Abstract
Claims made by the authors of That Was the Church that Was (2016) that the Church of England has ‘lost’ the English people since 1986 are examined through religious statistics. Both attachment and attitudinal indicators are reviewed, the former showing the decline of the Church has been long-term, the latter that division between Church and nation is not always clear-cut.
That Was the Church that Was (TWTCTW), by journalist Andrew Brown and sociologist of religion Linda Woodhead, has proved one of the most controversial religious books of recent years. 1 Following a legal complaint, the publisher cancelled its anticipated release in February 2016 and recalled review copies, pulping the entire print run. In its revised form, published in July 2016, it remains a lively and mainly damning account of developments in the Church of England between 1986 and 2016. The thesis is that, during these decades, the Church became progressively more inward looking, more obsessed with ‘managerial voodoo’, evolving from a societal into a congregational church (a distinction explained at TWTCTW, pp. 63–70). It increasingly disappeared from the centre of public life and became alienated from (and unaccountable to) its host community; ‘the warm blood of Church-society relations had largely drained away’, and ‘all that was left of establishment was a constitutional husk’ (p. 189). ‘The story we have told is of an England which has changed too much, and of a national church which has changed too little’ (p. 212), leaving a large ‘values gap’ between them. This gulf is in stark contrast to higher levels of public trust and commitment enjoyed by Scandinavian state churches (pp. 192, 213, 241).
TWTCTW’s subtitle is ‘how the Church of England lost the English people’. While it may seem strong (if contestable) on explanations for the loss, its extent is imperfectly documented, certainly in quantitative terms. This is regrettable since Woodhead has undertaken important sample survey research in this area, largely absent from TWTCTW. It therefore seems appropriate to ask whether statistics support the authors’ claim that the Church of England has lost the English people, and also how much of that loss occurred during the 30 years they examine. For brevity, attention will focus on a basket of attachment and attitudinal indicators, the former (implying some engagement with the Church) expressed relative to the relevant population. Attachment indicators are mainly sourced from the Church’s own statistics, 2 attitudinal ones from opinion polls featured in the British Religion in Numbers database. 3 Polls were typically conducted throughout, and reported for, Great Britain as a whole, rather than England alone. Results for some polls were disaggregated by religion, enabling professing Anglicans to be identified. Data for practising (churchgoing) Anglicans are omitted, as are those for clergy.
Attachment
Unlike many overseas countries, there was no religion question in British censuses in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One only appeared in 2001, offering an undifferentiated category of ‘Christian’ in England and Wales and thus no guide to Anglican affiliation. However, the deficiency can be made good from other sources.
The Church of England was established as a national Church at the Reformation, and its monopoly underpinned by uniformity legislation. Until the mid seventeenth century, Nonconformity (whether of Protestant or Catholic varieties) was limited, while ‘no religionism’ did not effectively arise until the French Revolution. Circa 1680, on the eve of extending toleration to Dissenters, the Church had a 94 per cent share of the English and Welsh religious market, which had recovered to the same figure in 1760, following a temporary dip to 1720. The phenomenal growth of Nonconformity and Methodism after 1760, particularly from 1800, then permanently eroded the Church’s position, and by 1840 its nominal share of population was down to 77 per cent, a fall of almost one-fifth in 160 years. 4 The decline persisted, with an estimated 64 per cent of Britons Anglican by 1914, 5 and 55 per cent by 1939. 6
Polls constitute a source of affiliation data from the mid twentieth century. Questions were initially of the ‘what is your religion?’ type, implying interviewees were expected to have one. According to Gallup, the Anglican proportion recovered somewhat after the Second World War, peaking at three-fifths in the 1960s and 1970s, before dropping in the 1980s and 1990s, being 53 per cent when last reported in 1996. 7 An overlapping series by MORI recorded Anglicans declining from 57 per cent in 1992 to 42 per cent in 2005. 8 Although ‘what is your religion?’ questions continue to be asked today, they mostly, like the census, do not distinguish between Christian denominations.
