Episode 09: Linda Woodhead MBE

Interview Date: 8 April 2021. Interviewer: Dr Jason Clark. Research and questions by Dr Simon Machin.

Professor Linda Woodhead has been described as "one of the world's leading experts on religion". She has written extensively on Anglicanism, secularisation, and spirituality's changing face in modern Britain. Professor Woodhead has also collaborated with leading British politicians to look at religion and society, co-founding the Westminster Faith Debates in 2011 with former Home Secretary Charles Clarke. For many years Distinguished Professor of the Sociology of Religion at Lancaster University, since 2022, Professor Woodhead has been the F.D. Maurice Professor and Head of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King's College London.

Linda Woodhead - Timed Interview Summary

0:00 - 24:53

The interview was recorded while Professor Linda Woodhead was Distinguished Professor of the Sociology of Religion in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University. She was born in Taunton in Somerset in a very rural part of the world. The black comedy Hot Fuzz was filmed in Somerset. The Glastonbury festival is also held in the same area. Grows up in a very traditional and old-fashioned village, which is fundamentally a farming community, and Glastonbury even then is a very exotic, alternative world which is not visited very often. Grandparents are colonials who have been all round the world. Parents grew up in Africa but came back to Somerset, but the people who came back from the colonies never really fitted in. Father is an agricultural labourer. Has a memory of grandfather taking her to the officer’s mess in the local army barracks.  An exciting but alien world. As a child, Linda’s geographical boundaries extend only to where she can reach on her small bicycle, but she knows every field, every hedge and every stream. Still goes back to see family, but references Elena Ferrante’s Neopolitan novels about moving out from an enclosed culture, becoming educated, and although retaining an intense connection to the place one grew up in, never quite fitting in there again. Reflections on parent’s relationship using Deborah Orr’s memoir, Motherwell, as her own experience is similar. Although as a child Linda thought her mother was dominant, she now realizes that it was her father in a quiet way. Had relatives on the Isle of Man and remembers going to see the TT races and loving it. 

24:54 – 39:49 

Schooling and church experience. Despite spending childhood in one place she went to a number of schools each with a different ethos, one intensely Christian and another very secular, and it may have been a reason for her adult interest in sociology. Education was critically important in widening her imagination. Always has a book. This world of the imagination, the world of the head, is more real than the physical world. Reads anything and everything from Plato to Enid Blyton. Is interested in the Extra ECC’s producer, Simon Machin’s interest in women’s reading of yarns and adventure stories.  Always wants to be an academic. It is an early decision, and she is the first person in her family to go to university. Enjoys school but by the sixth form is a bit bored and wants to get on. Parents are not religious but rural Anglican experience is taking for granted, and is gentle, warm and welcoming.  The ceremonies are very rural, nature-based, and almost pagan with little emphasis on reading the Bible. Beating the bounds, walking around the boundaries of the parish was an annual event.  Religion as part of life. 

39:50 – 56:00 

Harbours a secret ambition to go to university since neither the home background nor the schools are particularly set up to support it. Studies all the time, and her sixth form is reasonably good. Her religious education teacher encourages her to apply to Cambridge University. Goes for interview and gets conditional offer based on getting ‘A’ level grades. A different time when only 5% of people went to university. Could not have been happier, greatly enjoying the culture shift. A huge adventure. As a tutor, Don Cupitt stood out at her college, Emmanuel. He was famous and the person to study with. A very charismatic figure, a real intellectual.  She is taught systematics by Rowan Williams.  Is trained in the skill of the academic in being able to retain and organize data even when it is uninspiring in its presentation. Goes to chapel regularly. Faith entirely theological and her compass but she is open to change. Finds evangelicalism the antithesis of what Christianity means to her.  

