August 04, 2005
WELL, 1215 TO 1955 WAS A DECENT RUN:
The death of religion & the fall of respectable Britain (Christie Davies, Summer 2004, New Criterion)
At the end of the nineteenth century, there were comparable levels of religiosity in Britain and the United States. The British lived in a culture in which the assumptions of Protestant Christianity were taken for granted. Few people believed strongly, but everyone believed a little. Throughout the population there was a somewhat vague general acceptance of central Christian beliefs, a strong respect for sacred things, a liking for church-based rituals to mark the turning points in life (and particularly its ending), a moral code of helping others that was rooted in Christian ethics, and a liking for and ability to sing hymns, both of which had been learned in Sunday School. Even football crowds sang “Abide with Me” or “Bread of Heaven”; today they sing songs full of thoughtless blasphemies, obscenities, and thought-out sexual and racial abuse to upset their opponents. Regular attendance at Sunday School was a standard part of most people’s youth, and it was the place where standards of respectability were inculcated. Britain’s was a society with a remarkably low and falling incidence of violent and acquisitive crime, illegitimacy, and addiction to opiates. Public drunkenness was a problem, but it was gradually ceasing to be so; by the 1920s it had all but disappeared.This is the world Britain has lost. The first turning point was the First World War. Before that war there was already a degree of uneasiness about the strength of religion in Britain; after the war it was clearly in decline. The decline of religion was slow and punctuated by periods of recovery, such as the early 1950s. From the mid-1950s onwards, however, the previous prevailing religious culture collapsed, and by the millennium Britain was one of the most thoroughly irreligious countries in the world. Less than half the population believes in God. For many of those who do believe in God, their belief is not in a personal God who is a guide to conduct or a source of solace but a mere impersonal and irrelevant something-or-other.
In 1901–1911, half the British population under fifteen was enrolled in Sunday School; in 1957 three-quarters of those over the age of thirty had attended Sunday School at some time in their lives. By the end of the twentieth century, less than 10 percent belonged to a Sunday School. An entire culture had been lost. In England in 1913, 70 percent of all live births were baptized in the Church of England; in 1956, it was still 60 percent, but by 1997 it had fallen to less than a quarter. In the 1950s in Britain two-thirds of those questioned said they believed Jesus was the son of God and only a fifth expressed disbelief. By the 1980s, less than a half of those asked said they believed this and nearly 40 percent said they did not believe. In the 1950s most people believed in the central tenets of Christianity or at least went along with the dominant belief of their culture. By the 1980s, this was no longer the case. By the end of the millennium, many Christian denominations in Scotland, as well as in England and Wales, were predicting their own imminent demise in the twenty-first century. A few evangelical, Pentecostal, and fundamentalist groups thrive, but they lack numbers, have little influence on the wider culture, and are ignored and even snubbed and discriminated against by the secular liberals, who control broadcasting and education.
One consequence of this, or at least a social change that is closely correlated with it, is the collapse of respectable Britain. By the standards of 1905 or 1925 or 1955 Britain is a criminal society, a society with a substantial minority of violent people and an even larger minority willing to indulge in planned dishonesty. In 1927, there were only 110 robberies reported to the police; there were thirty times as many in 1997. Most of this increase occurred after 1955. Even if some part of the recorded increase may be dismissed as merely greater reporting and improved recording, it remains a massive change. In 1927, one’s chance of being mugged was absolutely negligible. Even today it is not all that likely an experience, but it has become one of the ordinary risks of life to be thought about and around which life is planned—enough to constitute an important qualitative change.
In 1957, half a million notifiable offenses were recorded by the police, but in 1997 it was 4,500,000; much of this is petty theft, but one crucial change to be noted is the shift over time in the ratio of violent to acquisitive crime. In 1900, violence against the person was 2.4 percent of all reported crime; by 1937 it had fallen to 1 percent and, in 1967, 0.9 percent, but by 1997 it had risen to 5.6 percent. Part of the change is due to the fall in binge drinking and public drunkenness in the early years of the twentieth century, due in part to the pressure from Protestant temperance groups, followed by a marked return of these problems in the latter part of the century. [...]
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the incidence of illegitimacy in peacetime was very low, perhaps 4-5 percent of all live births and particularly low in urban areas. It began to rise in the mid-1950s, however, and by 1968 it was 8.5 percent. Illegitimacy has continued to rise to the point where over a third of all births are to unmarried parents, but many of these children are, in fact, being brought up by both parents. Nonetheless, at a time of declining fertility, the number of bastards born to traditional unmarried mothers rose from 41,400 in 1966 to 51,000 in 1996. A high and increasing proportion of these were born to mothers under twenty.
During the nineteenth century the consumption of opiates in Britain declined, and by the early 1950s, addiction was a negligible problem. In 1953, only 290 addicts were known to the Home Office, the lowest figure ever recorded, and there was no significant drug-related crime. By 1968, there were 3,000 registered heroin addicts, and by the beginning of the twenty-first century there were 20,000. In total there are probably between 200,000 and 400,000 regular users of heroin in Britain. There is a substantial black market in drugs; addicts commit robberies and burglaries to finance their habit, and gangs of drug dealers settle their disputes with violence; they may well badly beat up any addict who is heavily in debt to them, or thought to be an informer.
