Duncan Tanner Essay Prize Winner 2012
The Invention of a 'Secular Society'? Christianity and the Sudden Appearance of Secularization Discourses in the British National Media, 1961-4
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12239309 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sam Brewitt-Taylor (0000-0002-6156-186X, Lincoln College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 327-350 |
| Publication date | 2013-06-18 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Twentieth Century British History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0955-2359 • E-ISSN: 1477-4674 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/tcbh/hwt012 |
| OpenAlex | W2321479992 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 23 |
This essay examines the sudden re-imagination of Britain as a ‘secular society’ in the highbrow British media between 1961 and 1964. It is often assumed that contemporary discourses of secularization were relatively unproblematic, simply reflecting reality, but closer investigation reveals that they invented a general crisis of supernaturalism, and exaggerated the extent of religious decline. Between 1961 and 1963 such discourses were promulgated in the British media chiefly by Christians, who still enjoyed a privileged position in the reporting of religious affairs. In many cases such discourses drew on a radical theological critique of the churches which had been developing since the 1940s. From 1963, especially in the wake of Honest to God, the idea of the ‘secular society’ was accepted by a wide range of Christian leaders, and consequently it passed into the received wisdom, allowing secular sociologists to dominate the debate from 1965. This problematic re-imagination of British religiosity had important secularizing consequences, especially in the fields of the media, the law, and within the churches themselves. For these reasons, Christians played the central role in the initial stages of the religious crisis of the 1960s, and in the imaginative deconstruction of ‘Christian Britain’
Christianity · Deconstruction (building · Political science · Politics · Religiosity · Secular state · Secularism · Secularization · Social science · Sociology · Sociology of religion · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development · Law · Philosophy · Religious Studies
Defensive secularism reconsidered
Historicizing ‘Religion’ and ‘the Secular’
Eric Mascall and the responsibility of the theologian in England, 1962-1977
Anglicans and the New Jerusalem
Enemy Within? The Appeal of the Discipline of Sociology to Religious Professionals in Post-War Britain
The Sociological Myth
Speaking to God in Australia
Inspiration and Institution in 1960s Anglican Radicalism
From Religion to Revolution
The Merits of ‘Moral Ecumenism’
The Church of England, Homosexual Law Reform, and the Shaping of the Permissive Society, 1957-1979
An engineering career as industrial mission
A heavenly poise
Christian civilisation’, ‘modern secularisation’, and the revolutionary re-imagination of British modernity, 1954-1965
The Relation of the Sexes’
Another Window on British Secularization
Introduction
Going ‘part of the way together’
A belated return for Christ?’
To stay, serve and witness’ – church politics and British inner cities in the 1980s
Christianity and the Invention of the Sexual Revolution in Britain, 1963–1967
Civil Religions in Derby, 1930–2000
The Institutional Afterlife of Christian England
| Unique citing works | 23 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,92 |
| Citation span | 2014 - 2026 (13) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 22 |