From the 1970s, alternative wording was introduced, based upon self-reported ‘belonging’ to a religion. This formulation, regarded as more neutral, was widely interpreted by respondents to mean a less nominal attachment than ‘what is your religion?’ As a consequence, it generated much higher levels of ‘no religion’ and much lower levels of Anglican allegiance. The best-known series exploring religious ‘belonging’ is the British Social Attitudes (BSA) Survey, whose findings are noted in TWTCTW (pp. 190, 224–5). In the first three years of BSA (1983–85), Anglicans represented 38 per cent of Britons, which had reduced to 18 per cent by 2012–14 (14 points fewer than had been raised as Anglicans). The decrease is explained by a big rise in religious nones (to 49 per cent in 2012–14) but also by a significant shift to non-denominational Christians (11 per cent by 2012–14); it is likely that many of the latter would have self-identified as Anglicans in early BSA studies. 9
In popular parlance, ‘belonging’ might be thought akin to ‘membership’. To the extent that it represented numbers baptized or confirmed into the Church of England, metrics the Church once calculated (but discontinued), this might have been true. But the Church’s official criteria of membership were more narrowly defined. Since 1924 the principal criterion has been electoral roll membership, open to adults meeting specified application requirements. The system functioned imperfectly for many years and was radically overhauled in 1972, since when there has been a fundamental sexennial roll revision. Enrolments have always equated to a minority of the potential constituency. The peak figure was 15 per cent in the late 1920s, dipping below 10 per cent during the Second World War and falling ever since. The absolute total in 2015 was 1,033,000 (equivalent to 2 per cent of adult population), less than one-third of the maximum in 1930 and 35 per cent below 1986.
A more long-standing (canonical) criterion of membership was taking Holy Communion at Easter. This has been an unsatisfactory measure on account of variations over time and space and between Church parties in the importance attached to the sacrament, and in the date of Easter and weather on the day. Nevertheless, the overall trend in parochial Easter Day communicants has been downwards since first reported with reasonable completeness in 1922, when they amounted to 9 per cent of adults. The figure was still 6 or even 7 per cent following the Second World War but slipped below 5 per cent during and after the 1970s. The absolute number fell below 1,000,000 from 2011, a far cry from the 2,250,000 achieved during the inter-war heyday. In 2015 there were 908,000 Easter Day communicants, or 2 per cent of the adult population, one-third less than in 1986. Easter Day communicants outstripped Christmas Day/Eve communicants until the 1960s but the position has been reversed most years since. A separate series of Easter week communicants was published to 1992 but discontinued thereafter on the grounds that ‘churchmanship differences have tended to distort the results’. 10
Communicants were a subset of church attenders. Theoretically, the Church of England should have been ideally placed with regard to Sunday churchgoing, for it was compulsory, and subject to ecclesiastical and civil discipline, under post-Reformation statutes, whose vestiges were not repealed until 1969. 11 In practice, enforcement varied, and the system largely collapsed after 1689 when Dissenters were granted freedom of worship. Eighteenth-century Anglican visitation returns suggest irregular churchgoing and even complete non-attendance were fairly common. 12 A definitive review of local evidence for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries concluded that, relative to population, Anglican church attendance grew in the early nineteenth century but declined from the 1850s. 13 Week-by-week congregations were notably small in cities and large towns, less than one in ten of the population in London, Hull and Liverpool by the Edwardian era. 14
The Church of England only began enumerating churchgoers nationally in 1968, with its Usual Sunday Attendance index. It was 1,606,000 in 1968, equivalent to 3.5 per cent of English residents, but fell unremittingly, to 1,167,000 in 1986 (2.5 per cent), symbolically dipping below 1,000,000 in 1997 and reaching 753,000 (1.4 per cent) in 2015. Additional mechanisms were inaugurated in 2000. These have produced somewhat more favourable results, although the best figure for weekly churchgoing (including mid-week) in 2015 was still only 961,000 (1.7 per cent), with 2.3 per cent of the population in the pews at Easter and 4.6 per cent at Christmas. It is symptomatic of the ground which the Church has ceded that it recently started to calculate attendance as a proportion of Christian (rather than entire) population. Confirmation of the downward trend in Anglican churchgoing is provided by independent English church censuses in 1979, 1989, 1998 and 2005. 15
Even before the decades examined in TWTCTW, therefore, the Church’s reach was distinctly limited, measured by membership and attendance. Traditionally, its participatory strength had lain more in high take-up of rites of passage (occasional offices), whose persistence puzzled sociologists in the face of otherwise pervasive secularization. 16 The decreasing popularity of three principal rites (baptisms, marriages and funerals) is noted in TWTCTW (pp. 191–2, 213, 241).
