This is a major contribution to scholarly debates on the chronology and nature of secularization in modern Britain. Combining historical and social scientific insights, it analyses a range of statistical evidence for the 'long 1950s', testing (and largely rejecting) Callum Brown's claims that there was a religious resurgence during this period.

Interpreting the Great Awakening of the 18th century was in large part the work of Jonathan Edwards, whose writings on the subject defined the revival tradition in America. This text demonstrates how Edwards defended the evangelical experience against overheated zealous and rationalistic critics.

Secularization in the Long 1960s: Numerating Religion in Britain provides a major empirical contribution to the literature of secularization. It moves beyond the now largely sterile and theoretical debates about the validity of the secularization thesis or paradigm. Combining historical and social scientific perspectives, Clive D. Field uses a wide range of quantitative sources to probe the extent and pace of religious change in Britain during the long 1960s. In most cases, data is presented for the years 1955-80, with particular attention to the methodological and other challenges posed by each source type. Following an introductory chapter, which reviews the historiography, introduces the sources, and defines the chronological and other parameters, Field provides evidence for all major facets of religious belonging, behaving, and believing, as well as for institutional church measures. The work engages with, and largely refutes, Callum G. Brown's influential assertion that Britain experienced 'revolutionary' secularization in the 1960s, which was highly gendered in nature, and with 1963 the major tipping-point. Instead, a more nuanced picture emerges with some religious indicators in crisis, others continuing on an existing downward trajectory, and yet others remaining stable. Building on previous research by the author and other scholars, and rejecting recent proponents of counter-secularization, the long 1960s are ultimately located within the context of a longstanding gradualist, and still ongoing, process of secularization in Britain.

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.

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.

"John Wesley and Karl Marx, unmistakably, are the two most influential characters of all modern history." So argues J. Wesley Bready in this classic statement on the social significance of the original evangelical movement in Great Britain. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, at least, evangelical religion-as found in the life and teaching of John Wesley-had profound consequences that were anything but an opiate of the people (contra the teachings of Karl Marx). Instead, "vital religion" proved itself to be powerfully transformative, not only in the personal lives of its converts, but also in the deepest fibre of their social and political lives. J. Wesley Bready's careful documentation of the profound social and political influence of John Wesley's preaching and teaching will, for many readers today, prove to be a convincing demonstration of the transformative power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The power and scope of this evangelical Christian influence was extraordinary: from education to health care; from the needs of the poor and orphans, to prison reform and the founding of democratic institutions; from the promotion of good reading to an end to cruelty to animals (and founding of the RSPCA). All of these, and more, are the hallmarks and outward manifestations of a vital Christian faith. Nothing could illustrate more convincingly that "faith without works is dead" and, contrary to Marx, that the gospel of Jesus Christ more typically serves as a sharp awakening rather than an opiate of the people. Rev. Dr. J. Wesley Bready (1887-1953) was a Canadian-born scholar and author of numerous books, including Wesley and Democracy (1939), Lord Shaftesbury (1900), This Freedom-Whence? (1942), and Faith and Freedom: The Roots of Democracy (1946). He held degrees from Queen's University, University of Toronto, Columbia University, and University of London.

Although the evolution of human rights diplomacy during the second half of the 20th century has been the subject of a wealth of scholarship in recent years, British foreign policy perspectives remain largely underappreciated. Focusing on former Foreign Secretary David Owen's sustained engagement with the related concepts of human rights and humanitarianism, David Owen, Human Rights and the Remaking of British Foreign Policy addresses this striking omission by exploring the relationship between international human rights promotion and British foreign policy between c.1956-1997. In doing so, this book uncovers how human rights concerns have shaped national responses to foreign policy dilemmas at the intersections of civil society, media, and policymaking; how economic and geopolitical interests have defined the parameters within which human rights concerns influence policy; how human rights considerations have influenced British interventions in overseas conflicts; and how activism on normative issues such as human rights has been shaped by concepts of national identity. Furthermore, by bringing these issues and debates into focus through the lens of Owen's human rights advocacy, analysis provides a reappraisal of one of the most recognisable, albeit enigmatic, parliamentarians in recent British history. Both within the confines of Whitehall and without, Owen's human rights advocacy served to alter the course of British foreign policy at key junctures during the late Cold War and post-Cold War periods, and provides a unique prism through which to interrogate the intersections between Britain's enduring search for a distinctive 'role' in the world and the development of the international human rights regime during the period in question.

Counting Religion in Britain, 1970-2020, the fourth volume in the author's chronological history of British secularization, sheds significant new light on the nature, scale, and timing of religious change in Britain during the past half-century, with particular reference to quantitative sources. Adopting a key performance indicators approach, twenty-one facets of personal religious belonging, behaving, and believing are examined, offering a much wider range of lenses through which the health of religion can be viewed and appraised than most contemporary scholarship. Summative analysis of these indicators, by means of a secularization dashboard, leads to a reaffirmation of the validity of secularization (in its descriptive sense) as the dominant narrative and direction of travel since 1970, while acknowledging that it is an incomplete process and without endorsing all aspects of the paradigmatic expression of secularization as a by-product of modernization.

Clements provides a detailed study of religious beliefs in British society, using a broad range of opinion poll and social survey data. Examining public opinion on religious-secular issues, this book provides a rich analysis of the belief and attitudes of social groups over time.

‘Adult Reactions to Popular Music and Inter-generational Relations in Britain, 1955–1975’ challenges stereotypes concerning a post-war ‘generation gap’, exacerbated by rebellion-inducing popular music styles, by demonstrating the considerable variety which frequently characterized adult responses to the music, whilst also highlighting that the impact of the music on inter-generational relations was more complex than is often assumed. [NP] Utilizing extensive primary evidence, from first-person accounts to newspapers, television programmes, surveys and archive collections, the book adopts a thematic approach, identifying three key arenas of British society in which adult responses to popular music, and the impact of such reactions upon relations between generations, seem particularly revealing and significant. The book examines in detail the place of popular music within family life and Christian churches and their engagement with popular music, particularly within youth clubs. It also explores ‘encounters’ between the worlds of traditional Variety entertainment and popular music while providing broader perspectives on this most dynamic and turbulent of periods.