Like so many mid-Victorian observers before him, Rowntree asked was about what impact the dying-out of Christianity would have on the character of England, and their collective concern was to ensure that Christian morality would survive without Christian dogma. For a century, thanks to T. H. Green and his idealist disciples, their wish was granted. A century later, Rowntree recorded that the activity had become bankrupt.

Where does this disintegration of Christianity leave us as a nation? Here is the importance of this tome for today's debate, as our nation tries to make sense of what life is and what it should and can be about. We are forced to do so against an elite which has fought ruthlessly to ensure that the sticky fog of relativism is smeared over the country's debate and where anyone's moral compass is considered as good as anyone else's. Yet Rowntree went to the heart of the matter: "In some future century, men may become so highly civilised" as to be able to "regulate their lives according to an ethical system shorn of all supernatural religion with which to give it authority". Rowntree concluded: "That time is not yet." 

I, like Rowntree, accept that the clocks cannot be turned back. So how do we react to living in a world where there are no supernatural religions available with a universal appeal to underpin our society's moral rules, and where we are not yet so civilised that the basic rules come naturally? Isn't the one option we have open to us to agree the ground rules on citizenship and for such rules to be systematically taught? T. H. Green's brilliance was in converting Christianity into public ideology. Labour, for all sorts of reasons, failed to recognise and address his achievement, although David Blunkett tried to row against the tide. In picking up Blunkett's mantle, the current Prime Minister might gain an over-arching theme which would knit together his government's domestic programme.