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

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The second marker is 2000, when I published Religion in Modern Europe. The crucial point here is that Britain, in terms of its patterns and structure of religious life, is essentially a European society. It is, of course, a pivot between Europe and America, and denominationally it looks west. But in terms of pattern, structure and state-church, and the legacies of a state-church, it is firmly European. The subtitle “A Memory Mutates” was chosen because the book understood religion as a form of collective memory and then asked questions about how that memory is or is not passed on. Within the book, however, is a key idea, which, retrospectively, is I think its most important contribution, and that is the notion of vicarious religion. Vicarious religion is easy to grasp for Europeans, but sometimes problematic for Americans. De Groot, Kees, and Jos Pieper. 2015. Seekers and Christian Spiritual Centers in the Netherlands. In A Catholic Minority Church in a World of Seekers, edited by S. Hellemans and P. Jonkers, 97-127. Washington, DC: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy.

Grace Davie is one of the best analysts of religion in contemporary sociology. This book caps a distinguished record of studies of religion - first of Britain, then of Europe, then globally. This is a magisterial work, which should be read by anyone interested in the place of religion in the modern world' - Peter L. Berger, Boston University I began my sociological career with an undergraduate degree in Sociology at Exeter (1967); this was followed by a doctorate at the London School of Economics (1975). It was at this stage that I developed the two aspects of my work which were to endure throughout: an interest in the sociology of religion and an acquaintance with both France and French sociology. My doctoral thesis on the political aspects of the French Protestant community in the interwar period brought these together. Troeltsch, Ernst. 1911. Das Stoisch-Christliche Naturrecht Und Das Moderne Profane Naturrecht. Historische Zeitschrift 106(1): 237–267. Berger, after having initially predicted complete secularisation, has argued that there has been a significant desecularisation of the world and that western academics did not predict this because they were blinded by their own atheism. Western academics existed in a particular secular “bubble” and imagined other people shared their experiences. Actually, as we shall see in the next section, most of the world is highly religious. According to Berger, it has become more religious in recent years (hence desecularisation and resacrilisation). Zinnbauer, Brian J. 1997. Capturing the Meanings of Religiousness and Spirituality: One Way Down From A Definitional Tower of Babel. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University. Unpublished doctoral dissertation.

What is the sociology of religion? What are its particular concerns, dominant themes and defining methodologies? Where did it begin, and how has it evolved? This interview with Grace Davie, the first in our BSA SOCREL series, introduces this important and historically influential approach to the study of religion. The second remark is more directed to religious leadership, and concerns the question of value judgments. One reason church leaders have alighted on believing without belonging is that implies, superficially at least, that it’s not quite so bad after all. Europa, the European world, is Japheth’s world spreading out, and it would not have come to be what it has become without that Christian culture. And yet for just that reason Europe’s modern condition stands as a particularly paradoxical interpretive challenge for the social sciences. Indeed, a central puzzle for this Handbook is that the European space shaped so profoundly by Christianity has become ‘one of the most secular parts of the world’ (6). How could Europe, a space so fundamentally defined by its enduring Christian religious heritage and its continuing religious diversity, become so strikingly secular? Davie, Grace (2014). "Grace R.C. Davie: Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Waco, Texas: Baylor University . Retrieved 2 November 2020. Agencies (including religious organizations) from which help sought during 2022 cost of living crisis (4249)

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. Campbell, Colin. 1972. The Cult, the Cultic Milieu and Secularization. A Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain 5: 119–136. Zinnbauer, Brian J, Kenneth I Pargament, Brenda Cole, Mark S Rye, Eric M Butter, Timothy G Belavich, Kathleen M Hipp, Allie B Scott, and Jill L Kadar. 1997. Religion and Spirituality: Unfuzzying the Fuzzy. Journal for the scientific study of religion:549–564. the reactions of Britain’s secular elites to the increasing saliance of religion in public as well as private life; and Davie is Past-President of the Association for the Sociology of Religion (2003) [7] and the International Sociological Association RC22 Sociology of Religion Board (2002-2006). [8]

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Visiting professor, University of Uppsala (including a month at the Collegium for Advanced Studies of the University of Helsinki)