Britain's Last Religious Revival? Quantifying Belonging, Behaving, and Believing in the Long 1950s

Combining historical and social scientific insights and approaches, this is a major contribution to the literature of British secularization, particularly its chronology. The book examines the claims by Callum Brown that the late 1940s and early 1950s in Britain were a period of religious resurgence prior to the onset of revolutionary secularization in the 1960s. These claims are substantially rejected on the basis of the first systematic analysis of a balanced portfolio of quantitative performance measures, published and unpublished, for all faith traditions. They subsume the three dimensions of belonging, behaving, and believing – the typology increasingly applied to the study of religiosity. It is concluded that the long 1950s accord better with a gradualist interpretation of religious change in modern Britain. An up-to-date historiographical and bibliographical review is also offered. The volume will appeal to social historians of modern Britain, sociologists of religion, clergy, and church growth practitioners.

Clive Field holds honorary academic appointments at the University of Birmingham, UK, and the University of Manchester, UK, and co-directs British Religion in Numbers. He has researched and published widely in the social history and sociology of British religion, with particular reference to statistical sources. He is former Director of Scholarship and Collections at the British Library.

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Belonging
3. Behaving
4. Believing
5. Conclusion