Bullivant
Biographic Data
| ID | 40089 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bullivant |
| FAMILY NAME | Bullivant |
| SIGNATURE | BULLIVANT |
| AFFILIATIONS | St Mary's University Twickenham London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5881-6131 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 48 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The Intergenerational Transmission of Religion
There is increasing evidence for the intergenerational decline of religiosity across many different countries: religious beliefs, behaviours, and identities of parents are not being passed on to their children. This Element surveys the psychological and sociological research on the intergenerational transmission of religion, focussing on the factors that influence it. After introducing the topic in Section 1, Section 2 describes the methods used …
Atheism studies lives up to its own hype: Marginal notes on Gervais's Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species
This Is the Greatest Thing a Man Can Do: Vocational Journeys of Recently Ordained Catholic Priests in Australia
In many Western countries, the Catholic Church (like several others) is currently suffering a vocations crisis. Australia is no exception. Each year, dioceses see more priests retire, die, or leave the priesthood than new ones are ordained. For this reason, it is becoming increasingly mission-critical for dioceses to understand better the vocational journeys of those men who do become priests. These are also, of course, groups of considerable soc…
The Church in England and Wales: An Historical Overview
Over the course of the past century, Catholics in England and Wales went from being a marginalized minority, with a strong subcultural identity as Catholics, to a largely unexceptional and accepted part of the mainstream: ‘like everyone else’, in the famous words of British Catholic anthropologist Mary Douglas. This simplistic narrative, while true enough in its broadest contours, nevertheless obscures a great deal. This chapter presents a more n…
Catholics in Contemporary Britain: Faith, Society, Politics
This book showcases findings from a wide-ranging, empirical study of Catholics living in Britain. It offers a sociologically informed study, placing the contemporary Catholic community in the wider contexts of their society and the global faith of which they are a part. The book has been animated by a set of compelling broader questions: Who are the Catholics in Britain? How do they engage with their faith and with the Church? What do they think …
Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America
The United States is in the midst of a religious revolution. Or, perhaps it is better to say a non-religious revolution. Around a quarter of US adults now say they have no religion. The great majority of these religious “nones” also say that they used to belong to a religion but no longer do. These are the nonverts: think “converts,” but from having religion to having none. Even on the most conservative of estimates, there are currently about 59 …
Lived Catholicism: A Roundtable Discussion
The study of Lived Catholicism seeks to step away from the normative forces of institutional expectations to explore Catholicism as it is found in the practices of daily life. It draws on the foundations of lived religion in recognising the importance of improvisation, negotiation, resistance and subversion in everyday religiosity. It foregrounds the voices and experiences of ordinary people to explore the places of Catholicism in their lives. Ho…
Economic models of church life: Three 'Nudges' Towards Better Behaviour
Economic ideas have long shed light on diverse spheres of social and cultural life. Religion is no exception and has spawned a large and thriving subfield. However, whereas recent decades have famously witnessed a 'behavioural' turn in economics - with Nobel prizes going to two pioneers of the field, Daniel Kahneman in 2002 and Richard Thaler in 2017 - there has yet to be significant work done in the 'behavioural economics of religion'. This is a…
Power, Preferment, and Patronage: An Exploratory Study of Catholic Bishops and Social Networks
Social Network Analysis (SNA) has shed light on cultures where the influence of patronage, preferment, and reciprocal obligations are traditionally important. We argue here that episcopal appointments, culture, and governance within the Catholic Church are ideal topics for SNA interrogation. This paper presents preliminary findings, using original network data for the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales and the United States Confere…
Why Younger Catholics Seem More Committed: Survivorship Bias and/or 'Creative Minority' Effects among British Catholics
The normative value of, and the extent of popular engagement with, different forms of commitment differ across Christian religious traditions, but studies often show women and older people exhibiting greater religiosity in their behavior and belief. Using a multidimensional approach to religious commitment, this study uses a new survey to provide an in-depth assessment of Catholics in Britain. It finds that younger cohorts show greater involvemen…
