Neil Smelser's Social Paralysis and Social Change is one of the most comprehensive histories of mass education ever written. It tells the story of how working-class education in nineteenth-century Britain—often paralyzed by class, religious, and economic conflict—struggled forward toward change. This book is ambitious in scope. It is both a detailed history of educational development and a theoretical study of social change, at once a case study of Britain and a comparative study of variations within Britain. Smelser simultaneously meets the scholarly standards of historians and critically addresses accepted theories of educational change—"progress," conflict, and functional theories. He also sheds new light on the process of secularization, the relations between industrialization and education, structural differentiation, and the role of the state in social change. This work marks a return for the author to the same historical arena—Victorian Britain—that inspired his classic work Social Change in the Industrial Revolution thirty-five years ago. Smelser's research has again been exhaustive. He has achieved a remarkable synthesis of the huge body of available materials, both primary and secondary. Smelser's latest book will be most controversial in its treatment of class as a primordial social grouping, beyond its economic significance. Indeed, his demonstration that class, ethnic, and religious groupings were decisive in determining the course of British working-class education has broad-ranging implications. These groupings remain at the heart of educational conflict, debate, and change in most societies—including our own—and prompt us to pose again and again the chronic question: who controls the educational terrain?

This thorough history of the Wesleyan Methodist educational efforts in Victorian England discusses the influence of Dr. James Harrison Rigg, Principal of Westminster Training College, who dominated his church and who made friendships with senior politicians of the day. The book also looks in depth at the influence of anti-Catholicism, which was rampant in the Methodist church of the era.

Brings together the work of a wide range of scholars to explore the history of churches and education.

Uniquely authoritative and wide-ranging in its scope, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church is the indispensable one-volume reference work on all aspects of the Christian Church. It contains over 6,000 cross-referenced A-Z entries, and offers unrivalled coverage of all aspects of this vast and often complex subject, including theology, churches and denominations, patristic scholarship, the bible, the church calendar and its organization, popes, archbishops, saints, and mystics. In this revision, innumerable small changes have been made to take into account shifts in scholarly opinion, recent developments, such as the Church of England's new prayer book (Common Worship), RC canonizations, ecumenical advances and mergers, and, where possible, statistics. A number of existing articles have been rewritten to reflect new evidence or understanding, for example the Holy Sepulchre entry, and there are a few new articles. Perhaps most significantly, a great number of the bibliographies have been updated. Established since its first appearance in 1957 as an essential resource for ordinands, clergy, and members of religious orders, ODCC is an invaluable tool for academics, teachers, and students of church history and theology, as well as for the general reader.

Fr. Richard Schiefen collection.