisionists has arisen to challenge the basic premises of decline and its putative causes. Sceptical both of traditional accounts and of their more recent rejection, S. J. D. Green concentrates scholarly attention for the first time on the 'social history of the chapel' during the crucial years and in a characteristic industrial urban setting. He demonstrates just why so many churches were built in these years, who built them, who went to them, and why. He evaluates the related 'associational ideal' during the years of its greatest success, and explains the causes of its subsequent decline. Finally, he considers the shifting range and altered significance of religious experience, both within and extending beyond religious organisations, at that time. In this way Religion in the age of decline offers a fresh and cogent interpretation of the extent and the implications of the decline of religion in early twentieth-century Britain.