On reading his own obituary published by mistake, Mark Twain remarked that news of his death “was greatly exaggerated”. The Church of England may feel the same way when it hears about a book entitled That Was The Church That Was that purports to explain “how the Church of England lost the English people”. One of its authors, Professor Linda Woodhead of Lancaster University, also referred to the fraying ties that bind the Church of England and the nation when she discussed her recent research during her British Academy Lecture this week. The evidence is certainly sobering.   The decline in religious membership and participation in England over the past couple of generations is inexorable, and the tipping point – when more people claim to have no reli