Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World

Hempton, David & McLeod, Hugh (eds)

ISBN 10: 0198798075 / ISBN 13: 9780198798071

Published by Oxford University Press, United Kingdom, 2017

About this Item

hardback, octavo, a tightly bound copy with clean and unmarked contents and in a very well preserved pictorial dust jacket. xiv + 407pp.

Seller Inventory # 300785

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, United Kingdom
• Publication Date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198798075
• ISBN 13: 9780198798071
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine

About this title

Synopsis

In the early twenty-first century it had become a cliché that there was a 'God Gap' between a more religious United States and a more secular Europe. The apparent religious differences between the United States and western Europe continue to be a focus of intense and sometimes bitter debate between three of the main schools in the sociology of religion. According to the influential 'Secularization Thesis', secularization has been an integral part of the processes of modernisation in the Western world since around 1800. For proponents of this thesis, the United States appears as an anomaly and they accordingly give considerable attention to explaining why it is different. For other sociologists, however, the apparently high level of religiosity in the USA provides a major argument in their attempts to refute the Thesis.

Secularization and Religious Innovation in the Atlantic World provides a systematic comparison between the religious histories of the United States and western European countries from the eighteenth to the late twentieth century, noting parallels as well as divergences, examining their causes and especially highlighting change over time. This is achieved by a series of themes which seem especially relevant to this agenda, and in each case the theme is considered by two scholars. The volume examines whether American Christians have been more innovative, and if so how far this explains the apparent 'God Gap'. It goes beyond the simple American/European binary to ask what is 'American' or 'European' in the Christianity of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in what ways national or regional differences outweigh these commonalities.

About the Author

David Hempton is Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, Alonzo L. McDonald Family Professor of Evangelical Theological Studies, and John Lord O'Brian Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School.

Hugh McLeod is Emeritus Professor of Church History at the University of Birmingham. He is a historian specializing in the religious history of 19th and 20th century. His publications include The Religious Crisis of the 1960s (2007) and Religion and the People of Western Europe 1789-1990, Second Edition (1997).