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During this century the Christian Churches of Britain have lost support and influence to the extent that their future is considered by some observers to be problematic. They have also been confronted with an unprecedented concentration of social changes, some of which have challenged central religious traditions and teachings. This multi-denominational study is the first to investigate these changes (public and private) across virtually the entire Christian spectrum.
During the twentieth century, Britain turned from one of the most deeply religious nations of the world into one of the most secularised nations. This book provides a comprehensive account of religion in British society and culture between 1900 and 2000. It traces how Christian Puritanism and respectability framed the people amidst world wars, economic depressions, and social protest, and how until the 1950s religious revivals fostered mass enthusiasm. It then examines the sudden and dramatic changes seen in the 1960’s and the appearance of religious militancy in the 1980s and 1990s. With a focus on the themes of faith cultures, secularisation, religious militancy and the spiritual revolution of the New Age, this book uses people’s own experiences and the stories of the churches to display the diversity and richness of British religion. Suitable for undergraduate students studying modern British history, church history and sociology of religion.
Attitudes towards divorce have changed considerably over the past two centuries. As society has moved away from a Biblical definition of marriage as an indissoluble union, to that of an individual and personal relationship, secular laws have evolved as well. Using unpublished sources and previously inaccessible private collections, Holmes explores the significant role the Church of England has played in these changes, as well as the impact this has had on ecclesiastical policies. This timely study will be relevant to ongoing debates about the meaning and nature of marriage, including the theological doctrines and ecclesiastical policies underlying current debates on same-sex marriage.
Unique account of the affairs of the Church of England during a period of colossal change and controversy.
The dramatic social, cultural, and political changes in the twentieth century posed challenges and opportunities to Christian believers in Britain and Ireland: many, whether in the churches or among the laity, sought to adapt their faith to what was seen as a new, “modern” world fundamentally different than the one in which Christianity had risen to a position of institutional and cultural dominance. Alongside the more long-term processes of industrialisation, urbanisation, and democratisation, the formative experiences of war and post-war reconstruction, confrontations with totalitarianism, changing relations between the sexes, and engagements with an increasingly assertive “secular” culture inspired many Christians not only to reconsider their faith but also to try to influence the emerging modernity. The chapters in this volume address various specific topics – from mass politics to sexuality – but are linked by a stress on how Christians played active roles in building “modern” life in twentieth-century Britain and Ireland. Tensions and ambiguities between “religious” and “secular” and between “modern” and “traditional” make understanding Christian encounters with modernity a valuable topic in the exploration of the complexities of twentieth-century cultural and intellectual history. This book will be of great value to students and scholars in the fields of history including modern British history, religion, and the intersectionality of gender and religion. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Contemporary British History.
The law governing family relationships has changed dramatically in the course of the 20th century and this book - drawing extensively on both published and archival material and on legal as well as other sources - gives an account of the processes and problems of reform.
Based on extensive analysis of surveys from recent decades, this book provides a detailed study of the attitudes of religious groups in Britain. It looks at continuity and change in relation to party support, ideology, abortion, homosexuality and gay rights, foreign policy, and public opinion towards religion in public life.
Nigel Yates brings together the religious and social dimensions of the 1950s and 60s and examines the enormous changes in moral attitudes that took place in these two decades. Much of the popular literature on post-war Britain tends to present the 1950s as a period of continuing repression and respectability in the area of private and public morality, and the 1960s as one in which there was rapid social change. Using a wide range of contemporary sources - books (including novels), magazines, newspapers, advertising, fashion catalogues, films and television, as well as a number of significant archive collections - Nigel Yates argues that changes in attitudes to religion and morality in the 1960s were only made possible by developments in the 1950s.
This book traces the influence of Anglican writers on the political thought of inter-war Britain, and argues that religion continued to exert a powerful influence on political ideas and allegiances in the 1920s and 1930s. It counters the prevailing assumption of historians that inter-war political thought was primarily secular in content, by showing how Anglicans like Archbishop William Temple made an active contribution to ideas of community and the welfare state (a term which Temple himself invented). Liberal Anglican ideas of citizenship, community and the nation continued to be central to political thought and debate in the first half of the 20th century. Grimley traces how Temple and his colleagues developed and changed their ideas on community and the state in response to events like the First World War, the General Strike and the Great Depression. For Temple, and political philosophers like A. D. Lindsay and Ernest Barker, the priority was to find a rhetoric of community which could unite the nation against class consciousness, poverty, and the threat of Hitler. Their idea of a Christian national community was central to the articulation of ideas of 'Englishness' in inter-war Britain, but this Anglican contribution has been almost completely overlooked in recent debate on twentieth-century national identity. Grimley also looks at rival Anglican political theories put forward by conservatives such as Bishop Hensley Henson and Ralph Inge, dean of St Paul's. Drawing extensively on Henson's private diaries, it uncovers the debates which went on within the Church at the time of the General Strike and the 1927-8 Prayer Book crisis. The book uncovers an important and neglected seam of popular political thought, and offers a new evaluation of the religious, political and cultural identity of Britain before the Second World War.
This is a major contribution to scholarly debates on the chronology and nature of secularization in modern Britain. Combining historical and social scientific insights, it analyses a range of statistical evidence for the 'long 1950s', testing (and largely rejecting) Callum Brown's claims that there was a religious resurgence during this period.