This book is the first one volume history of religious belief and practice in England, Wales and Scotland. It covers the period from Roman times to the present and has been written by twenty-three scholars, all writing accessibly for a wide readership.

Marjorie Wheeler-Barclay argues that, although the existence and significance of the science of religion has been barely visible to modern scholars of the Victorian period, it was a subject of lively and extensive debate among nineteenth-century readers and audiences. She shows how an earlier generation of scholars in Victorian Britain attempted to arrive at a dispassionate understanding of the psychological and social meanings of religious beliefs and practices—a topic not without contemporary resonance in a time when so many people feel both empowered and threatened by religious passion—and provides the kind of history she feels has been neglected. Wheeler-Barclay examines the lives and work of six scholars: Friedrich Max Müller, Edward B. Tylor, Andrew Lang, William Robertson Smith, James G. Frazer, and Jane Ellen Harrison. She illuminates their attempts to create a scholarly, non-apologetic study of religion and religions that drew upon several different disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, the classics, and Oriental studies, and relied upon contributions from those outside as well as within the universities. This intellectual enterprise—variously known as comparative religion, the history of religions, or the science of religion—was primarily focused on non-Christian religions. Yet in Wheeler-Barclay’s study of the history of this field within the broad contexts of Victorian cultural, intellectual, social, and political history, she traces the links between the emergence of the science of religion to debates about Christianity and to the history of British imperialism, the latter of which made possible the collection of so much of the ethnographic data on which the scholars relied and which legitimized exploration and conquest. Far from promoting an anti-religious or materialistic agenda, the science of religion opened up cultural space for an exploration of religion that was not constricted by the terms of contemporary conflicts over Darwin and the Bible and that made it possible to think in new and more flexible ways about the very definition of religion.

First published in 1949, A History of Christianity in England is a kaleidoscopic view of the religious situation in England for readers and students who wish to eventually take it up as a serious study. The author asserts that the influence of the Church and the State in the development of the English national life and character has also led to the growth of a unique English Christianity. English religion appears neither completely Catholic, properly Protestant nor consistently Liberal, rendering itself an enigma. The author believes that the confusion of its various discordant parts can be resolved by situating English Christianity within a historical continuum. This book will be of interest to students of theology, history and Christianity.

During the twentieth century, Britain turned from one of the most deeply religious nations of the world into one of the most secularised nations. This book provides a comprehensive account of religion in British society and culture between 1900 and 2000. It traces how Christian Puritanism and respectability framed the people amidst world wars, economic depressions, and social protest, and how until the 1950s religious revivals fostered mass enthusiasm. It then examines the sudden and dramatic changes seen in the 1960’s and the appearance of religious militancy in the 1980s and 1990s. With a focus on the themes of faith cultures, secularisation, religious militancy and the spiritual revolution of the New Age, this book uses people’s own experiences and the stories of the churches to display the diversity and richness of British religion. Suitable for undergraduate students studying modern British history, church history and sociology of religion.

For curious readers young and old, a rich and colorful history of religion from humanity’s earliest days to our own contentious times In an era of hardening religious attitudes and explosive religious violence, this book offers a welcome antidote. Richard Holloway retells the entire history of religion—from the dawn of religious belief to the twenty-first century—with deepest respect and a keen commitment to accuracy. Writing for those with faith and those without, and especially for young readers, he encourages curiosity and tolerance, accentuates nuance and mystery, and calmly restores a sense of the value of faith. Ranging far beyond the major world religions of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism, Holloway also examines where religious belief comes from, the search for meaning throughout history, today’s fascinations with Scientology and creationism, religiously motivated violence, hostilities between religious people and secularists, and more. Holloway proves an empathic yet discerning guide to the enduring significance of faith and its power from ancient times to our own.

Modern British intellectual history has been a particularly flourishing field of enquiry in recent years, and these two tightly integrated volumes contain major new essays by almost all of its leading proponents. The contributors examine the history of British ideas over the past two centuries from a number of perspectives that together constitute a major new overview of the subject. History, Religion, and Culture begins with eighteenth-century historiography, especially Gibbon's Decline and Fall. It takes up different aspects of the place of religion in nineteenth-century cultural and political life, such as attitudes towards the native religions of India, the Victorian perception of Oliver Cromwell, and the religious sensibility of John Ruskin. Finally, in discussions which range up to the middle of the twentieth century, the volume explores relations between scientific ideas about change or development and assumptions about the nature and growth of the national community.