There has, then, been a series of linked changes in Britain, that I have termed the rise and fall of respectable Britain. In the late-nineteenth century, crime rates fell dramatically, as did drug and alcohol abuse, and illegitimacy became less common. All these indexes of deviance were fairly steady between World War I and 1955. After 1955 they all rose massively to create a U-curve of deviance, over the period from 1847 to 1997.
From an American perspective what's most interesting--because we too seemed to teeter on the edge of the abyss in the late 60s and the 70s--is that Britain lacked any capacity to fight back against these various pathologies. In his malaise speech, Jimmy Carter called attention to a very similar crisis of confidence on our own secular Left, but the 1980s saw not just the landslide victories of Ronald Reagan but the rise of the Moral Majority, the anti-abortion movement, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Just Say No, and a plethora of other puritanical grassroots campaigns. We truly are a Hellfire Nation, though why we have uniquely remained so is not an easily answered question. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 4, 2005 09:30 PM
Immigration=national renewal.
Posted by: ghostcat at August 4, 2005 10:11 PMThe size and diversirty of the U.S. compared to Great Britain makes a difference here -- the secular left's disdain for any part of flyover country that doesn't offer up an overpriced ski resort or major alternative music festival, means that the societal norms that were borrowed from Europe and have affected parts of both coasts never had a chance to get a major foothold in the middle part of the nation.
Britain had Maggie Thatcher to fight back for a while, but you never hear of certain sections of the nation being called "Thatcher Country". That wasn't the case with Reagan, and now Bush, and it means there's a counterweight to the values that enamour the left towards Europe and make them want to create the same type of society over here.
Posted by: John at August 4, 2005 10:15 PMit's just not that big a mystery; britain was bled white by two wars and ran headlong into the arms of socialism as a result. from there it was a fait accompli. england, may she rest in peace.
Posted by: cjm at August 4, 2005 10:21 PMJohn:
Except that for all her great qualities she never pushed back on social issues.
cjm:
Odd that the much bloodier Civil War here had almost no such effect.
Posted by: oj at August 4, 2005 11:03 PMThe assimilation process challenges and renews the host culture. Continuous assimilation provides continous renewal. It's that simple. (Although productive assimilation, itself, is not that simple. Thereby begging the question.)
Posted by: ghostcat at August 4, 2005 11:05 PMwas it much bloodier ? post the stats, please.
Posted by: cjm at August 4, 2005 11:35 PM110 robberies in 1927? For the whole year? For the whole country? Something is wrong with that number.
If this is all explained by religion, then how do you account for the left side of the U, the period where crime and drunkenness were high but England was still a majority religious culture?
America has dealt with a similar rise in illegitimate births and drug use, but hasn't seen a decline in religiosity. So as much as you would like to blame all bad things on irreligiosity, the facts just refuse to accomodate you.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at August 4, 2005 11:55 PMthe entire criminal class had been transported out of the country by 1927. edwardian england was the apogee of human existence.
"renew! renew!"
Posted by: cjm at August 4, 2005 11:59 PMRobert:
They're pathologies of poverty (at least urbanized/industrial poverty) as well. The question is why affluent countries re-developed them and the answer has to do with the spiritual state of the culture.
Posted by: oj at August 5, 2005 12:18 AMcjm:
For one thing recall that there were no battles fought in Britain and no civilian casualties (on land).
Posted by: oj at August 5, 2005 12:51 AMJohn, Robert, oj: Not poverty, race. The elephant in the living room again. The social pathology in the U.S. is largely racial. Euro-Americans do very well alongside Euro-Europeans.
Posted by: Lou Gots at August 5, 2005 03:49 AM"America has dealt with a similar rise in illegitimate births and drug use, but hasn't seen a decline in religiosity."
Were the religious ones the drug users?
Posted by: Ali Choudhury at August 5, 2005 05:13 AMThe local church is a very strong social element in North America. For instance, it would be impossible to get elected provincially or nationally in my riding without belonging to one of the big evangelical churches.
I obviously can't speak for Europe, but a very large percentage of the kids get their socializing through these large churches here. Of course there are always renegades, but it is a positive peer pressure that really reduces abortion and drug use.
And that's pretty important considering Chilliwack is probably the marijuana capital of the world. (I mean, it keeps many kids off weed, even though it is so prevalently available here -- not that there are no drug users).
Posted by: Randall Voth at August 5, 2005 06:27 AMRobert:
Your normal depth fails you on this one. Nobody is claiming religion per se offers an automatic protection against vice or social pathology or that the religious can foresee or even avoid the effects of social developments like urbanization, prosperity, etc. better than anyone else. The issue is not so much seeing the future but finding the resiliancy to escape the muck, something that usually takes at least a generation. British cities did indeed wallow in crime and vice in the early 19th century, but they rose above it during the Victorian era and I don't think anyone would deny the key role of the religious imperative, expressed through Christian social activism, temperance and mass moral education.
