CHRISTIAN IDENTITY IN CRISIS

In his aforementioned study, Callum Brown claims that since the 1960s the changes that have taken place in British culture constitute a transition from a Christian to a post-Christian society. Instead of perceiving the slow decline of several centuries as the tide of religion ebbs, he describes a sudden draining away of church affiliation, practice, and Christian construction of social identity. Brown's thesis has been challenged in various ways: changes in British society since the 1960s may be attributable to causal factors already embedded in its history from at least the nineteenth century; early periods of twentieth-century history, especially the aftermath of the First World War, reveal widespread disaffection and crises of confidence for institutional Christianity; and, in any case, many of the social changes that he perceives as signs of dissociation may themselves have been promoted by the churches. But, notwithstanding these caveats, it is difficult to contest the claim that the traditional markers of Christian identity have been in rapid decline during the past generation.