Copyright holder: Tyndale University, 3377 Bayview Ave., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M2M 3S4 Att.: Library Director, J. William Horsey Library Copyright: This Work has been made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws of Canada without the written authority from the copyright owner. Copyright license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License Citation: Faught, C. Brad. Review of Religious Belief and Popular Culture in Southwark c. 1880-1939, by S.C. Williams. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Anglican and Episcopal History 70, no. 1 (2001): 135-136. ***** Begin Content ****** TYNDALE UNIVERSITY 3377 Bayview Avenue Toronto, ON M2M 3S4 TEL: 416.226.6620 www.tyndale.ca Note: This Work has been made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws of Canada without the written authority from the copyright owner. Faught, C. Brad. Review of Religious Belief and Popular Culture in Southwark c. 1880- 1939, by S.C. Williams. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Anglican and Episcopal History 70, no. 1 (2001): 135-136. 135 BOOK REVIEWS S. C. Williams. Religious Belief and Popular Culture in Southwark c. 1880-1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. x + 206, appendix, bibliography, index. $70.00. S. C. Williams has written an engaging and important book about working class religiosity in London that challenges the secularization the- sis. This thesis holds that from about the mid-nineteenth century British society began to display clearly a move away from institutionalized, orga- nized religion. This move, spurred by a corpus of reasons, illustrated Victorian society’s gradual rejection of conventional religious norms and forms, and their replacement by the “liberal” principles encompassed by statism and science. Essential to the secularization thesis (as expounded by Jeffrey Cox, A. D. Gilbert, Patrick Joyce, et al.) is the equating of con- ventional churchgoing and confessional practices and institutional health with individual religiosity. Once these public indices of religiosity fell into decline, then, the secularization theorists contend, so too did religious belief. Williams, however, in measured, lively and well-documented prose, rejects this argument in favor of the manifest resilience of religious belief as a form of popular culture. “Formal outward signs,” Williams suggests, are merely the tip of the ice- berg as far as individual religiosity is concerned. Seeing them as explanatory of religious life is simplistic, as she discovers in Southwark, the working class London borough that she has chosen to study intensively. Williams relies heavily on oral history. Therefore, her study is replete with the grit of history, the stuff of personal experience, that defies the conven- tional wisdom on the assumed pervasiveness of alienation and irreligion amongst the fin-de-siecle working classes. The voices of the interviewed are heard loudly in this monograph as they recount their variegated religious 136 ANGLICAN AND EPISCOPAL HISTORY practice, which most often did not include regular church attendance, but did include participation in selective rites of passage. On baptism and the churching of women, for example: “You had to be christened to thank God for getting you over your confinement in those days, you know,” as one women remembered who otherwise did not darken the door of a church (p. 96). Likewise, Sunday school was seen as a necessity for children, even though the adults interviewed no longer went to church themselves. Written with verve and clarity, and superbly edited, the monograph makes the case for the persistence of private and semi-public religious belief and expression in the face of evident institutional decline. Williams integrates her interviewees’ words well with the large historiography on the subject to offer up a persuasive argument for the ways in which reli- gious belief maintains itself over time. The only significant weakness in this otherwise excellent book is its failure to examine adequately inter- and intra-denominational differences in the dynamic of institutional decline and poplar persistence. This is a book for historians and sociolo- gists—and perhaps especially, beleagured (Anglican?) church planners. C. Brad Faught Mount Allison University Sacville, New Brunswick, Canada. ***** This is the end of the e-text. This e-text was brought to you by Tyndale University, J. William Horsey Library - Tyndale Digital Collections *****