Abstract

This article considers the factors which contribute to maintaining women as lifelong attenders of the Christian church in England when so many former attenders have now become disaffiliates, women as well as men. It also asks if the same conditions which have kept these women in church still prevail to ensure their children remain affiliates. Carried out in northern England, this study found that three factors are important: belonging to a particular extended kinship network, belonging to a particular moral community and civic belonging, all types of belonging with which younger generations no longer identify. Hence, these female lifelong attenders may well be the last of a long line in England, at least.