Duncan tanner essay prize winner 2012: The Invention of a 'Secular Society'? Christianity and the Sudden Appearance of Secularization Discourses in the British National Media, 1961-4

Abstract

This essay examines the sudden re-imagination of Britain as a 'secular society' in the highbrow British media between 1961 and 1964. It is often assumed that contemporary discourses of secularization were relatively unproblematic, simply reflecting reality, but closer investigation reveals that they invented a general crisis of supernaturalism, and exaggerated the extent of religious decline. Between 1961 and 1963 such discourses were promulgated in the British media chiefly by Christians, who still enjoyed a privileged position in the reporting of religious affairs. In many cases such discourses drew on a radical theological critique of the churches which had been developing since the 1940s. From 1963, especially in the wake of Honest to God, the idea of the 'secular society' was accepted by a wide range of Christian leaders, and consequently it passed into the received wisdom, allowing secular sociologists to dominate the debate from 1965. This problematic re-imagination of British religiosity had important secularizing consequences, especially in the fields of the media, the law, and within the churches themselves. For these reasons, Christians played the central role in the initial stages of the religious crisis of the 1960s, and in the imaginative deconstruction of 'Christian Britain'. © The Author [2013]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.