McCarrick, the Kingmaker: A Social Network Analysis of Episcopal Promotion in the Roman Catholic Church
The former Cardinal McCarrick was often dubbed as the “Kingmaker” for his power to influence episcopal promotion in the United States and even in the Vatican. However, most of the information to support this argument is often lacking in context, making the claim easy to downplay. The purpose of this study is to look at one of the networks of Catholic bishops in the United States and to provide empirical evidence of McCarrick as the “Kingmaker” us…
To Conscience First, and to the Pope (Long) Afterwards? British Catholics and their Attitudes towards Morality and Structural Issues concerning the Catholic Church
Background The attitudes of Catholics in Britain have undergone significant liberalisation on social moral issues across recent decades, whilst the reputation of the Catholic Church has suffered due to public opposition to its traditional teachings on such issues. But there has been comparatively little recent investigation into British Catholics' views on these debates using surveys aimed at this religious community. Purpose This article examine…
“We Confess that we are Atheists”
In the immortal words of Herbert McCabe, ‘Whatever we are referring to when we use the word “God” it can no more be a god than it can be a model aeroplane or half-past eleven’ ( God Still Matters ). This striking idea – the “atheism” of true Christianity – has, in fact, a long pedigree. This paper traces its history from the early Church to the Angelic Doctor himself. The essential point is this: if our God really is who Christians claim God is, …
Explaining the rise of ‘nonreligion studies’: Subfield formation and institutionalization within the sociology of religion
As recently as 2008, a major reference work in the sociology of religion could (correctly) describe the study of atheism, secularity, and nonreligion as ‘meager, fragmentary, and unappreciated’. Only a decade later, this situation has been radically transformed. Not only is there a substantial, ever-growing, and constantly diversifying (methodologically, theoretically, geographically) research literature, but ‘nonreligion studies’ now possesses a…
Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II
In 1962, Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council with the prophecy that ‘a new day is dawning on the Church, bathing her in radiant splendour’. Desiring ‘to impart an ever increasing vigour to the Christian life of the faithful’, the Council Fathers devoted particular attention to the laity, and set in motion a series of sweeping reforms. The most significant of these centred on refashioning the Church’s liturgy. Over fifty years on, ho…
Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain: A Quantitative Overview
This article presents a quantitative assessment of Catholic disaffiliates—those who were brought up Catholic, but who now no longer identify as such—in contemporary Britain. Using British Social Attitudes data, it seeks to: 1) gauge the overall extent of Catholic disaffiliation and its significance relative to the retention/disaffiliation rates of other major Christian groupings; 2) identify patterns in the changing rates of Catholic retention/di…
Defining ‘Atheism’
The Oxford Handbook of Atheism
Recent books by, among others, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens have thrust atheism firmly into the popular, media, and academic spotlight. This so-called New Atheism is arguably the most striking development in western socio-religious culture of the past decade or more. As such, it has spurred fertile (and often heated) discussions both within, and between, a diverse range of disciplines. Yet atheism, and the New Atheism, ar…
Interdisciplinary Studies of Non-religion and Secularity: The State of the Union
It has become something of a cliche to begin social-scientific studies of non-religion,1 secularity, atheism, and related topics by bewailing the dearth of previous research (e.g. Bainbridge; Bogen
Not so indifferent after all? Self-conscious atheism and the secularisation thesis
Commenting on the lack of self-conscious atheists in apparently secularised Western European societies, the British sociologist Steve Bruce has argued that strong expressions of unbelief are in fact symptomatic of religious cultures. In 1996's Religion in the Modern World, for instance, he writes: 'it should be no surprise that, though there are more avowed atheists than there were twenty years ago, they remain rare. Self-conscious atheism and ag…
Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal
The term “new atheism” has been given to the recent barrage of bestselling books written by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and others. These books and their authors have had a significant media presence and have only grown in popularity over the years. This book brings together scholars from religious studies, science, sociology of religion, sociology of science, philosophy, and theology to engage the new athei…
