The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation, 1800-2000

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Psychology Press, 2001 - History - 257 pages

The Death of Christian Britain uses the latest techniques to offer new formulations of religion and secularisation and explores what it has meant to be 'religious' and 'irreligious' during the last 200 years.

By listening to people's voices rather than purely counting heads, it offers a fresh history of de-christianisation, and predicts that the British experience since the 1960s is emblematic of the destiny of the whole of western Christianity.

Challenging the generally held view that secularization has been a long and gradual process beginning with the industrial revolution, it proposes that it has been a catastrophic short term phenomenon starting with the 1960's.

Is Christianity in Britain nearing extinction? Is the decline in Britain emblematic of the fate of western Christianity? Topical and controversial, The Death of Christian Britain is a bold and original work that will bring some uncomfortable truths to light.

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Contents

The problem with religious decline
16
The salvation economy
35
Personal testimony and religion 18001950
115
35
126
the statistics
145
The 1960s and secularisation
170
The end of a long story
193
888
223
viii
254
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About the author (2001)

Callum G. Brown is Reader in History and co-Director of the Scottish Oral History Centre at the University of Strathclyde.

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