The Eclipse of Christianity: and why it matters - Softcover

Shortt, Rupert

This title will be released on 11 September 2025

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1399802755 ISBN 13: 9781399802758

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton, 2025

Synopsis

A call for Christianity to recover its confidence

The mainstream Churches are faltering - or even at risk of dying out - in their Western and Middle Eastern heartlands. Surveys confirm that only a minority of people in a country such as Britain now claim Christian allegiance. The pattern is being matched in neighbouring societies. At the same time many opinion formers preach secularist ideology with a self-confidence shading into dogmatism. Others, unsure of their moorings, feel some residual attachment to spirituality, while being sceptical about the existence of God and other articles of belief.

Yet church teaching remains intellectually robust, as well as inspiring a transformative global presence. In this major and wide-ranging international study - both a report on the unsettling consequences of secularisation and a defence of a creed too often belittled by its opponents - Rupert Shortt outlines Christianity's fading profile in the present, but also argues compellingly that Europe's historic faith remains critical to the survival of a humane culture.

About this title

About the Author

Rupert Shortt is religion editor of The Times Literary Supplement and a former Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford. He writes for The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and the London Evening Standard. His books include Benedict XVI (2005), Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack (2012), Rowan's Rule: The Biography of the Archbishop (2014) and God Is No Thing: Coherent Christianity (2016).

Edition details

• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1399802755
• ISBN 13: 9781399802758
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368