56:01 – 1:16:29

Post Cambridge University career.  Appointed as lecturer in doctrine and ethics at Ripon College, Cuddesdon near Oxford. Semi-monastic in its origins, had retained its feeling of a prep school, and she is younger that some of the ordinands.  A time of change which is quite exciting.  Does not consider ordination (and is not invited to consider it), leaves behind the Anglican environment and theology which is male-oriented, and relocates to Lancaster University to lecture in Christianity in a flagship religious studies (rather than theology) department. It is within a social science faculty and feels like a homecoming.  Sociology is the context that was missing in her upbringing and theological training. The social context of belief is what interests her. Bringing religion and society together is extremely stimulating. Has as a strong ambition to teach her students better than she was taught at Cambridge University. As a result of her teaching experience she comes to the view that there are three essential types of Christianity: church-based, catholic with a small-c Christianity with open boundaries and a desire to bring society in; Biblical-sectarian with closed boundaries, a clear text and an “us against the world” mentality; and a mystical type which emphasizes subjective and personal experience. All three have been present from the beginning and they become interweaved and fight, and at different periods one particular form predominates.   It is important to teach students that there is more than one type. Writes An Introduction to Christianity and later distills it down into a shorter OUP book.

1:16:30 – 1:42:43

Widening research interests lead eventually towards a specialization in what is happening to organized religion as it declines and is transformed into a growing social experimentation with different forms of spiritual experience.  Between 2000-02 undertakes with a colleague, Paul Heelas, and others, a detailed examination of what was happening in the small town of Kendal. Eventually published in the book, The Spiritual Revolution. It takes the researchers considerable effort to unearth spiritual activities as they are taking place in people’s homes. Many of the leaders are women. 126 different groups are found. Rich sub-cultures exist and they are often off the radar. Sociologists love to examine the dynamics of them. The Kendal research illustrates the massive subjective turn of modern culture (the concept popularized by the philosopher, Charles Taylor).  

When examining a community like Kendal, Linda wants to establish what the “centre of gravity” is, the golden thread, the obvious thing which at first cannot be seen. Great books are always really clear, lucid and limpid because things are explained clearly. Facts are expensive, because of the interviews, the researchers, the triangulation of techniques, and it takes a lot of time. Prior to the research there were competing hypotheses in academia: from the thought that religion was dying out through to the belief that there was still a continuing Christian tradition of believing, not belonging.  Linda’s research confirmed that spirituality still thrived, but there was totally new finding, that 80% of it was being led by women – a gender puzzle. The decline of the church was confirmed.  Linda is still puzzling over this gender puzzle, despite a 50%:50% split in the locality between women and men. A lot of the women were refugees from the National Health Service or teaching. The therapies offered by them, often to other women, were inexpensive and easily accessible.  A specific market had developed for working-class as well as middle-class practitioners. After Kendal, a whole field of spirituality studies has developed. 

1:42:44 – 1:59:52

That Was The Church That Was. A 2016 book about the Church of England, co-authored with Guardian journalist Andrew Brown. Andrew had been the religious correspondent of the Guardian for over twenty years. The book is structured around the various archbishops, the Synod and the church hierarchy. The Kendal research confirms the decline of the Church of England. The difficulty of changing institutions and dealing with abuse scandals.   The courage to look it in the eye may lead to a psychological revolution. However, as a counterbalance, institutions can still have a positive influence.  

1:59:53 – 2:10:40

Feminist theology and its history. What Linda grew up with. She became critical but now regrets that feminist theology wasn’t mainstreamed. Reflects that ignoring women was the point at which the Church of England started to decline.  It lags behind secular society.  Nevertheless, the Church Of England has a wonderful tradition and something new may emerge from it, as people massively underestimate the significance of the past.  

2:10:41 – 2:19:13   

Linda’s work with political hierarchies, particularly Charles Clarke, the former Labour Home Secretary in the Westminster Faith Debates. Parliamentarians are explicitly more Christian than the population. Charles Clarke wasn’t, but still thought religious faith really important to society. However, politicians are slow to reform how religion is taught in schools. The Faith Debate format was to put together two scholars and two public figures to discuss issues. A great interest amongst politicians and civil servants.    

2:19:14 – 2:33:34

Current preoccupations. A new book under way with the working title, Unknowing God.  Linda is hoping to create an environment where people can talk about the supernatural, how people connect with higher powers without being ridiculed.  The Cadbury Lectures 2021: “Values are the New Religion”. Linda has become fascinated in values, since every organization seems to have them now. Her interest has arisen out of completing a study of Generation Z (18-25 years old).   Values have flown free from religious control, and this means that younger people are more reflective about what their values are. Yet there will always be a place for religion which is focused upon God. Modern society is more complicated because so many organizations have values and they are sometimes contradictory and may conflict with personal beliefs. Yet ethical decisions are like exercising a muscle, we are making them all the time.