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Author: Hugh McLeod Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1139438158 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 246
Book Description
Christendom lasted for over a thousand years in Western Europe, and we are still living in its shadow. For over two centuries this social and religious order has been in decline. Enforced religious unity has given way to increasing pluralism, and since 1960 this process has spectacularly accelerated. In this 2003 book, historians, sociologists and theologians from six countries answer two central questions: what is the religious condition of Western Europe at the start of the twenty-first century, and how and why did Christendom decline? Beginning by overviewing the more recent situation, the authors then go back into the past, tracing the course of events in England, Ireland, France, Germany and the Netherlands, and showing how the fate of Christendom is reflected in changing attitudes to death and to technology, and in the evolution of religious language. They reveal a pattern more complex and ambiguous than many of the conventional narratives will admit.
Author: Hugh McLeod Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1139438158 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 246
Book Description
Christendom lasted for over a thousand years in Western Europe, and we are still living in its shadow. For over two centuries this social and religious order has been in decline. Enforced religious unity has given way to increasing pluralism, and since 1960 this process has spectacularly accelerated. In this 2003 book, historians, sociologists and theologians from six countries answer two central questions: what is the religious condition of Western Europe at the start of the twenty-first century, and how and why did Christendom decline? Beginning by overviewing the more recent situation, the authors then go back into the past, tracing the course of events in England, Ireland, France, Germany and the Netherlands, and showing how the fate of Christendom is reflected in changing attitudes to death and to technology, and in the evolution of religious language. They reveal a pattern more complex and ambiguous than many of the conventional narratives will admit.
Author: Hugh McLeod Publisher: ISBN: 9780511073458 Category : Christianity Languages : en Pages : 234
Book Description
For over two centuries, Christendom has declined in Western Europe, as we have moved gradually towards a society where a huge variety of religious and non-religious options are available. This book discusses this decline, showing where we are now, how we got there, and offering some predictions for the future.
Author: David Martin Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN: 9781409406587 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 244
Book Description
The Future of Christianity offers a mature assessment of themes preoccupying David Martin over some fifty years, and acts as a complement to his earlier volume, On Secularization. Particular themes of focus include the dialectic of Christianity and secularization, the relation of Christianity to multiple enlightenments and modes of modernity, the enigmas of East Germany and Eastern Europe, and the rise of the transnational religious voluntary association, including Pentecostalism, as that feeds into vast religious changes in the developing world.
Author: Phil Zuckerman Publisher: NYU Press ISBN: 1479891851 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 291
Book Description
An updated edition showcasing the social health of the least religious nations in the world Religious conservatives around the world often claim that a society without a strong foundation of faith would necessarily be an immoral one, bereft of ethics, values, and meaning. Indeed, the Christian Right in the United States has argued that a society without God would be hell on earth. In Society without God, Second Edition sociologist Phil Zuckerman challenges these claims. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with more than 150 citizens of Denmark and Sweden, among the least religious countries in the world, he shows that, far from being inhumane, crime-infested, and dysfunctional, highly secular societies are healthier, safer, greener, less violent, and more democratic and egalitarian than highly religious ones. Society without God provides a rich portrait of life in a secular society, exploring how a culture without faith copes with death, grapples with the meaning of life, and remains content through everyday ups and downs. This updated edition incorporates new data from recent studies, updated statistics, and a revised Introduction, as well as framing around the now more highly developed field of secular studies. It addresses the dramatic surge of irreligion in the United States and the rise of the “nones,” and adds data on societal health in specific US states, along with fascinating context regarding which are the most religious and which the most secular.
