The Battle for Christian Britain
Sex, Humanists and Secularisation, 1945–1980

Exposes the mechanisms by which conservative Christianity dominated British culture during 1945–65 and their subsequent collapse.

Callum G. Brown (Author)

9781108431613, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 October 2019

339 pages
22.7 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.48 kg

'… The battle for Christian Britain makes a valuable contribution to questioning and rethinking the ways in which historians research and write about the religious and sexual transformations of the period. Its most signi?cant contribution is likely to be in provoking further discussion and debate on these issues.' Laura Ramsay, Journal of Ecclesiastical History

Post-war British culture was initially dominated by religious-led sexual austerity and, from the sixties, by secular liberalism. Using five case studies of local licensing and a sixth on the BBC, conservative Christians are exposed here as the nation's censors, fighting effectively for purity on stage, screen and in public places. The Anglican-led Public Morality Council was astonishingly successful in restraining sex in London's media in the fifties, but a brazen sexualised culture thrived amongst the millions of tourists to Blackpool, whilst Glasgow and the Isle of Lewis were gripped by conservatism. But come the late 1960s, tourists took Blackpool's sexual liberalism home, whilst progressive Humanism burrowed into Parliament and the BBC to secularise moral reform and the national narrative. Using extensive archival research, Callum G. Brown adopts a secular gaze to show how conservative Christians lost the battle for the nation's moral culture.

Part I. The Battle in Context: 1. Introduction
Part II. The Heyday of Christian Vigilance 1945–1965: 2. Moral vigilance
3. Licensing at the front line: London and Blackpool
4. Licensing in the provinces: Sheffield, Glasgow and Lewis
5. Battle at the Beeb part I
Part III. The Sixties Crisis and its Legacy, 1965–1980: 6. The privatisation of moral vigilance
7. The sixties liberalisation of licensing
8. The Humanist challenge
9. Battle at the Beeb part II
Part IV. Conclusion: 10. The birth of civilised Britain.

Subject Areas: Church history [HRCC2], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], British & Irish history [HBJD1]