Research and Publications
Secularisation
For fifty years,Callum Brown has studied the decline of religion,resulting in 15 research monographs,principally focusing upon Britain,but also Canada and the United States,and,to a lesser extent,Europe. In the first phase of his academic career,research concerntrated upon the 19th century. His first monograph,the Social History of Religion in Scotland since 1730 adhered to a then current orthodoxy which envisaged the influence of religion having diminished during the late 19th century as a result of urbanisation. Later,Brown came to believe that this thesis was incorrect,and that secularisation did not properly take hold in Britain until the mid-twentieth century. [6] 1] This first book was heavily revised for a new edition which appeared in 1997 as Religion and Society in Scotland since 1707. [7] 2] The later edition argued that nineteenth century clergy had created a discourse of the 'unchurched' urban working classes which later influenced what historians believed,but that in reality,religiosity remained strong. It also drew upon then emerging trends in history writing,chiefly a burgeoning concern with identities. The book was perhaps the first Scottish history book which related the marginalisation of a culture of puritanism in the 1960s and 1970s to arguments about changing expectations about leisure time. By the mid-2020s,Brown believed that the progress of secularisation had been sufficiently through in Scotland that if published today,Religion and Society in Scotland since 1707 might struggle to gain a significant readership due to low levels of public knowledge about churches,particularly amongst younger generations,coupled with the dwindling appeal of religious history. [7]
Brown's focus then turned to reconceptualising secularisation in the twentieth century. His research moved beyond the borders of Scotland. He developed a central thesis which asserts that secularisation in the western Christian world has been both rapid and intense since the 1960s,but should not be regarded as confined to decline of churches,faith or religious behaviour. Secularisation,Brown argues,is multi-faceted. Eventually,he came to delineate five forms of secularisation which had previously been overlooked by historians,proceeding to research and write a book on each of them. Firstly,secularisation was identified as the breakdown of hegemonic Christian culture,triggered by the collapse of conventional female piety in the 1960s,in TheDeath of Christian Britain (2000). Here,the ‘death’of Christian Britain stands for the demise of the nation’s core religious and moral identity. For a thousand years,Brown reminds the reader,Christianity 'penetrated deeply into the lives of the people,enduring Reformation,Enlightenment and industrial revolution' by adapting. Then,in the 1960s,there was a ‘profound rupture’which sent organised Christianity into a ‘downward spiral into the margins of social significance.’ [8] When writing,Brown innovated using discourse analysis and women's history,both of which he had then recently been introduced to by Abrams,and,influenced by the work of Sarah Williams on religion in 19th century England,rejected the primacy of social class as insufficient to explain the magnitude of change in religious fortunes,instead alighting upon gender history. TheDeath of Christian Britain deployed a postmodern-inspired approach of discourse analysis and personal testimony study,combined use of which in religious history was then relatively novel. [8] The book was widely reviewed upon publication and generated some controversy;Brown received biblical texts and warnings of hell,while some Christian historians and sociologists were hostile. In the early years of the internet,TheDeath of Christian Britain generated vigorous online discussion and engagement. [8]
Secondly,in Religion and the Demographic Revolution (2012) secularisation was investigated as a demographic phenomenon,with women grasping ultra-low fertility and rejecting restrictive religiousity. [9] Thirdly,secularisation was seen as the recrafting of the self,studied through oral history,in Becoming Atheist (2017). Based on interviews with 80 people stretching from Estonia in the east to Vancouver and San Francisco in the west,this book was the first to analyse how people narrated their loss of religion in and after the 1960s,according to gender,age,ethnicity and cultural contexts. [10] Fourthly,secularisation as a struggle between liberal and conservative moralities in the 1960s,considered in The Battle for Christian Britain (2019). [11]
