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From Religion to Revolution: Theologies of Secularisation in the British Student Christian Movement, 1963–1973

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2015

SAM BREWITT-TAYLOR
SAM BREWITT-TAYLOR*
Affiliation:
Lincoln College, Oxford E-mail: samuel.brewitt-taylor@lincoln.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

The collapse of the British Student Christian Movement in the long 1960s is conventionally ascribed to its mimicking of student radicalism at a time of increasing secularisation. Yet analysis of the SCM's rhetoric demonstrates that in the early 1960s the movement imagined a religious crisis when student Christianity was still strong. By embracing a theological vision of ‘secularisation’, which demanded the deliberate transposition of Christian eschatologies into secular form, the SCM embarked on an early, original and influential journey into political radicalism. In this way, the SCM made a significant contribution to British student radicalism in the late 1960s.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 66 , Issue 4 , October 2015 , pp. 792 - 811
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

1 For overviews see Boyd, Kenneth, The witness of the Student Christian Movement, London 2007, 99–103Google Scholar, and McLeod, Hugh, The religious crisis of the 1960s, Oxford 2007, 211–12Google Scholar.

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3 Boyd, Witness of the SCM, 117–19.

4 See the remarks on ordinands in ‘Hot and bothered: the rise of evangelicalism is shaking up the established Church’, The Economist, 10 Mar. 2012, and McLeod, Religious crisis, 207–12.

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39 Mackie, Survey of Christianity, 26.

40 Ibid.

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43 Author's calculations based on data collected from college reports, 1960–1, SCM, C57.

44 Ibid.

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64 Brewitt-Taylor, ‘Invention of a “secular society”?’, 338–41.

65 Bliss, ‘Men without religion’, 117.

66 Student Movement (Winter 1960), 2.

67 Ambrose Reeves to General Council, Feb. 1963, SCM, A300b.

68 Ibid.

69 Reeves to Irish secretary, 31 Oct. 1962, SCM, A362.

70 General Council minutes, 14–18 Sept. 1964, SCM, M70, para. 9753.

71 Ibid. para. 9727ff.

72 Ibid. para. 9753.

73 Ibid. para. 9755.

74 See the mid-1960s assessments summarised in Martin, Sociology of English religion, 128–9.

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86 Bristol half-yearly report, Dec. 1963; Cambridge half-yearly report, Dec. 1963, SCM, A344.

87 Irish secretary to Reeves, 26 Oct. 1962, SCM, A363.

88 Midlands annual report, May 1966, SCM, A344, 2.

89 Annual college reports, SCM, C57, C65. Most SCM branches ceased collecting membership lists after the introduction of the ‘openness policy’, and so average meeting attendance became the de facto measure of branch size. These are used here as the 1966 figures. Even taking this into account, the declines are still very large for such a short period of time.

90 Calculated from college reports, 1966–7, SCM, C65.

91 London half-yearly report, Dec. 1965, SCM, A344.

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93 See, for example, Goodhew, ‘Rise of the CICCU’, 83. The number of IVF travelling secretaries nearly doubled between 1968 and 1978: Douglas Johnson, Contending for the faith: a history of the Evangelical movement in the universities and colleges, Leicester 1979, 338.

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95 Carmichael, ‘Collapse of the SCM’, 127.

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97 Reeves to branch presidents, 24 Sept. 1964, SCM, A327.

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99 Sheila Rowbotham, Promise of a dream, New York 2001, esp. pp. 145, 160–2, 177, 202.

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111 Breakthrough (Autumn 1964), front cover; Rev. xxi. 1.

112 Boyd, Witness of the SCM, 113.

113 Laurence Bright, ‘Humanism’, Breakthrough (May 1966), 7.

114 Transcript of conference sermon, 13 Apr. 1969, SCM, A402.

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120 David Head, ‘Openness’, Breakthrough (May 1966), 17–19.

121 Boyd, Witness of the SCM, 113.

122 Cambridge annual report, 1965–6, SCM, A360.

123 David Head, ‘SCM policy and staffing’, Feb. 1969, SCM, A387.

124 Chun, British New Left, 87–8; Marwick, Cultural revolution, 632.

125 Thomas, ‘Student protest’, 296.

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127 Ibid. 104.

128 Tariq Ali, ‘For a revolutionary journal …’, Black Dwarf, 1 June 1969, 2; cf. Hoefferle, Student activism, 98–9.

129 See, for examples, Burns, Arthur, ‘Beyond the “red vicar”: community and Christian socialism in Thaxted, 1910–84’, History Workshop Journal lxxv (2013), 101–24Google Scholar, and Kenneth Leech, ‘Has rebellion a theology?’, Prism (Nov. 1962), 22–8.

130 ‘The Gospel of revolution’, New Christian, 12 Dec. 1968, 1; John Robinson, ‘Not radical enough?’, in John Robinson, Christian freedom in a permissive society, London 1970, 232–40 at p. 239. For the 1959 example see Robinson, John, On being Church in the world, Harmondsworth 1969, 13–29Google Scholar, esp. pp. 19–21.

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139 SCM in Cambridge, annual report, 1968–9, SCM, A360.

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141 ‘Aide-memoire on the first meeting … held at the Ivanhoe Hotel, London, 10 June 1966’, SCM, A377, 8; Edwards, David, The futures of Christianity, London 1987, 416Google Scholar.

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144 ‘SCM policy and staffing’, distributed by David Head, Feb. 1969, SCM, A387, 3, pace Bruce, Firm in the faith, 91.

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146 Cf. Rowbotham, Promise of a dream, 231.

147 ‘Springboks facing chaos’, The Guardian, 11 Sept. 1969, 11; David Head, ‘Springboks rugby tour’, Church Times, 28 Nov. 1969, 12. For the response see ‘Springboks & students’, Church Times, 5 Dec. 1969, 14.

148 ‘SCM may lose charity status’, The Guardian, 2 Aug. 1972, 8.

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150 Bruce, Firm in the faith, 77; Boyd, Witness of the SCM, 114.

151 Hoefferle, Student activism, 99.

152 For a popular overview see Sandbrook, Dominic, Seasons in the sun: the battle for Britain, 1974–1979, London 2011Google Scholar, 88.

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154 Cf. Sandbrook, Dominic, State of emergency: the way we were: Britain, 1970–1974, London 2010, 182–4Google Scholar, 177–9.

155 Annual report, 1975–6, SCM, B1, 4.

156 Boyd, Witness of the SCM, 119; Bruce, ‘SCM and IVF’, 334–7.

157 SCM website, ‘Our vision and values’: http://www.movement.org.uk/about-us/our-vision-and-values#, accessed 23 Jan. 2014.

158 Boyd, Witness of the SCM, 133.

159 Ibid. ‘Faith in action project’: http://www.movement.org.uk/faithinaction#, accessed 31 Jan. 2014.

160 Boyd, Witness of the SCM, 134.

161 Cf. Rev. xxi. 22.

162 Bruce, Firm in the faith, 78.

163 Pace Brown, Death of Christian Britain, 176.

164 This question remains largely unexplored in the British case, although see Holger Nehring, ‘“The long, long night is over”: the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, “generation”, and the politics of religion (1957–1964)’, in Jane Garnett and others, Redefining Christian Britain: post-1945 perspectives, London 2007, 138–47 at pp. 139–40. For American examples see Chappell, David, Stone of hope: prophetic religion and the death of Jim Crow, London 2004CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Rossinow, Doug, The politics of authenticity: liberalism, Christianity and the New Left in America, New York 1998Google Scholar.

165 Cf. Martin, On secularization, 174.