Britain as a secular society

• in pre-reformation Europe, people's lives and thinking were strongly controlled by the church. to a certain extent, this continued in tudor and Stuart England after the reformation: the monarch dictated the official religion and those who dissented were liable to torture and death
• however, the reformation encouraged a m ore individualist approach. by encouraging people to study the bible and interpret its meaning in the light of conscience, religion became more personal and less of something that was imposed by authority
• in the eighteenth century the emphasis on reason, evidence and scientific thought further encouraged a more individualistic approach to religion. it was now possible to be openly atheist or agnostic
• the nineteenth century laws that permitted greater religious freedom, the horrors of two world wars in the twentieth century and the challenge to authority experienced in the 1960s decreased further the number of those who attended church and who regarded themselves as 'practicing' christians
• from the late twentieth century, squabbles and scandals within the church have led to growing disillusionment with traditional christianity