Finally,in Ninety Humanists and the Ethical Transition of Britain (2026) secularisation as ethical change between 1930 and 1980 in an ‘Open Conspiracy’of intellectuals. Here,Brown charts the role of elites in engineering ethical change,a 'fifty year transition devoid of party politics and religion' led by 'just under a hundred of Britain's leading scientists,writers and social reformers',who,inspired by the work of H.G. Wells,'created a diverse and remarkably successful social movement',which 'led to the dismantling of 'longstanding Christian moral legislation.' [12]
Oral History
Brown was one of the earlier pioneers of the use of oral history in Scotland. He began using the methodology in the early 1990s,when teaching and researching at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. In 1995,he co-founded,with Arthur McIvor,the Scottish Oral History Centre (SOHC),based at Strathclyde,as a hub for training,expertise and archiving oral history. The Centre reached its 30th anniversary in 2025. [13] A book resulted from Brown's oral history work at Strathclyde,co-written with Arthur McIvor and the late Neil Rafeek,the University Experience 1945-75:An Oral History of the University of Strathclyde. [14] For just under a decade,between 2009 and 2017,Brown worked on a rolling programme of oral history interviewing for his ‘Becoming Atheist’research project,which investigated individual stories of secularisation since the 1960s. He enquired into the lives of humanists,atheists,agnostics,sceptics,secularists,rationalists,and freethinkers. Beginning in Scotland with the humanist celebrant who married him and his wife,Brown recruited informants across the United Kingdom,in Canada,and the United States,as well as in India,France and Estonia. [15] The resulting collection of 78 interviews,supplemented by written testimonies,were transcribed manually by a team of transcribers,and assembled into a compendium of 649,257 words. Both the interview tapes and the compendia will be deposited in the Bishopsgate Archive,London. [16] Between 2018 and 2020,Brown carried out oral history interviewing in the Western Highlands and Western Isles,investigating,with researcher,Ealasaid Munro,memories of the Highlands and Islands Film Guild,an organisation which brought cinema to rural communities. [17]
Religion and the Heterosexual Revolution
Callum Brown's interest in secularisation led him to the history of sexualities. Drawing upon analysis of statistics for 'illegitimacy',he has argued for a 'short' sexual revolution as having taken place in England in the 1960s which proceeded the mass availability of the oral contraceptive pill. The 1960s,he has asserted,witnessed a sudden growth in pre-marital heterosexual intercourse,which implied a cultural rather than a technological cause for changing sexual behaviour. Examining social surveys,such as the published investigations by Geoffrey Gorer,Eustace Chesser and Michael Schofield,he found clear evidence of correlation between reported levels of religious activity and levels of pre-marital sexual activity. Finally,he argues that in the 1950s,the dominance of a conservative Christian culture in England restrained women's behaviour,but that attitudes changed in the 1960s,a shift led by the agency of single women. Changing female sexual behaviour and attitudes,accompanied by a collapse of 'respectability' and 'puritanism',Brown argues,constituted a significant instigator of the religious crisis of the 1960s. [18]
Critical Reception
In 1999,Up-helly-aa:Custom,Culture and Community in Shetland won the Frank Watson Prize for best book or monograph published on Scottish History. [19]
Hugh McLeod,writing in Social History,praised Becoming Atheist:Humanism and the Secular West,which appeared in 2017,for its innovative uses of oral history,saying that the ‘originality of Brown’s account lies not only in the highly detailed tracing of individual life stories,but also in showing patterns of similarity between accounts by those of the same nationality,ethnicity,gender or religious background.’McLeod found Callum Brown’s analysis of the impact of different ethnic or religious backgrounds upon journeys to humanism,such as those of African Americans and secular Jews to be ‘especially interesting.’ [20] McLeod did however,offfer some reservations,chiefly,that the book canvased the memories of members of humanist organisations,a small group,rather than a 'random sample of atheists.' They were,he asserted,a 'distinctive group',mostly 'elderly,many well-educated and containing no less than ten-percent former clergy or trainee clergy.' McLeod was also doubtful about the primacy in a book about 'the West' of the emphasis on the 1960s as a moment of religious rupture in Britain,which 'would have been impossible if he was writing about Germany or France.' While Brown had 'been successful in showing how committed humanists saw the world',McLeod said,there remained room for a 'more detached analysis.' [20] Edward Royle,in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History ,found the book a 'carefully researched and closely argued study,written from an atheist point of view' which 'should provoke religious historians to re-examine their assumptions about how the process of secularisation should be understood in the contemporary world.' [21]