Statistics of Anglican infant baptisms exist from 1891. Before the Second World War the ratio to live births was around two-thirds, with peaks of 71 per cent in 1922–28. The proportion declined post-war, particularly from 1964, with 1966 the last year in which the Church baptized the majority of English newborns. By 1986, the ratio was reduced to 30 per cent, by 2015 to 11 per cent. The topic has been intensively explored by David Voas, who suggests the diminishing number of religiously homogeneous couples undermined the predisposition to infant baptism. 17
Data on the mode of solemnization of marriages have been collected by the state since 1841, albeit only intermittently between 1914 and 1962. 18 Although civil ceremonies were possible from the outset, the Church of England and Church in Wales had an initial advantage over Nonconformists, many of whose chapels were not licensed for weddings and, even if they were, required the civil registrar’s presence until 1898. In the early 1840s, 92 per cent of marriages were solemnized in Anglican places of worship. The proportion declined continuously thereafter and was down to 65 per cent by the early 1900s. The last year in which there was definitely an Anglican majority share was 1934, the average by the late 1970s being one-third. In 1986, 34 per cent of marriages had Anglican solemnizations, in 2013 just 21 per cent. The reduced Anglican share in recent decades is substantially explained by two factors: the Church’s long-standing hostility to remarrying divorcees, driving them into the arms of other marriage providers, and the popularity of weddings in ‘approved premises’ since 1995, rivalling Anglican churches as attractive venues. Of course, the Church was also negatively impacted by the falling marriage rate and cohabitation; the 50,000 marriages conducted by the Church in 2013 contrast starkly with the all-time high of 221,000 in 1919, but as late as 1992 the figure still exceeded 100,000.
The Church of England only began collecting statistics on parochial funerals in 2000, and there are no alternative sources of earlier national data. Nevertheless, it is clear from local and anecdotal evidence that funerals with a religious celebrant were the norm until at least the late 1970s, perhaps also throughout the 1980s, the overwhelming majority conducted by Anglican clergy. The Church’s position was secured by funeral directors’ observance of the ‘unofficial contract’ of notifying deaths to the incumbent of the parish in which the deceased resided. Since 2000 there has been a substantial fall in Church of England funerals as a proportion of deaths, from 46 per cent to 30 per cent in 2015. The decline has been especially large for Anglican funerals in crematoria and cemeteries, which have virtually halved (127,000 in 2000, 65,000 in 2015). The explanation probably lies mainly in the growing demand for services ‘personalized’ to the deceased, and including non-religious readings and music, sitting uncomfortably with formal Church liturgy. This trend has coincided with greater availability of secularist or humanist celebrants since the Millennium.
Attitudes
TWTCTW emphasizes the attitudinal gap between an increasingly socially liberal nation and a Church striving to ‘catch up’. Woodhead had already highlighted it in her polling for the 2013 Westminster Faith Debates (WFD). 19 In TWTCTW this gulf is exemplified in the struggles within the Church around the ordination of women as priests and bishops and the approach to homosexuals, particularly among clergy.
Britons certainly spoke loudly in favour of ordaining women as priests in the Church of England. 20 Seven or eight in ten endorsed them in polling by Gallup (1976, April and October 1984, 1988, 1996), NOP (1978, 1981, 1984), Marplan (1979), MORI (1989), and Continental Research (1993). Whenever findings were disaggregated by religion, Anglicans were at least five points more supportive than the nation overall. Resounding endorsement of women priests was also revealed in special Anglican samples, by Gallup (1985), Marplan (1986) and MORI (1989). Marplan’s 1986 enquiry among Anglicans already showed that the public saw no conceptual difference between women priests and women bishops, and this was similarly implicit in Gallup’s national polls (1984, 1988). When Gallup first posed the question explicitly in 1996, 63 per cent of Britons and 67 per cent of Anglicans wanted the Church to ordain female bishops, the former figure being identical when YouGov asked in 2010. During 2012–13, when proposals for women bishops were delayed in General Synod, extensive (generally adverse) media coverage led to public outrage against the Church. Seven or eight in ten Britons backed women bishops in three polls by ComRes in 2012 and four by YouGov in 2012–13. 21 There can be little doubt the fallout from the Church’s handling of women bishops partly accounted for the disapproval, in the 2013 WFD polling, expressed by 45 per cent of Britons and 47 per cent of Anglicans of the Church’s policies towards women.
