Redefining Christian Britain: Post 1945 Perspectives

Redefining Christian Britain brings together distinguished writers from a number of fields - history, sociology, theology - to reassess the role of Christianity in Britain. This is an area that has been of increasing public debate and interest in recent years, but the debate has followed rather predictable grooves. This book seeks to do something different, by looking at the impact of Christianity over a wide range of areas of national life - religion and the media, religious art, religion in literature, religion in schools, religion and economics and so on. The book has been born out of a frustration at existing writing on religious change in Britain, which has tended to over-concentrate on church attendance figures, rather than look at the more diffuse and dynamic influence of religion on public and private life. Redefining Christian Britain will open up new areas of inquiry including religious architecture, church music, debates on sexuality and women’s ordination, public rituals like royal weddings, the ‘sacred’ memory of World War II, multicultural education, and the role of Christian narrative in children’s literature. Many of these topics are areas of current debate in the media. Some have been the subject of specific academic studies. But no book, until now, has attempted to bring them all together. The book is organised around three themes: authenticity, generation and virtue. These themes offer a distinct and original conceptual framework within which to address the study of modern Christianity. This is an essential book for anyone interested in modern religion and modern British society, and will appeal particularly to students of history, sociology and religious studies as well as religious professionals.