Religion in Britain

A Persistent Paradox

Grace Davie

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781405135962, 9781405135955
• eBook ISBN: 9781119004318
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Religion

Religion in Britain evaluates and sheds light on the religious situation in twenty-first century Britain; it explores the country's increasing secularity alongside religion's growing presence in public debate, and the impact of this paradox on Britain's society.

• Describes and explains the religious situation in twenty-first century Britain
• Based on the highly successful Religion in Britain Since 1945 (Blackwell, 1994) but extensively revised with the majority of the text re-written to reflect the current situation
• Investigates the paradox of why Britain has become increasingly secular and how religion is increasingly present in public debate compared with 20 years ago
• Explores the impact this paradox has on churches, faith communities, the law, politics, education, and welfare

Part I
Preliminaries

1
Introduction: A Framework for Discussion

The introduction to this book is divided into two sections. The first establishes the factors that must be taken into account if we are to understand the complexities of religion in twenty-first century Britain. In so doing, it draws extensively on two decades of research and writing in the field which began with the first edition of Religion in Britain since 1945 and has continued since (see Davie 1994, 2000, 2002, 2006, 2007a). The second section sets out the plan for the book as a whole, indicating how the ideas already introduced reflect both the material covered in the first edition and more recent developments in the field.

Religion in Modern Britain: The Factors to Take into Account

There are six rather different features, which – taken together – contribute to a better understanding of the place of religion in modern Britain, seeing this as a distinctive variation on a European theme. The crucial point to remember is that they push and pull in different directions. The six factors are:

1. the role of the historic churches in shaping British culture;
2. an awareness that these churches still have a place at particular moments in the lives of British people, though they are no longer able to influence – let alone discipline – the beliefs and behaviour of the great majority of the population;
3. an observable change in the actively religious constituencies of Britain, which operate increasingly on a model of choice, rather than a model of obligation or duty;
4. the arrival into Britain of groups of people from many different parts of the world, and with very different religious aspirations from those seen in the host society;
5. the reactions of Britain’s secular elites to the increasing salience of religion in public as well as private life;
6. a growing realization that the patterns of religious life in modern Europe (including Britain) should be considered an ‘exceptional case’ in global terms – they are not a global prototype.

Each of these will be taken in turn in the paragraphs that follow. They will be drawn together in a short conclusion to this section.

Cultural heritage

The starting point reflects the undisputed role of Christianity in shaping British culture over the long term, remembering that other factors (notably Greek rationalism and Roman organization) must also be kept in mind. One example will suffice to illustrate this fact: the Christian tradition has had an irreversible effect in determining the most basic categories of human existence (time and space) in this part of the world. Both week and year follow the Christian cycle, even if the major festivals of the Christian calendar are beginning to lose their resonance for large sections of the population. Many of them are nonetheless retained as a framework for public holidays. Sunday, moreover, remains distinctive despite the fact that the notion of a ‘day of rest’ has largely been discarded.

The same is true of space. Wherever you look in Britain, Christian churches predominate, some of which retain huge symbolic value for the populations that surround them. And from the largest city to the smallest village, British people orient themselves with reference to religious buildings even if they seldom enter them for worship. The whole of Britain, moreover, is divided into parishes – a territorial model with civic as well as religious implications. For centuries, the parish determined the parameters of life for the great majority of British people from the cradle to the grave. Its significance has diminished over time, but the residues still resonate, sometimes in unexpected ways. This is not to deny that in some parts of the country (notably the larger cities) the skyline is fast becoming an indicator of growing religious diversity. Britain is changing, but the legacies of the past remain deeply embedded in both the physical and cultural environment.

The historic churches

The physical and cultural presence of the historic churches is one thing; a hands-on role in the everyday lives of British people quite another. Commentators of all kinds agree that the latter is no longer a realistic, or indeed a desirable, aspiration. That does not mean that these institutions have entirely lost their significance as markers of religious identity. But how should we understand their current role? It is at this point that I have drawn time and time again on one of the key themes of Religion in Britain since 1945 – the notion of ‘believing without belonging’. My thinking, however, has continued to develop, requiring a second conceptual tool, termed ‘vicarious religion’ (Davie 2000, 2007b, 2008). Both concepts have helped me to understand the continuing role of traditional religious institutions in a society which is both increasingly secular and increasingly diverse and will be developed at length. Only an outline is given here.

One of the most striking features of religious life in this country remains the mismatch between different measurements of religiousness. There exists, first of all, a set of indicators which measure firm commitments to (i) institutional life and (ii) credal statements of religion (in this case Christianity). These indicators, moreover, are closely related to each other in so far as institutional commitments – in the form of regular religious practice – both reflect and confirm religious belief in its ‘orthodox’ forms.¹ The believing Christian attends church to express his or her belief and to receive affirmation that this is the right thing to do. Conversely, repeated exposure to the institution and its teaching necessarily disciplines belief.