The position with regard to same-sex relationships is less clear-cut. It was not a simple matter of the people adopting a liberal position and the Church an illiberal one. Indeed, public opinion was overwhelmingly negative in the post-war era and opposed the decriminalization of male homosexuality in 1967. Although attitudes softened thereafter, they suffered a temporary setback with AIDS in the mid 1980s and significant improvement was delayed until the Millennium. 22 When it came to religion, a series of six Gallup polls (1979–93) revealed three-quarters of Britons saw no incompatibility between faith and homosexuality. However, a plurality in five Gallup polls (1977–86) rejected homosexual clergy, while majorities for their dismissal were recorded by Marplan (1987) and Continental Research (1993). According to MORI, two-thirds of Anglicans in 1989 also opposed ordination of homosexuals. In Gallup surveys in 1984 and 1996, significant numbers of Britons (45 and 38 per cent, respectively) even agreed with the Church’s statement it could never approve homosexual acts.
The narrative in TWTCTW is, perhaps, too influenced by battles over same-sex marriage (SSM) in 2012–13, by which time public and Anglican opinion had certainly become more liberal, albeit not universally. 23 Seven YouGov polls in 2011–12 found Britons fairly evenly split for and against SSM, many thinking civil partnerships sufficient. Only in eight later polls in 2012–13 did a slender majority (no more than 55 per cent) emerge for SSM, with 36 per cent opposed. Moreover, there was considerable sympathy for the Church of England’s hostility towards SSM, YouGov (2012) discovering 47 per cent of Britons (and 65 per cent of Anglicans) endorsed the Church’s defence of marriage as a heterosexual institution, while 58 per cent upheld its entitlement to oppose SSM in a Survation enquiry (2012). Almost two-fifths in three YouGov polls in 2012–13 judged the Church ‘right’ to resist SSM, among them a majority of Anglicans. Other YouGov surveys in 2012–13 likewise revealed Anglicans to be disproportionately against SSM.
Perhaps a better example of social distance between Church and nation might have been remarriage of divorcees in church. The issue’s importance is acknowledged in TWTCTW (p. 191) but not elaborated, surprisingly given one-third of marriages now involve divorced parties. Both before and after major divorce law reform in 1969, a consistent three-fifths of Britons considered the Church should permit the remarriage of divorcees. This was reflected in polls by Gallup (1947, 1955, 1957, 1984, 1996), NOP (1984) and Continental Research (1993). When the Church eventually mooted changing its rules, the move was welcomed by 81 per cent of NOP’s respondents (2000). The changes took effect in 2002, albeit remarriage of divorcees in church was conditional, not automatic. Attitudes to assisted dying (unindexed in TWTCTW) would have been another good instance of the ‘values gap’. 24
Besides reacting to some specific policies, the public has also judged the Church of England generally. Although Britain (unlike France or Spain) has no strong tradition of anti-clericalism, the standing of churches and clergy collectively has diminished since the 1960s, especially during the 1990s and 2000s, and the Church of England has not been immune. 25
Opinions have sometimes been sought about the Archbishop of Canterbury, interesting given the searchlight shone on holders’ alleged failings in TWTCTW. Knowledge of the incumbent has often been limited, one-third of Anglicans failing to name Geoffrey Fisher (NOP, 1960) or Robert Runcie (MORI, 1989) and 62 per cent ignorant of Rowan Williams (YouGov, 2013). Among Britons, George Carey was named by 11 per cent (MORI, 1991) and 19 per cent (Sunday Express, 1993); Williams by 18 per cent (MORI, 2003), 26 per cent (BMRB, 2004), 13 per cent (Populus, 2005) and 28 per cent (YouGov, 2013); and Justin Welby by 19 per cent (YouGov, 2013).