Author: Bruce R. Berglund Publisher: Central European University Press ISBN: 9639776653 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 404
Book Description
Disgraceful collusion. Heroic resistance. Suppression of faith. Perseverance of convictions. The story of Christianity in twentieth-century Eastern Europe is often told in stark scenes of tragedy and triumph. Overlooked in the retelling of these dramas is how the region's clergy and lay believers lived their faith, acted within religious and political institutions, and adapted their traditions---while struggling to make sense of a changing world. The contributors to this volume, coming from the U.S. and Western and Eastern Europe, look beyond the narratives of resistance and collaboration. They offer surprising new evidence from archives and oral history interviews, and they provide fresh interpretations of Christianity as it was lived and expressed in modern Europe: from religiosity in the industrial cities of the late nineteenth century to current debates over immigration and European identity; from theological debates in East Germany to folk healing in post-socialist Bulgaria; and, counter-intuitively, from religious fervor among the Czechs to indifference among the Poles. Addressing Christianity in diverse forms---Orthodox, Protestant, Roman and Greek Catholic---as an integral part of the region's politics, society, and culture, this collection is a major addition to studies of both Eastern Europe and religion in the twentieth century. "A volume that specialists in the history of Christianity in other regions of the world will read with great interest, and a degree of envy. As an historian of religion in Western Europe, I can say that although there is a vast literature on the religious history of the nineteenth century and a growing literature on the twentieth century, there is nothing quite like this." From the Foreword by Hugh McLeod, author of The Religious Crisis of the 1960s. "This is a path-breaking book in two different ways. It contributes to the re-evaluation of the nature of modern European religion generally, and to the nature of religion in the modern world." Jeffrey Cox, University of Iowa, author of Imperial Fault Lines: Christianity and Colonial Power in India.
Author: Michael Snape Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317058291 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 281
Book Description
The power of modernity to secularise has been a foundational idea of the western world. Both social science and church history understood that the Christian religion from 1750 was deeply vulnerable to industrial urbanisation and the Enlightenment. But as evidence mounts that countries of the European world experienced secularising forces in different ways at different periods, the timing and causes of de-Christianisation are now widely seen as far from straightforward. Secularisation in the Christian World brings together leading scholars in the social history of religion and the sociology of religion to explore what we know about the decline of organised Christianity in Britain, Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia. The chapters tackle different strands, themes, comparisons and territories to demonstrate the diversity of approach, thinking and evidence that has emerged in the last 30 years of scholarship into the religious past and present. The volume includes both new research and essays of theoretical reflection by the most eminent academics. It highlights historians and sociologists in both agreement and dispute. With contributors from eight countries, the volume also brings together many nations for the first consolidated international consideration of recent themes in de-Christianisation. With church historians and cultural historians, and religious sociologists and sociologists of the godless society, this book provides a state-of-the-art guide to secularisation studies.
Author: John Carter Wood Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht ISBN: 3647101494 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 212
Book Description
This collection explores how Christian individuals and institutions – whether Churches, church-related organisations, clergy, or lay thinkers – combined the topics of faith and national identity in twentieth-century Europe. "National identity" is understood in a broad sense that includes discourses of citizenship, narratives of cultural or linguistic belonging, or attributions of distinct, "national" characteristics. The collection addresses Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox perspectives, considers various geographical contexts, and takes into account processes of cross-national exchange and transfer. It shows how national and denominational identities were often mutually constitutive, at times leading to a strongly exclusionary stance against "other" national or religious groups. In different circumstances, religiously minded thinkers critiqued nationalism, emphasising the universalist strains of their faith, with varying degrees of success. Moreover, throughout the century, and especially since 1945, both church officials and lay Christians have had to come to terms with the relationship between their national and "European" identities and have sought to position themselves within the processes of Europeanisation. Various contexts for the negotiation of faith and nation are addressed: media debates, domestic and international political arenas, inner-denominational and ecumenical movements, church organisations, cosmopolitan intellectual networks and the ideas of individual thinkers.
