ABSTRACT
The study of popular religion needs to be localised. Not only did the level of religious observance in nineteenth-century England vary significantly from one region to another, but the distribution of the various churches and sects followed different patterns. Regional diversity means that one must treat with caution all attempts to write generally of the influence of religion on the working class. In a critique of recent trends in the history of popular leisure it has been suggested that in their attempts to reform traditional recreations evangelicals or temperance reformers were ‘purveyors of minority causes’. An historian of the metropolis might well have found that to be the case, but it would be misleading to approach the social history of many smaller and different kinds of community from the same premise. In the mining villages of Durham or Cornwall Methodists of one kind or another could often claim majority support, at least so far as influence went if not membership. 1