Religion and the Demographic Revolution was appraised by Todd Green,reviewer for Church History,to have ‘delivered a persuasive argument for connections between demography,religion and secularisation. The sheer range of data he [Brown] draws on makes his case impressive.’Given the ‘neglect of gender in traditional accounts of religious change and decline in modern histories of the West,Green felt that ‘Brown’s book is an indispensable contribution to the field’which would ‘go a long way to helping bring gender as a crucial category of analysis from the periphery to the centre of the secularisation debate.’ [22] S.C Williams,for the English Historical Review ,considered Religion and the Demographic Revolution to be a ‘fascinating analysis’which brought together and studied the bonds between ‘three powerful revolutions:the secular,the demographic and the revolution in women’s identities.’He was more critical of the book’s treatment of the demographic growth of ‘other religionists’,whose mass immigration from regions with faith traditions other than Christianity ‘had become a vital characteristic of each of the countries studied.’However,Williams concluded it ‘remained the case that Brown had produced a watershed book which opened new ground in the social history of religion.’ [23]
The Battle for Christian Britain:Sex,Humanists and Secularisation,1945-1980,which was published in 2019,was reviewed by Jon Lawrence in the American Historical Review . Lawrence considered the book a 'rich and original study,its local case studies (of London,Sheffield,Blackpool,Glasgow and the Isle of Lewis) adding an important new dimension to our understanding of post-war social and cultural history,not just by decentring London in the story of an increasingly sexualised and permissive culture,but also by reminding us of the continued importance of local religious,political and social traditions in the practical implementation of state policies in the era.’ [24] Lawrence also welcomed ‘Brown’s sustained focus on the role of secular humanists in driving social reforms’,but questioned whether he had adequately explained the forces eroding the culture of social deference in post-war Britain,suggesting the one pertinent factor was an elite crisis of confidence in telling other people how to live their lives. [24] Grace France,writing in Twentieth Century British History,considered that the ‘most significant triumph’of the book was Brown’s ‘emphasis on the content of the battles themselves and not solely on their eventual outcomes’,which ‘carved out a place for Christian activists’,whose eventual demise obscured their earlier importance. It was worth ending her review,France said,with Brown’s opening vignette of a woman in Sussex complaining about the naked mannequins in a shop window,anticipating there might be a law against such a display. ‘The book begins,’she summarised,‘in a culture where such a complaint was commonplace and ends in one where it was not.’The Battle for Christian Britain is,she considered,thoroughly researched and endlessly fascinating.’ [25]
The Humanist Movement in Modern Britain,which Brown co-authored with David Nash and Charlie Lynch,appeared in 2023. Its main thesis is that organised humanism achieved a ‘disproportionate’influence on international affairs and domestic social policy in the mid-20th century,experienced crisis and retrenchment in the 1970s and 1990s,but recovered in the 21st century by 'championing a distinctive ethical approach to human rights,sexual liberty and the autonomy of the individual.' [26] Nathan Alexander,writing in the Journal of British Studies ,appraised the book as one which,while obviously appealing to scholars of non-religion,was relevant to historians of Britain because 'it describes a phenomenon which had seemingly happened under their noses. The majority of society had become non-religious,largely holding humanist values.' [27] John Carter Wood,in Contemporary British History ,was rather more critical,adjudging that with the authors ‘very much on the side of their humanist protagonists’,the presumption that humanists formed the ‘ethical vanguard of Britain’made for a ‘somewhat flattened story’which overlooked ‘darker sides of secularist thought.’However,Carter Wood decided that while the book was ‘partial in scope and partisan in its commitments,it was clearly a ‘significant achievement which offers a detailed and carefully researched study of key institutions of non-belief in Britain,effectively drawing out overarching patterns in organised non-belief.’ [28]
