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Secularisation, Church and Popular Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2011

STEVE BRUCE
STEVE BRUCE
Affiliation:
School of Social Science, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3QY; e-mail: s.bruce@abdn.ac.uk
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Abstract

The contrast between institutional and popular (or folk) religion is used by some social historians to rebut the sociological secularisation thesis. This article uses a re-examination of religion in the north Yorkshire fishing village of Staithes to consider how some elements of popular religion change with the decline of institutional religion. It concludes by suggesting that, far from enduring despite the decline of the Christian Churches, popular religion is doubly vulnerable to secularisation: it is directly eroded by secularising forces and it is indirectly undermined by the decline of the Churches. Without an institutional core, a popular religious culture cannot be sustained.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 62 , Issue 3 , July 2011 , pp. 543 - 561
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 Callum G. Brown, The death of Christian Britain: understanding secularisation, 1800–2000. London 2001, 161–3.

2 Bryan Wilson, Religion in secular society: a sociological comment. London 1966; Peter L. Berger, The sacred canopy: elements of a sociological theory. New York 1967.

3 Grace Davie, Religion in Britain since 1945: believing without belonging. London 1994.

4 David Clark, Between pulpit and pew: folk religion in a north Yorkshire fishing village, Cambridge 1982. It is mentioned four times in Sarah Williams, Religious belief and popular culture in Southwark, c. 1880–1939, Oxford 1999.

5 In the course of research I have found similar patterns in Westmorland, north Yorkshire and County Durham and north Wales. These will be detailed in future publications.

6 James Obelkevich, Religion and rural society in South Lindsey, 1825–1875, Oxford 1976; Jeffrey Cox, The English Churches in a secular society: Lambeth, 1870–1930, Oxford 1982; Williams, Religious belief and popular culture.

7 Sykes, Richard, ‘Popular religion in decline: a study from the Black Country’, this Journal lvi (2005), 288Google Scholar.

8 Ibid.

9 Williams, Religious belief and popular culture, 11.

10 Clark, Between pulpit and pew.

11 Timothy Jenkins, Religion in English everyday life, Berghahn 1999.

12 Williams, Religious belief and popular culture, 176.

13 Hugh McLeod, The religious crisis of the 1960s, Oxford 2007, 7.

14 Jenkins, Religion, 25–31.

15 North Yorkshire County Council, Population estimates 2007: http://www.northyorks.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=2875.

16 John Howard, A history of Wesleyan Methodism in Staithes, Guisborough 1967, 17.

17 Clark, Between pulpit and pew, 58.

18 Ibid. 61.

19 Jean Eccleston and Peter Eccleston, A history and geology of Staithes, Staithes 1998, 118.

20 John Howard, Staithes: chapters from the history of a seafaring town, Scalby 2000, 201.

21 According to The Yorkshire Congregational yearbook (York 1952) in 1951 Bethel had 27 members and 30 Sunday scholars. The Congregational Yearbook for 1965 (London 1955) records 20 members and 50 Sunday scholars.

22 Clark, Between pulpit and pew, 61.

23 Ibid. 63.

24 Private communication, Jean Beadle, February 2009.

25 J. S. Johnson, The Nagars of Runswick Bay, Runswick Bay 2002.

26 Howard, Staithes, 207.

27 Clark, Between pulpit and pew, 71.

28 Ibid. 76.

29 Ibid. 63.

30 Quarterly Meeting minutes, Loftus and Staithes circuit, 7 Mar. 1973, Teesside Archives, Middlesbrough, R/M/LOF.

31 George Stewart, ‘A letter to the Methodists of Staithes’, 19 Apr. 1981, ibid.

32 Danny Stradling, ‘Staithes Men's Choir’, 10/11/97: www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/staithes.htm.

33 Interview with Peter Meney, Hill Top, Eggleston, 2008.

34 HMI Inspection report 181154, Seton Community Primary School, June 2004: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/oxedu_reports/download/(id)/24157/(as)/121301_188154.pdf.

35 See, for example, http://www.hinderwellvh.co.uk/locality.htm.

36 Keith Thomas, Religion and the decline of magic, Harmondsworth 1997.

37 Robert Moore, Pitmen, preachers and politics: the effects of Methodism in a Durham mining community, Cambridge 1974, 218.

38 Quarterly Meeting minutes, Loftus and Staithes circuit, 15 May 1986, Teesside Archives, R/M/LOF.

39 Robin Gill, The ‘empty church’ revisited, Aldershot 2003.

40 Quarterly Meeting minutes, Loftus and Staithes circuit, 8 Mar. 1978, Teesside Archives, R/M/LOF.

41 My research on the secularisation of superstition is at an early stage. As supporting evidence, I offer these observations about the superstitions listed in I. Opie and M. Tatem, A dictionary of superstitions, Oxford 1989: the vast majority date from no later than the nineteenth century, none relate to occupations created after 1939 and the majority of post-1945 references are to people talking about their grandparents and parents or their own distant childhoods.

42 It was not possible to carry out the detailed research necessary to trace the origins of current residents but Clark's comments and those of my respondents suggest that many of those described as ‘incomers’ are children and grandchildren of residents, returning after higher education and working elsewhere.

43 According to my calculations made from the data available on the Office of National Statistics NOMIS website (www.nomisweb.co.uk), the 2001 census data show that 44% of Staithes residents in employment travel an average of 10 km to their place of work.

44 According to data helpfully supplied by the director of the National Coal Mining Museum, the annual fatalities rate fell from a peak in 1877 of 2·63 deaths per thousand people employed in the industry to 0·55 in 1953 and 0·1 in 1983.

45 Howard, ‘Wesleyan Methodism’, 3.

46 Clark, Between pulpit and pew, 76.