Eric Mascall and the rise, fall and rise of ‘Christian sociology’, c.1935 – 1985

Bibliographic Data

ID21724979
AuthorsPeter Webster (0000-0001-5181-4475, Webster Research and Consulting Ltd, Chichester, UK, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume23
Issue2
Pages188-205
Publication date2023-04-03
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal for the Study of the Christian Church (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1474-225X • E-ISSN: 1747-0234
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1474225x.2023.2186570
OpenAlexW4324359875
LanguageEN
References cited13

This article explores the social thought of E.L. Mascall, Anglican theologian and philosopher. The bewilderment of the 1930s and 1940s, Mascall believed, was at root a loss of a proper sense of the human person: dependent on the action of God for very existence, simultaneously bodily and spiritual, a worker on earth yet a pilgrim towards glory. Human fulfilment was contingent on a right relation of humankind to God, and the subservience of society, economy and politics to human need. Mascall was rare among his contemporaries in continuing to write into the mid-1980s, and thus being able to reflect on the eclipse in the 1950s and 1960s of much of what he had advocated. I suggest that the waxing and waning of Mascall’s interventions mirrors the rise, eclipse and (finally) partial revival of a catholic understanding of society and the human person, often given the name of ‘Christian sociology’

Epistemology · Glory · Human spirit · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Theology · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Philosophy · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Religious studies

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