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This book charts the profound changes in British Christianity over the last century. It does so through the medium of diverse local case-studies, based on high quality new research. The ethnic diversification of British churches in the last fifty years is a key theme of the volume. Overall, the chapters show how secularization has had different trajectories in different parts of the country. Alongside this, the book charts the surprising desecularisation of parts of Britain in recent decades.
List of contents
Part I: Introductory Questions.- 1. David Goodhew and Mark Smith; Christianity in Britain Since 1914.- Part II: British Christianity, c. 1914 to 1970.- 2. Alistair Beecher Alresford; The Collapse of Anglican Hegemony in Rural Hampshire, c. 1914 - 1939.- 3. Mark Smith; The Great War and the Church of England in Oxfordshire.- 4. Grant Masom; The Longest Battle? Engaging with Secular Culture in a Southern Industrial Town, 1919 onwards.- 5. Matthew Houston; Interpreting the Good Fight: Denominational perspectives on the Second World War in Northern Ireland, 1933-1945.- 6. Ian Jones; Foundations of Community? Church, Family and Neighbourhood in Birmingham, 1945-1980.- 7. Andrew Atherstone; Faith and the University: Oxford Student Evangelism since the Second World War.- Part III: British Christianity, c. 1970 to the Present.- 8. Mark Dorsett; Sneering or celebration? Some responses to secularization in Cambridge Anglicanism in the 1980s.- 9. Sam Jeffery; Globalisation and 'British' Neo-Charismatic Christianity: the Transnational Community of the Newfrontiers Network of Churches, c. 1979-2011.- 10. David Ceri Jones; Secession, stagnation and survival: Evangelical Congregations in Wales, 1990-2022.- 11. Richard Burgess; The Redeemed Christian Church of God in Britain: the 1980s to the Present.- 12. Sheila Akomiah Conteh; The Changing Landscape of Christianity in Scotland: New Churches in Glasgow 2000-2016.- 13. Susan Longhurst; 'Who Joins the Catholic Church and Why? A Case study of contemporary Britons seeking to become Catholic in the Archdiocese of Southwark.
About the author
David Goodhew is a Visiting Fellow of St Johns College at Durham University, UK and Vicar of St Barnabas Church, Middlesbrough, UK.
Mark Smith is Associate Professor at the University of Oxford, UK.
