This book reveals how, in confrontation with secularity, various new forms of Christianity evolved during the time of Europe's crisis of modernisation. Rudolf Schlögl provides a comprehensive overview of the development of religious institutions and piety in Protestant and Catholic Europe between 1750 and 1850; at the same time, he offers a detailed exposition of contemporary philosophical, theological and socio-theoretical thought on the nature and function of religion. This allows us to understand the importance of religion in the self-defining of European society during a period of great change and upheaval. Religion and Society at the Dawn of Modern Europe is a pivotal work – translated into English here for the first time – for all scholars and students of European society in the 18th and 19th centuries.

This book examines the relationship between religion and Society in Europe in the last 200 years.

Religion in Modern Europe examines religion as a form of collective memory. This is a memory held in place by Europe's institutional churches, educational systems, and the mass media - all of which are themselves responding to rapid social and economic change. Europe's religious memory is approached in the following ways: as vicarious-a particularly European characteristic, as precarious-especially among young people, and as it is portrayed by the media. The memory may fragment, be disputed, and in extreme cases, disappear. Alternatives may emerge. The challenge for European societies is to affirm healthy mutations in religious memory and discourage others. The book also examines the increasing diversity of Europe's religious life. European Societies Series Series Editor: Colin Crouch Very few of the existing sociological texts which compare different European societies on specific topics are accessible to a broad range of scholars and students. The European Societies series will help fill this gap in the literature, and attempt to answer questions such as: Is there really such a thing as a 'European model' of society? Do the economic and political integration processes of the European Union also imply convergence in more general aspects of social life, like family or religious behaviour? What do the societies of Western Europe have in common with those further to the east? This series will cover the main social institutions, although not every author will cover the full range of European countries. As well as surveying existing knowledge in a way that will be useful to students, each book will also seek to contribute to our growing knowledge of what remains in many respects a sociologically unknown continent.

From a variety of perspectives, the essays presented here explore the profound interdependence of natural philosophy and rational religion in the `long seventeenth century' that begins with the burning of Bruno in 1600 and ends with the Enlightenment in the early Eighteenth century. From the writings of Grotius on natural law and natural religion, and the speculative, libertin novels of Cyrano de Bergerac, to the better-known works of Descartes, Malebranche, Cudworth, Leibniz, Boyle, Spinoza, Newton, and Locke, an increasing emphasis was placed on the rational relationship between religious doctrine, natural law, and a personal divine providence. While evidence for this intrinsic relationship was to be located in different places - in the ideas already present in the mind, in the observations and experiments of the natural philosophers, and even in the history, present experience, and prophesied future of mankind - the result enabled and shaped the broader intellectual and scientific discourses of the Enlightenment.

Current scholarship continues to emphasise both the importance and the sheer diversity of religious beliefs within early modern societies. Furthermore, it continues to show that, despite the wishes of secular and religious leaders, confessional uniformity was in many cases impossible to enforce. As the essays in this collection make clear, many people in Reformation Europe were forced to confront the reality of divided religious loyalties, and this raised issues such as the means of accommodating religious minorities who refused to conform and the methods of living in communion with those of different faiths. Drawing together a number of case studies from diverse parts of Europe, Living with Religious Diversity in Early Modern Europe explores the processes involved when groups of differing confessions had to live in close proximity - sometimes grudgingly, but often with a benign pragmatism that stood in opposition to the will of their rulers. By focussing on these themes, the volume bridges the gap between our understanding of the confessional developments as they were conceived as normative visions and religious culture at the level of implementation. The contributions thus measure the religious policies articulated by secular and ecclesiastical elites against the 'lived experience' of people going about their daily business. In doing this, the collection shows how people perceived and experienced the religious upheavals of the confessional age and how they were able to assimilate these changes within the framework of their lives.

In the pre-industrial societies of early modern Europe, religion was a vessel of fundamental importance in making sense of personal and collective social, cultural and spiritual exercises. This text presents Kaspar von Greyerz's important overview and interpretation of the religions and cultures of Early Modern Europe.

This interdisciplinary volume examines the role of sensation in the religious transformations of early modern Europe. Sensation was both central to the doctrinal disputes of the Reformation and critical in shaping new or reformed devotional practices.