Religion in Britain Since 1945: Believing without Belonging (Making Contemporary Britain)

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Davie, Grace. 1990a. Believing Without Belonging: Is This the Future of Religion in Britain? Social Compass 37(4): 455–469. In some parts of Europe, for example, baptism is becoming increasingly the preserve of the active minority, a shift which is closely related to changes in the theologies of baptism, about which, at one level, I am very sympathetic. But if you have lived in a society that for several hundred years has coerced its population into baptism with threats that if you do not have this child baptized, something terrible will happen (like burial in unconsecrated ground), and then suddenly you say that you can only have your child baptized if you come to church so many times, it seems to me that you are projecting the confusions of the church onto a population, which is a very unfair thing to do. In short, it is the church that’s moved, not the population. Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart. 2011. Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. New York: Cambridge University Press. and in this capacity, program chair of two major international conferences (Québec 1995, Toulouse 1997) each of which gathered 300 plus scholars from over 30 countries.

Davie, Grace. 1990b. ‘An Ordinary God’: The Paradox of Religion in Contemporary Britain. The British Journal of Sociology 41(3): 395–421.Where we start is nearly 12 years ago, when the book called Religion in Britain since 1945 was published — an unremarkable title. But the subtitle contained this phrase, “Believing Without Belonging,” which retrospectively, was an inspirational moment for me, because it is this phrase that everybody remembers and can associate with my work. With this question we are in the vicinity of a familiar story of Europe’s becoming modern that the Handbook wants to complicate. The editors want to hold on to ‘nuances’ that are lost in the too-simple story of inexorable ‘disenchantment’ and the end of religion that belongs to the standard secularisation thesis (6). The basic nuance the Handbook affirms is unquestionably important: namely, that there is no inevitability to the decline of religion, even in an increasingly secular Europe – and that is because this increasingly secular continent, like everywhere else, also remains stubbornly religious. With Nancy Ammerman et al. (2018) Religions and social progress: Critical assessments and creative partnerships. In International Panel on Social Progress (Ed) Rethinking Society for the 21st Century. Cambridge: Cambirdge Univiersty Press, 641-676. The next stage of mywriting developed this thinking in new ways.In the first instance, this found expression in a book commissioned by Sage for their Millennium Series, which reflects on w hy the subject matter of the sociology of religion has developed in the way that it has. Why, in other words, have certain aspects of the research agenda received disproportionate attention and what are the consequences for sociological understanding? The text becomes in fact a critical appraisal of both content and method within the sociology of religion, underlining the importance of contextual factors for its development in different parts of the world (the comparative element is central).It was first published in May 2007; a new edition appeared in 2013.

Turner, Robert P., David Lukoff, Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse, and Francis G. Lu. 1995. A Culturally Sensitive Diagnostic Category in the DSM-IV. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 183(7): 435–444.Mears, Daniel P., and Christopher G. Ellison. 2000. Who Buys New Age Materials? Exploring Sociodemographic, Religious, Network, and Contextual Correlates of New Age Consumption. Sociology of Religion 61(3): 289–313. The latest research report from Theos, this time prepared in partnership with the Cardiff Centre for Chaplaincy Studies, was published on 11 March 2015: Ben Ryan, A Very Modern Ministry: Chaplaincy in the UK. It provides an interesting overview of contemporary chaplaincy, from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives, perceiving it as an area of religious growth and innovation which is complementary to the notion of the ‘gathered congregation’ and has now broadened out somewhat from its Christian roots. Terminological issues, about what constitutes a chaplain, are aired but not completely resolved. For example, are street pastors – who are now thought to number 11,000 trained volunteers – to be considered as chaplains or not? The quantitative evidence is reviewed in part 1 of the report, with chaplains being found in areas as diverse as higher education (1,000), prisons (1,000 with 7,000 volunteers), police (650), armed forces (500), hospitals (350 full-time and 3,000 part-time), and sport (300). A survey in Luton in October-November 2014 identified 169 chaplains working in eight primary and eight secondary fields, equivalent to one for every 1,200 residents, albeit only 20 of these personnel were salaried. The Luton chaplains were overwhelmingly Christian, even though Christianity was professed by a minority of the town’s population (47%), with 25% Muslim. The report can be read at: Lucas, Phillip C. 1992. The New Age Movement and the Pentecostal/Charismatic Revival: Distinct Yet Parallel Phases of a Fourth Great Awakening? In Perspectives on the New Age, ed. J.R. Lewis and J.G. Melton, 189–211. Albany: State University of New York Press. In an essay entitled ‘Faith and Knowledge’, the Algerian-born French philosopher Jacques Derrida outlines just such a reading of Enlightenment developments. He shows how the preference for secularity in European affairs – a preference that is also massively evident in the ‘profoundly secular social sciences’ that dominate our understanding of those affairs today – is essentially connected to the way morality and religion came to be conceived in the eighteenth century, most conspicuously in Kant’s thought. There is, Derrida argues, a thesis in Kant on the connection between what it means to conduct oneself morally as a human being and what it means to be authentically religious that will make the distinctively European public space at once both increasingly secular and enduringly Christian. Aldridge, A (2013). Religion in the contemporary world: a sociological introduction. Oxford: Polity Press. p.147.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2019/01/a-lived-situated-and-constantly-changing-reality-why-religion-is-relevant-to-the-pursuit-of-social-progress/ Religion in Britian offers an overview of these sociological realities, in a very readable and accessible form. The book is divided into five parts, covering preliminary issues; religious legacies; shifiting priorities (from obligation to consumption); public religion and secular reactions; and finally a concluding chapter. The discussion is wide ranging, but focuses primarily on Christianity. This is one weakness of the book: at least some discussion of how those of other faiths practise their beliefs would have given a fuller picture. There is much for Anglicans to engage with, including discussions of chaplaincy, faith schools, women bishops, same-sex relationships, and why cathedrals have a lot in common with large charismatic churches. From Davie’s sociological perspective, “both the cathedral and the charismatic service embody religion in the sense of the sacred or ‘set-apart.’ It seems that late modern populations respond warmly to this feature” (p.143). In partnership with the NSRN (Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network), it is our pleasure to bring you the audio recordings of five very important lectures from Grace Davie, Humeira Iqtidar, Callum Brown, Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, and Jonathan Lanman.

References

Hood Jr, Ralph W. 1975. The Construction and Preliminary Validation of a Measure of Reported Mystical Experience. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion:29–41.