No observer of the current religious scene disputes the fact that these dimensions of British religion are interrelated and in serious decline. Fewer British people go to church than used to and fewer believe in a credal sense (see Chapters 3 and 4 for an extended discussion of these profiles). As a result, the idea of a common narrative (of Christian liturgy or of Christian language and metaphor) becomes more and more tenuous almost by the day. What, then, are the consequences of this situation? The complex relationship between belief in a wider sense and practice is central to this discussion, for it is abundantly clear that a manifest reduction in the ‘hard’ indicators of religious life has not, in the short term at least, had a similar effect on the less rigorous dimensions of religiousness. For the time being at least, the latter remain relatively strong though by no means immutable. Between half and two-thirds of British people assent to ‘belief in God’ in more general terms, and roughly similar proportions touch base with the institutional churches at some point in their lives, often at times of crisis. It is precisely this state of affairs which was captured by the phrase ‘believing without belonging’. And given the rapidity with which this passed into both the sociological and pastoral literature, it clearly struck a chord.

Right from the start, however, I had misgivings – mainly because the expression ‘believing without belonging’ separates one kind of religiousness (belief) from another (belonging). It evokes less well the point already made: namely that both belief and belonging can be ‘hard’ or ‘soft’. The notion of ‘vicarious religion’ was developed with this in mind. By vicarious is meant the notion of religion performed by an active minority but on behalf of a much larger number, who (implicitly at least) not only understand, but appear to approve of what the minority is doing. The first half of the definition is relatively straightforward and reflects the everyday meaning of the term ‘vicarious’ – that is, to do something on behalf of someone else. The second half is best explored by means of examples. It captures rather better than ‘believing without belonging’ the legacy of a historically dominant church.

Religion can operate vicariously in a wide variety of ways. For example, churches and church leaders perform ritual on behalf of others (at the time of a birth or a death for instance); if these services are denied, this causes offence – the more so amongst those who do not attend church with any regularity. Church leaders and churchgoers believe on behalf of others and incur criticism if they do not do this properly. Once again it is, very often, the occasional churchgoer who articulates this disquiet most clearly, and the more senior the church leader, the worse the problem gets. Third, church leaders and churchgoers are expected to embody moral codes on behalf of others, even when those codes have been abandoned by large sections of the populations that they serve. Churches, finally, can offer space for the vicarious debate of unresolved issues in modern societies. If the latter were not the case, it is hard to understand the persistent scrutiny of their positions on a wide variety of topical issues, from changing views regarding the nature of sexuality to the difficult moral questions surrounding birth and death – which reflect in turn the meaning of life itself. All of these points will be expanded in Chapter 4.

An alternative way of illustrating the nature of vicarious religion is to consider the place of religion and the continuing role of religious institutions in European societies when they face the unexpected or the tragic. The reactions provoked by the death of Princess Diana in August 1997 offer a revealing illustration: what happened in Britain in the week following the car accident in Paris cannot by any stretch of the imagination be described as either rational or secular, but nor was it conventionally religious. So what was it? One point is clear: a great deal of the improvised and markedly heterogeneous rituals that emerged at that time took place in the vicinity of centrally placed churches. It was these churches, moreover, that housed books of condolence and facilities for lighting candles – ordinary people queued for hours to make use of these resources – and it was the established church (the Church of England) that took responsibility for her funeral.

Even more important, however, is the fact that the reactions to Princess Diana’s death (or any number of more recent equivalents) are simply ‘writ-large’ versions of what goes on in the everyday lives of individuals and communities all the time. People die, sometimes unexpectedly, and communities suffer, sometimes with little apparent justification. What is to be done on these occasions and who is to do it? Once again the taken-for-grantedness of this situation is the crucial point: the presence of the churches and their availability to ordinary people are simply assumed.

From obligation to consumption

Where, though, does this leave Britain’s diminishing, but still significant churchgoers – those who maintain the tradition on behalf of the people described in the previous section? Here an observable change is clearly taking place, best summarized as a gradual shift from a culture of obligation or duty to a culture of consumption or choice. What was once simply imposed on substantial sections of the population (with all the negative connotations of this word), or inherited (which has a rather more positive spin), becomes instead a matter of personal choice. Religiously active individuals now go to a church or to another religious organization because they choose to, sometimes for a short period or sometimes for longer, sometimes regularly and sometimes occasionally, but they feel little obligation either to attend that church in the first place or to continue if they no longer want to.

As such, this pattern is entirely compatible with vicariousness: the historic churches need to be there in order that those who wish may attend them if they feel inclined. Their nature, however, gradually alters – a shift that is discernible in both practice and belief, not to mention the connections between them. There is, for example, an easily documentable change in the patterns of baptism in the Church of England. The overall number of baptisms has dropped dramatically in the post-war period, evidence once again of institutional decline. In England, though not yet in the Nordic countries, or indeed in parts of southern Europe, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Figures and Tables
• Preface
• Part I: Preliminaries
• Part II: Religious Legacies
• Part III: Shifting Priorities: From Obligation to Consumption
• Part IV: Public Religion and Secular Reactions
• Part V: Thinking Theoretically
• References
• Index
• End User License Agreement