Now, Brit insists everything is just peachy, but assuming he's just on a patriotic high over cricket and that there is some substance to the alarmist fixation with social issues in British newspapers, the question becomes how to get out of it. Their only current answer seems to be government cash and counselling, advertizing and mind-numbingly boring indoctrination, which I assume you will agree is a proven joke. So, what else?
I agree that religion is not the only factor. Secular countries like the Nordics and Canada seem to maintain a kind of (neurotic)social prudery that keeps them fairly safe and orderly. Their problem is demographics, not social breakdown. Having just come back from a drive through New England that blew my mind over ceasless charm and beauty (town after town and everything in between), I realize liberal yuppiedom can have its own internal social constraints--often far more puritan and killjoy than anything conservatives throw up (and not terribly kid-friendly either). Orrin's theory is that they are freeloading on the morality of a past age that they claim to reject in theory. I tend to agree, although the obvious differences between ex-Catholic and ex-Protestant societies when they secularize does complicate the issue. How about your views?
BTW, it amazes me how you secular Enlightenment types, ever quick to trumpet improvement and progress in the human condition, can be so quick to pooh-pooh contemporary social concerns by delving into the distant past to prove that similar conditions were with us long ago. What's that--natural law for atheist materialists?
Posted by: Peter B at August 5, 2005 07:51 AMPeter,
Forgive my lack of depth, but you were gone for a week and I was forced to debate OJ's absolutist and unsupported assertions for the whole period.
I'm glad that you can admit to additional factors, and I would make the distinction between belief and religiosity. Randall describes how an active religious community can inculcate the proper moral attitudes in children. Many people are believers but don't commit themselves or their children to that level of moral training, or undo its influence by their behavior at home. Morality is primarily transmitted and sustained through imitation and peer pressure, as Randall said.
To answer Ali's question, yes, many of the people falling in with drugs in this country are religious, just from the sheer fact that only 5-10 percent of the population claims no religious belief. Drug use is no longer primarily an inner city problem of minorities, it has spread to the suburbs and rural areas. Crystal meth is a big problem here in the midwest.
The main disadvantage that the non-religious encounter is that, having given up on the beilefs, they don't or haven't replaced the institutional frameworks to shape common attitudes on morality. So the kids are learning behavioral norms from going to soccer games.
As far as neurotic social prudery goes, I must have done something right, because my seventeen year old daughter proudly admits to being a prude and a nerd, and will scold me whenever I use bad language or open up a can of beer. You can transmit moral values without religion, but I think that it is harder without the support of a social network of like minded people.
Robert:
Of course you can, you just can't derive them without religion. No one here will be surprised that you'd raise a child according to puritanical values.
Posted by: oj at August 5, 2005 09:09 AMRobert: for what it's worth, I think that might have something to do with the growth of megachurches in the States. A fair percentage of the guys I work with go to New Life, which has a huge facility here (Colorado Springs.) If you look at the size of the congregation (over 10,000) and all the various activities they offer for kids, you've got yourself a virtual small town. That's appealing to a lot of people who are looking to shelter their kids from the prevailing culture.
Posted by: joe shropshire at August 5, 2005 10:16 AMNo civilian casualties on land?
40,000 in London alone in three months in 1940. And, to judge by the response, the fewer casualties in London and places like Scarborough in 1915-18, were even more disturbing to the populace, which had not then become inured to that sort of thing.
Anyhow, it's kind of hard to explain why milions and millions of spiritually strong and religious people are migrating INTO Britain.
If the kind of religious society that (allegedly) formerly made Britain great still exists where they were born, why don't they stay there?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at August 5, 2005 03:29 PMHarry:
You're right--I was only referring to WWI. I don't think anyone claims WWII had much effect on Britian, especially as compared to WWI.
They aren't coming from Christian nations. We don't leave America and Jews don't leave Israel.
Posted by: oj at August 5, 2005 04:51 PMKeywords. Melting pot assimilation equals renewal; Multicultism equals divisiveness. Divide and conquer and pit each hyphenated American against the others.
Posted by: erp at August 5, 2005 05:16 PMpeople immigrate to the u.k. for the benefits available to them. people immigrate to the u.s for the opportunities available to them.
Posted by: cjm at August 5, 2005 05:49 PMBenefits, they'd give up their sacred sacredness for benefits?
You guys have descended into incoherence.
Orrin, as for civilian casualties in World War I, from their point of view, there were a lot.
The Royal Navy manning system of reserve ships took whole crews from a single town, and the navy also took boys as young as 12.
When the Good Hope was sunk with all hands at the Battle of Coronel in 1914, virtually every man and boy between the ages of 12 and 55 from one Scottish town was killed. They had all been 'civilians' until about four months earlier, and the impact was not much, if any, different than if some event killed all the men and boys in, say, Derry, N.H., on the same afternoon.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at August 5, 2005 07:47 PMSure, the reason History Ends is because folks won't live in povert by choice.
No women, no children, no towns destroyed, no Sherman's March, etc. A bad war, but nothing compared to our Civil War, nor even their own.
Posted by: oj at August 5, 2005 08:58 PM