With such low familiarity, poll appraisals of the achievements of individual archbishops should be treated cautiously. Runcie’s ratings fell over time, possibly reflecting disapproval of clashes between Church and government during his tenure but also of his willingness to accept the Pope as global supreme spiritual leader, opposed by 56 per cent of Britons and 63 per cent of Anglicans (Telephone Surveys, 1989). Whereas 55 per cent of Britons were satisfied with Runcie’s leadership in 1984 (Gallup), only two-fifths were in 1989 (MORI and Telephone Surveys); for Anglicans, the decrease was from 52 per cent in 1985 (Gallup) to 46 per cent (Telephone Surveys) or 42 per cent (MORI) in 1989. Carey enjoyed reasonable ratings with the public, 66 per cent believing he effectively promoted Anglican interests (Continental Research, 1993), 50 per cent being satisfied with him (Gallup, 1996) and 47 per cent respecting him (YouGov, 2002). In 1999 he was ranked second (after Tony Blair) in a Sunday Times table of public figures providing the best moral and spiritual leadership in Britain. Williams had a rockier road, his Sharia law speech (2008) condemned in YouGov and Populus polls, and his later criticisms of government policies displeasing many voters (YouGov, 2010, 2011; Populus, 2011). On the eve of his departure, 36 per cent assessed he had done a good job and 25 per cent a bad job (YouGov, 2012), with 46 per cent agreeing and 27 per cent disagreeing he had kept the Church of England relevant to modern society (ComRes, 2012). Welby came well down a list of national role models (Angus Reid, 2013), but, in YouGov polls, he was ranked fourth in 2014 for providing moral leadership and first in 2015 for contributing to the nation’s moral and religious life (but with merely 8 per cent of the vote).
Turning to perceptions of the Church of England as an institution, disestablishment questions apart, survey evidence mostly post-dates the Millennium, so we should be wary of discerning trends. Half the population still regard it as an important part of British identity (YouGov, 2005, 2011, 2014; ComRes, 2012), although two-thirds perceive its relevance to the nation in long-term decline (ComRes, 2012), a similar proportion regarding it as out of touch in four YouGov surveys in 2012–13. Opinion is divided about the Church’s overall value (YouGov, 2012, 2013), moral influence (ComRes, 2012; YouGov, 2013) and trustworthiness (MORI, 2008, 2014). One in seven Britons even view the Church a negative force in society and only one-quarter of Anglicans as an overtly positive force (YouGov, 2013).
As yet, however, such doubts have not translated into active support for disestablishment, which, apart from a brief crisis in 1996–98 linked to Prince Charles’s adultery and the prospect of a divorced and remarried monarch becoming the Church’s Supreme Governor, is not seen as urgent. Nor is it a topic about which the majority of people feel strongly or are very knowledgeable. 26 When pressed for an opinion, answers are extremely sensitive to question-wording. Two large-scale surveys in recent years produced conflicting results. A YouGov poll (2011) reported 54 per cent of Britons in favour of retaining an Established Church, 16 per cent against and 30 per cent undecided. However, an aggregation of four ComRes surveys (2014) found just 30 per cent rating the Church–state link ‘good’, 31 per cent ‘bad’, with 39 per cent unsure. These particular studies did not provide breaks by religion, but earlier ones revealed Anglicans significantly more positive about establishment than other adults. Its least attractive aspect for Britons appears to be the presence of Anglican bishops in the House of Lords, which a majority would axe (Opinion Research Business, 2000; YouGov, 2003, January and June 2012; ICM, 2010), the only outlier being ComRes (2007). Nevertheless, this hostility perhaps has less to do with establishment than the long-standing public desire to keep religion separate from politics.
Conclusion
So, has the Church of England ‘lost’ the English people and, if so, when did it happen? The implication in TWTCTW is that 1986–2016 were critical years and the Church itself, and successive Archbishops of Canterbury, bear significant responsibility for the loss, arising from preoccupation with, and illiberal views on, sex and gender and growing bureaucratization and clericalization of the Church.
This is an overstated position. Membership, attendance, baptism and marriage indicators confirm the Church’s decline as long-standing, most measures already at a low ebb in 1986. Funerals were the principal exception, falling more recently as part of a progressive and wider secularization of British society, vaguely acknowledged by the authors but insufficiently factored into their argument (the term is unindexed in TWTCTW). Notwithstanding, according to Woodhead’s 2013 WFD polling, 48 per cent of Britons and 63 per cent of Anglicans had some direct contact with the Church during the previous year, mostly as attenders at occasional offices or tourists. Attitudinal indicators reveal the Church as out of step with society (and Anglicans) on women’s ordination, remarriage of divorcees and some other issues but less so on homosexuality. Otherwise, there has been no real hostility to the Church, and little clamour for disestablishment, although there was diminishing interest in and understanding of its affairs. As secularization continues, Woodhead’s ‘sick’ and ‘dying’ Church of England may possibly defy actuarial projections of extinction, eventually being relegated to ‘a cargo cult’ (TWTCTW, pp. 70, 111). 27 However, the umbilical cord attaching it to the nation does not appear to have been severed just yet.