Author: Stefan Paas Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing ISBN: 1467446181 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 316
Book Description
An expert study of church planting in the most secular part of contemporary Europe In this book Stefan Paas offers thoughtful analysis of reasons and motives for missionary church planting in Europe, and he explores successful and unsuccessful strategies in that post-Christian secularized context. Drawing in part on his own involvement with planting two churches in the Netherlands, Paas explores confessional motives, growth motives, and innovation motives for church planting in Europe, tracing them back to different traditions and reflecting on them from theological and empirical perspectives. He presents examples from the European context and offers sound advice for improving existing missional practices. Paas also draws out lessons for North America in a chapter coauthored with Darrell Guder and John Franke. Finally, Paas weaves together the various threads in the book with a theological defense of church planting. Presenting new research as it does, this critical missiological perspective will add significantly to a fuller understanding of church planting in our contemporary context.
Author: Clive D. Field Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192520032 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
Secularization in the Long 1960s: Numerating Religion in Britain provides a major empirical contribution to the literature of secularization. It moves beyond the now largely sterile and theoretical debates about the validity of the secularization thesis or paradigm. Combining historical and social scientific perspectives, Clive D. Field uses a wide range of quantitative sources to probe the extent and pace of religious change in Britain during the long 1960s. In most cases, data is presented for the years 1955-80, with particular attention to the methodological and other challenges posed by each source type. Following an introductory chapter, which reviews the historiography, introduces the sources, and defines the chronological and other parameters, Field provides evidence for all major facets of religious belonging, behaving, and believing, as well as for institutional church measures. The work engages with, and largely refutes, Callum G. Brown's influential assertion that Britain experienced 'revolutionary' secularization in the 1960s, which was highly gendered in nature, and with 1963 the major tipping-point. Instead, a more nuanced picture emerges with some religious indicators in crisis, others continuing on an existing downward trajectory, and yet others remaining stable. Building on previous research by the author and other scholars, and rejecting recent proponents of counter-secularization, the long 1960s are ultimately located within the context of a longstanding gradualist, and still ongoing, process of secularization in Britain.
Author: Philip Jenkins Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199839859 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 388
Book Description
Named one of the top religion books of 2002 by USA Today, Philip Jenkins's phenomenally successful The Next Christendom permanently changed the way people think about the future of Christianity. In that volume, Jenkins called the world's attention to the little noticed fact that Christianity's center of gravity was moving inexorably southward, to the point that Africa may soon be home to the world's largest Christian populations. Now, in this brilliant sequel, Jenkins takes a much closer look at Christianity in the global South, revealing what it is like, and what it means for the future. The faith of the South, Jenkins finds, is first and foremost a biblical faith. Indeed, in the global South, many Christians identify powerfully with the world portrayed in the New Testament--an agricultural world very much like their own, marked by famine and plague, poverty and exile, until very recently a society of peasants, farmers, and small craftsmen. In the global South, as in the biblical world, belief in spirits and witchcraft are commonplace, and in many places--such as Nigeria, Indonesia, and Sudan--Christians are persecuted just as early Christians were. Thus the Bible speaks to the global South with a vividness and authenticity simply unavailable to most believers in the industrialized North. More important, Jenkins shows that throughout the global South, believers are reading the Bible with fresh eyes, and coming away with new and sometimes startling interpretations. Some of their conclusions are distinctly fundamentalist, but Jenkins finds an intriguing paradox, for they are also finding ideas in the Bible that are socially liberating, especially with respect to women's rights. Across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, such Christians are social activists in the forefront of a wide range of liberation movements. It's hard to overstate how interesting, how eye-opening, how frequently surprising (and sometimes disturbing) Jenkins' findings are. Anyone interested in the implications of these trends for the major denominations, for Muslim-Christian conflict, and for global politics will find The New Faces of Christianity provocative and incisive--and indispensable.
Author: Hugh McLeod
Author: Hugh McLeod
Author: Hugh McLeod
Author: David Martin
Author: Phil Zuckerman
Author: Bruce R. Berglund
Author: Michael Snape
Author: John Carter Wood
Author: Stefan Paas
Author: Clive D. Field
Author: Philip Jenkins