Introducing Irreligious Experiences
Reports of an emphatic awareness of the absence of God, or of unexplainable feelings of elation or despair at the thought of God’s non-existence, are well-documented from both believers and nonbelievers alike. Such irreligious experiences are, however, widely unknown, even among those engaged in the academic study of their “religious” counterparts. The purpose of this short article is to shed some light on an unjustly neglected phenomenon in the …
Research Note: Sociology and the Study of Atheism
Historically, atheism has been neglected by the social sciences. This fact, in the light of the recent upsurge of popular and media interest in the subject, is particularly unfortunate. Rectifying this is, however, not a straightforward task: studies devised for exploring religion cannot, for example, reliably be used to investigate its lack. This research note presents findings from a preliminary survey, administered to Oxford University student…
Interdisciplinary Studies of Non-religion and Secularity: The State of the Union
It has become something of a cliche to begin social-scientific studies of non-religion,1 secularity, atheism, and related topics by bewailing the dearth of previous research (e.g. Bainbridge; Bogen
Research Note: Sociology and the Study of Atheism
Historically, atheism has been neglected by the social sciences. This fact, in the light of the recent upsurge of popular and media interest in the subject, is particularly unfortunate. Rectifying this is, however, not a straightforward task: studies devised for exploring religion cannot, for example, reliably be used to investigate its lack. This research note presents findings from a preliminary survey, administered to Oxford University student…
Why Younger Catholics Seem More Committed: Survivorship Bias and/or 'Creative Minority' Effects among British Catholics
The normative value of, and the extent of popular engagement with, different forms of commitment differ across Christian religious traditions, but studies often show women and older people exhibiting greater religiosity in their behavior and belief. Using a multidimensional approach to religious commitment, this study uses a new survey to provide an in-depth assessment of Catholics in Britain. It finds that younger cohorts show greater involvemen…
Not so indifferent after all? Self-conscious atheism and the secularisation thesis
Commenting on the lack of self-conscious atheists in apparently secularised Western European societies, the British sociologist Steve Bruce has argued that strong expressions of unbelief are in fact symptomatic of religious cultures. In 1996's Religion in the Modern World, for instance, he writes: 'it should be no surprise that, though there are more avowed atheists than there were twenty years ago, they remain rare. Self-conscious atheism and ag…
Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain: A Quantitative Overview
This article presents a quantitative assessment of Catholic disaffiliates—those who were brought up Catholic, but who now no longer identify as such—in contemporary Britain. Using British Social Attitudes data, it seeks to: 1) gauge the overall extent of Catholic disaffiliation and its significance relative to the retention/disaffiliation rates of other major Christian groupings; 2) identify patterns in the changing rates of Catholic retention/di…
To Conscience First, and to the Pope (Long) Afterwards? British Catholics and their Attitudes towards Morality and Structural Issues concerning the Catholic Church
Background The attitudes of Catholics in Britain have undergone significant liberalisation on social moral issues across recent decades, whilst the reputation of the Catholic Church has suffered due to public opposition to its traditional teachings on such issues. But there has been comparatively little recent investigation into British Catholics' views on these debates using surveys aimed at this religious community. Purpose This article examine…
Introducing Irreligious Experiences
Reports of an emphatic awareness of the absence of God, or of unexplainable feelings of elation or despair at the thought of God’s non-existence, are well-documented from both believers and nonbelievers alike. Such irreligious experiences are, however, widely unknown, even among those engaged in the academic study of their “religious” counterparts. The purpose of this short article is to shed some light on an unjustly neglected phenomenon in the …
Research Note: Sociology and the Study of Atheism
Historically, atheism has been neglected by the social sciences. This fact, in the light of the recent upsurge of popular and media interest in the subject, is particularly unfortunate. Rectifying this is, however, not a straightforward task: studies devised for exploring religion cannot, for example, reliably be used to investigate its lack. This research note presents findings from a preliminary survey, administered to Oxford University student…
Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal
The term “new atheism” has been given to the recent barrage of bestselling books written by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and others. These books and their authors have had a significant media presence and have only grown in popularity over the years. This book brings together scholars from religious studies, science, sociology of religion, sociology of science, philosophy, and theology to engage the new athei…
Interdisciplinary Studies of Non-religion and Secularity: The State of the Union
It has become something of a cliche to begin social-scientific studies of non-religion,1 secularity, atheism, and related topics by bewailing the dearth of previous research (e.g. Bainbridge; Bogen
Not so indifferent after all? Self-conscious atheism and the secularisation thesis
Commenting on the lack of self-conscious atheists in apparently secularised Western European societies, the British sociologist Steve Bruce has argued that strong expressions of unbelief are in fact symptomatic of religious cultures. In 1996's Religion in the Modern World, for instance, he writes: 'it should be no surprise that, though there are more avowed atheists than there were twenty years ago, they remain rare. Self-conscious atheism and ag…
Defining ‘Atheism’
The Oxford Handbook of Atheism
Recent books by, among others, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens have thrust atheism firmly into the popular, media, and academic spotlight. This so-called New Atheism is arguably the most striking development in western socio-religious culture of the past decade or more. As such, it has spurred fertile (and often heated) discussions both within, and between, a diverse range of disciplines. Yet atheism, and the New Atheism, ar…
Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain: A Quantitative Overview
This article presents a quantitative assessment of Catholic disaffiliates—those who were brought up Catholic, but who now no longer identify as such—in contemporary Britain. Using British Social Attitudes data, it seeks to: 1) gauge the overall extent of Catholic disaffiliation and its significance relative to the retention/disaffiliation rates of other major Christian groupings; 2) identify patterns in the changing rates of Catholic retention/di…
Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II
In 1962, Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council with the prophecy that ‘a new day is dawning on the Church, bathing her in radiant splendour’. Desiring ‘to impart an ever increasing vigour to the Christian life of the faithful’, the Council Fathers devoted particular attention to the laity, and set in motion a series of sweeping reforms. The most significant of these centred on refashioning the Church’s liturgy. Over fifty years on, ho…
“We Confess that we are Atheists”
In the immortal words of Herbert McCabe, ‘Whatever we are referring to when we use the word “God” it can no more be a god than it can be a model aeroplane or half-past eleven’ ( God Still Matters ). This striking idea – the “atheism” of true Christianity – has, in fact, a long pedigree. This paper traces its history from the early Church to the Angelic Doctor himself. The essential point is this: if our God really is who Christians claim God is, …
Explaining the rise of ‘nonreligion studies’: Subfield formation and institutionalization within the sociology of religion
As recently as 2008, a major reference work in the sociology of religion could (correctly) describe the study of atheism, secularity, and nonreligion as ‘meager, fragmentary, and unappreciated’. Only a decade later, this situation has been radically transformed. Not only is there a substantial, ever-growing, and constantly diversifying (methodologically, theoretically, geographically) research literature, but ‘nonreligion studies’ now possesses a…
McCarrick, the Kingmaker: A Social Network Analysis of Episcopal Promotion in the Roman Catholic Church
The former Cardinal McCarrick was often dubbed as the “Kingmaker” for his power to influence episcopal promotion in the United States and even in the Vatican. However, most of the information to support this argument is often lacking in context, making the claim easy to downplay. The purpose of this study is to look at one of the networks of Catholic bishops in the United States and to provide empirical evidence of McCarrick as the “Kingmaker” us…
To Conscience First, and to the Pope (Long) Afterwards? British Catholics and their Attitudes towards Morality and Structural Issues concerning the Catholic Church
Background The attitudes of Catholics in Britain have undergone significant liberalisation on social moral issues across recent decades, whilst the reputation of the Catholic Church has suffered due to public opposition to its traditional teachings on such issues. But there has been comparatively little recent investigation into British Catholics' views on these debates using surveys aimed at this religious community. Purpose This article examine…
Catholics in Contemporary Britain: Faith, Society, Politics
