Review: British Gods: Religion in Modern Britain, by Steve Bruce

Abstract

Steve Bruce is one of Britain’s best-known sociologists of religion. Over a career spanning four decades, he has become a noted expert on the relationship between religion and politics as well as vocal defender of the secularization theory. Bruce calls British Gods an “end-of-career summation study” (vi) and in many ways it continues ideas that he has outlined in previous publications. The central argument underlying the book is that not only has religious adherence declined significantly in Britain since the mid-nineteenth century, but that its power and prestige has similarly crumbled. Throughout, Bruce draws not only upon the quantitative data demonstrating this national decline but also localized case studies from across the country.British Gods covers a range of topics. These include the decline of widespread elite patronage of local churches; the changing social roles of the Christian clergy; the rise of the Charismatic and Black Pentecostal movements; the growth of Islam; Spiritualism and New Age; and religion’s impact on recent British politics. Bruce is certainly convincing in his argument that religion as an organized, institutional phenomenon has seen a clear numerical decline that shows no sign of reversal in Britain. The growth of minority religious communities, usually of immigrant origin, have not offset this much larger decline. Where Bruce’s argument perhaps faces its biggest challenge is in the perseverance of supernaturalism in the form of belief about ghosts, mediumship, horoscopes, and so on, among those who do not align with a particular religious identity. He repeats the argument, which he has made elsewhere, that less than 2 percent of the UK population engages in New Age activities, but that perhaps fails to account for those who believe (or at least take an agnostic interest) in such topics without actually taking part in related activities. If I understand correctly, Bruce leans toward not considering this sort of unstructured belief to be religion at all. If that is the case, it would be better if he provided a clear stipulative definition of precisely what he means when he talks about religion.In keeping with Bruce’s trademark style, British Gods is characteristically straightforward, down-to-earth, and eminently readable. Here is a writer who knows how to get his argument across to a wide and often non-academic readership. At points the book is genuinely funny, a rare quality in scholarly writing. Not one to be swayed by academic fads or community lobbyists, Bruce refuses to serve as an apologist for any particular religious community or for religion itself. When he wants to criticize religious groups, he does so. He readily refers to those who object to developments like same-sex marriage as “homophobes” (87, 88), for instance. Moreover, he pulls no punches in pointing to how accusations of Islamophobia are sometimes used to stifle criticism of Islam in British public life and rejects the premise that self-segregation among many British Muslim communities can be purely explained as a response to prejudice from non-Muslims. While Bruce’s own beliefs certainly inform his writing, here he has (perhaps unintentionally) championed the value of evidence-based argument over scholarship informed more by ideology, apologetics, or wishful-thinking.This is not a book about new religious movements per se, and thus its especial value to new religions scholars is limited. Its discussions of Spiritualism and New Age are perhaps most useful in this regard, although such topics have been covered in far greater depth elsewhere. However, this is probably a book that anyone interested in religion in Britain (or the Western world more broadly) would really benefit from reading—students and established scholars alike. Those of us who study new religions can sometimes forget how small and uninfluential such groups typically are in the grand scheme of things. A book like British Gods serves as an important corrective to such attitudes.