The Secularization of Early Modern England: From Religious Culture to Religious Faith

Couverture
Oxford University Press, 9 avr. 1992 - 240 pages
This study overcomes the ambiguity and daunting scale of the subject of secularization by using the insights of anthropology and sociology, and by examining an earlier period than usually considered. Concentrating not only on a decline of religious belief, which is the last aspect of secularization, this study shows that a transformation of England's cultural grammar had to precede that loosening of belief, and that this was largely accomplished between 1500 and 1700. Only when definitions of space and time changed and language and technology were transformed (as well as art and play) could a secular world-view be sustained. As aspects of daily life became divorced from religious values and controls, religious culture was supplanted by religious faith, a reasoned, rather than an unquestioned, belief in the supernatural. Sommerville shows that this process was more political and theological than economic or social.
 

Table des matières

1 The Study of Secularization
3
2 The Secularization of Space
18
3 The Secularization of Time and Play
33
4 The Secularization of Language
44
5 The Politics of Secularization 15291603
55
6 The Secularization of Technology and Work
72
7 The Secularization of Art
82
8 The Politics of Reaction 16031659
98
9 The Secularization of Power
111
10 The Secularization of Personhood and Association
129
11 The Secularization of Scholarship and Science
144
12 Religious Responses to Secularization
165
13 Antecedents Causes and Conclusions
178
Notes
189
Index
221
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