In this and the following chapters we shall aim to cite generously from the transcripts of recordings we have made of older people speaking about their beliefs. We have attempted neither to improve the language used nor to hide the very real difficulties people often encounter in putting their beliefs into words. This is one reason perhaps for the social sciences’ neglect of spiritual discourse. It is hard to analyse, and appropriate methods of qualitative analysis may not yet have been developed. But the importance of spiritual discourse is indicated by its frequent proximity to expressions of personal well-being.

We have also included at the beginning of every chapter an introduction to the relevant subject matter. The change of style from more academic analysis to reportage of people's freely expressed attitudes will be evident to the reader. But we have hoped thereby to bring alive the place of belief in people's lives. We begin with a chapter which includes analyses of some of the first interviews that the present author and colleagues conducted on the subject of belief in the aftermath of the social changes of the 1960s, often regarded as a watershed in the evolution of religious and spiritual attitudes in the west.

The 1960s revolution against authority

Although there are various ways to characterise the social revolution that began 10 to 15 years after the end of the Second World War, the changes in attitudes that swept through western culture in those years can now be seen to have had a lasting influence on many areas of social life. One of the principal areas affected in Britain and elsewhere was religious allegiance. Indeed some commentators, such as Callum Brown (2001), argue that the processes of secularisation in Britain did not properly take hold until the 1960s. According to this view, although decline in allegiance to Christianity may have begun in the aftermath of the First World War as a reaction to the horrors of that war and the inability of the churches to oppose the mass slaughter that occurred, this did not impose lasting damage on the Christian character of the country. Christian values as a socialising force remained strong both through and after the Second World War.