The landscape of secularization is one that was was once familiar, and yet now appears almost unrecognisable to those who have lived within it all their lives. They and many external observers are saddened by the decline of institutional religion in Britain and cannot clearly discern the full nature of the causes. This text is not a systematic attempt to describe and identify every feature of a fading religious landscape. Instead, it holds to account a number of the fundamental transformations in religious understanding itself, helping the reader to grasp the bigger picture of the decline of the Church in Britain.