This is an ambitious study that sets out to redefine how historians measure the extent and nature of cultural change in post-war Britain. Callum Brown finds that existing scholarship is lacking. Secular histories, he says, have not done enough to understand the central importance of Christianity and its declining influence to the cultural transformations of the 1960s and 1970s. Religious histories, he says, have been too inward-looking and have not done enough to assess the wider impact of Christian ideas on British culture and morality. To redress these limitations, Brown interprets post-war cultural transformation through a particular lens, outlining a series of battles on issues relating to sex (which he defines broadly to include other issues of morality such as drinking, gambling and leisure activities) between conservative Christians and liberal, non-religious individuals and organisations. Brown concludes that cultural change followed a distinct chronology –Britain moved from a dominant British culture of Christian conservatism in the 1940s and 1950s, to a period of intense upheaval in the 1960s and 1970s, to Christianity ultimately losing its dominance and authority in public culture by 1980.

In this study Brown pioneers multiple methodologies to seek to understand the diversity of intersections between sex and Christianity. First, The battle for Christian Britain sets out to reach beyond the Churches, to try to understand more about the ways in which conservative, moralist versions of Christianity influenced wider British culture and morality. Brown focuses on the policies and activities of two organisations that protected and defended the cultural hegemony of Christianity in the years between 1945 and 1965 – the Public Morality Council (PMC) in London and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). These were the decades, he argues, when moral vigilantism wielded enormous influence with central state, local government, police and the entertainment industry. The BBC permitted religious broadcasting as a form of evangelising and ensured that non-religious narratives were not allowed to air. What changed in the 1960s and 1970s, Brown argues, was that the PMC collapsed and moral vigilantism passed to freelance ‘pirates’ of vigilance such as Mary Whitehouse and the Nationwide Festival of Light, who tried but failed to secure support from the Churches and the establishment. The rise of secular pressure on the BBC led it to abandon its evangelising role and allow anti-religious commentary to air. In such ways, Brown concludes, the dominant, conservative version of Christian morality lost its populist and establishment support, and Christian leadership and church authority was mocked and disrespected as never before.

Second, the book uses case studies to explore local variation to the battles that took place across Britain. Its examination of the very different timings and trajectories of changes to moral culture in London, Blackpool, Sheffield, Glasgow and the Isle of Lewis illuminate the diverse local licensing conditions that restrained popular culture organisation in each area. Contrary to existing historiographical assumptions, Brown finds that London – the focus of the most organised and effective system of moral vigilantism – did not provide a simple template for cultural change that was followed by the rest of the nation. Rather, the north co-invented the ‘swinging sixties’ and anticipated its changes. Brown asserts that historians of post-war Britain should therefore focus more attention on processes of cultural transformation in the provinces during the 1960s and 1970s.

Third, The battle for Christian Britain explores the activities of an important group of people of no religion – Humanists, secularists, agnostics and atheists – who have previously been overlooked in histories of cultural and moral change in twentieth-century Britain. Brown draws attention to the role of non-religious individuals and groups in creating and popularising a powerful, new narrative about Christianity, which identified the Churches and religious ideas as problems to legal and social reform, and secularism as the solution. Such narratives of cultural secularisation, Brown argues, broke into the mainstream via platforms such as the BBC, causing Christianity and the Churches to lose their position of influence and privilege in public discussions on issues such as abortion and contraception. Although these parts of the study are more impressionistic than earlier sections, Brown makes a compelling case on the need for further research in these areas.

Taken together, this sense of exploring alternative ways to research the diversity of intersections between sex and Christianity is what makes the study an important read. Nevertheless, aspects of its interpretation are likely to prove contentious. Despite Brown's criticisms of existing scholarship, this account also tends to oversimplify things. The thrust of the argument is framed in value-laden rhetoric that reiterates long-standing myths and assumptions about the cultural changes of the post-war period. The battle for Christian Britain describes ‘religious’ Britain as uncivilised, oppressive and prurient, and the ‘secular’ Britain that replaced it as civilised, morally progressive, diverse and tolerant. This terminology ignores recent scholarship (from both ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ perspectives) that has refuted simplistic, progressive narratives of cultural change and sought to understand more about the complexities and nuances of post-war developments. In addition, The battle for Christian Britain creates the illusion that it is about the sexual and moral obsessions of organised religion, whereas its focus is really on organisations that were external to the Churches. Even though organisations such as the PMC enjoyed some degree of support from sometimes significant conservative Christians, they did not represent the views of organised religion. Brown criticises religious historians for focusing too much on the progressive tendencies of Christian liberals, but creates the opposite impression, that the Churches came to be dominated by a conservative Christian culture. Both viewpoints are a simplified version of a complex reality. Brown also overstates the sense in which ‘the Churches’ enforced a particular version of morality. There was certainly more nuance between the positions of different Churches, as well as within denominations, than is suggested. Overall, notwithstanding its more contentious claims, 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 significant contribution is likely to be in provoking further discussion and debate on these issues.