This book showcases findings from a wide-ranging, empirical study of Catholics living in Britain. It offers a sociologically informed study, placing the contemporary Catholic community in the wider contexts of their society and the global faith of which they are a part. The book has been animated by a set of compelling broader questions: Who are the Catholics in Britain? How do they engage with their faith and with the Church? What do they think …
Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America
The United States is in the midst of a religious revolution. Or, perhaps it is better to say a non-religious revolution. Around a quarter of US adults now say they have no religion. The great majority of these religious “nones” also say that they used to belong to a religion but no longer do. These are the nonverts: think “converts,” but from having religion to having none. Even on the most conservative of estimates, there are currently about 59 …
Lived Catholicism: A Roundtable Discussion
The study of Lived Catholicism seeks to step away from the normative forces of institutional expectations to explore Catholicism as it is found in the practices of daily life. It draws on the foundations of lived religion in recognising the importance of improvisation, negotiation, resistance and subversion in everyday religiosity. It foregrounds the voices and experiences of ordinary people to explore the places of Catholicism in their lives. Ho…
Economic models of church life: Three 'Nudges' Towards Better Behaviour
Economic ideas have long shed light on diverse spheres of social and cultural life. Religion is no exception and has spawned a large and thriving subfield. However, whereas recent decades have famously witnessed a 'behavioural' turn in economics - with Nobel prizes going to two pioneers of the field, Daniel Kahneman in 2002 and Richard Thaler in 2017 - there has yet to be significant work done in the 'behavioural economics of religion'. This is a…
Power, Preferment, and Patronage: An Exploratory Study of Catholic Bishops and Social Networks
Social Network Analysis (SNA) has shed light on cultures where the influence of patronage, preferment, and reciprocal obligations are traditionally important. We argue here that episcopal appointments, culture, and governance within the Catholic Church are ideal topics for SNA interrogation. This paper presents preliminary findings, using original network data for the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales and the United States Confere…
Why Younger Catholics Seem More Committed: Survivorship Bias and/or 'Creative Minority' Effects among British Catholics
The normative value of, and the extent of popular engagement with, different forms of commitment differ across Christian religious traditions, but studies often show women and older people exhibiting greater religiosity in their behavior and belief. Using a multidimensional approach to religious commitment, this study uses a new survey to provide an in-depth assessment of Catholics in Britain. It finds that younger cohorts show greater involvemen…
The Church in England and Wales: An Historical Overview
Over the course of the past century, Catholics in England and Wales went from being a marginalized minority, with a strong subcultural identity as Catholics, to a largely unexceptional and accepted part of the mainstream: ‘like everyone else’, in the famous words of British Catholic anthropologist Mary Douglas. This simplistic narrative, while true enough in its broadest contours, nevertheless obscures a great deal. This chapter presents a more n…
This Is the Greatest Thing a Man Can Do: Vocational Journeys of Recently Ordained Catholic Priests in Australia
In many Western countries, the Catholic Church (like several others) is currently suffering a vocations crisis. Australia is no exception. Each year, dioceses see more priests retire, die, or leave the priesthood than new ones are ordained. For this reason, it is becoming increasingly mission-critical for dioceses to understand better the vocational journeys of those men who do become priests. These are also, of course, groups of considerable soc…
Atheism studies lives up to its own hype: Marginal notes on Gervais's Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species
The Intergenerational Transmission of Religion
There is increasing evidence for the intergenerational decline of religiosity across many different countries: religious beliefs, behaviours, and identities of parents are not being passed on to their children. This Element surveys the psychological and sociological research on the intergenerational transmission of religion, focussing on the factors that influence it. After introducing the topic in Section 1, Section 2 describes the methods used …
Religion and Society Interactions (20 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Law (12 works) · Political science (11 works) · Religious studies (10 works) · Atheism (9 works) · Religion, Society, and Development (9 works) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works)