Callum G. Brown

David Nash

Charlie Lynch

Humanists have been a major force in British life since the turn of the 20th century. Here, leading historians of religious non-belief Callum Brown, David Nash, and Charlie Lynch examine how humanist organisations brought ethical reform and rationalism to the nation as it faced the moral issues of the modern world. This book provides a long overdue account of this dynamic group. Developing through the Ethical Union (1896), the Rationalist Press Association (1899), the British Humanist Association (1963) and Humanists UK (2017), Humanists sought to reduce religious privilege but increase humanitarian compassion and human rights. After pioneering legislation on blasphemy laws, dignity in dying and abortion rights, they went on to help design new laws on gay marriage, and sex and moral education. Internationally, they endeavoured to end war and world hunger. And with Humanist marriages and celebration of life through Humanist funerals, national ritual and culture have recently been transformed. Based on extensive archival and oral-history research, this is the definitive history of Humanists as an ethical force in modern Britain.

A History of Ethicists, Rationalists and Humanists

The Humanist Movement in Modern Britain

The Western World is becoming atheist. In the space of three generations churchgoing and religious belief have become alien to millions. We are in the midst of one of humankind's great cultural changes. How has this happened? Becoming Atheist explores how people of the sixties' generation have come to live their lives as if there is no God. It tells the life narratives of those from Britain, Western Europe, the United States and Canada who came from Christian, Jewish and other backgrounds to be without faith. Based on interviews with 85 people born in 18 countries, Callum Brown shows how gender, ethnicity and childhood shape how individuals lose religion. This book moves from statistical and broad cultural analysis to use frank, humorous and sometimes harrowing personal testimony. Becoming Atheist exposes people's role in renegotiating their own identities, and fashioning a secular and humanist culture for the Western world.

Humanism and the Secular West

Becoming Atheist

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.

Religion and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain

Tackling important contemporary themes, such as the role of the Kirk in national identity and the growth of secularization, Brown explores the histories of Catholicism, Presbyterianism, and Episcopalism over the past 250 years.

Religion and Society in Scotland Since 1707

Postmodernism is an essential approach to History. This is the first dedicated primer on postmodernism for the historian. It offers a step-by-step guide to postmodern theory, includes a guide to how historians have applied the theory, and provides a review of why its critics are wrong. In simple and clear language, it takes the reader through the chain of theory that developed in the 20th century to become now, in the early 21st century, the leading stimulant of new forms of research in History. With separate chapters on The Sign, The Discourse, Post/Structuralism, The Text, The Self, and Morality, this book will encourage a new critical awareness of Theory when reading books of History, and when writing essays and dissertations. Armed with the principal ideas of Saussure, Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida, the historians can formulate how to combine empirical History with the excitement of fresh perspectives and new skills, merged in the new moral impetus of the postmodern condition. Designed for the beginner this is the essential postmodern starting point.

Postmodernism for Historians

Up-Helly-Aa is Europe's largest and most spectacular winter fire festival. In the biting Arctic wind on the last Tuesday of every January, a Guizer Jarl leads one thousand men in guising costumes with flaming torches through the streets of Lerwick, the capital of the Shetland Isles, accompanying a Viking galley to its ceremonial burning.

Custom, Culture, and Community in Shetland

Up-helly-aa

A much-awaited new book by the foremost scholar of secularisation and religion in the modern world.

Women and Secularisation in Canada, Ireland, UK and USA Since the 1960s

Religion and the Demographic Revolution

The Death of Christian Britain uses the latest techniques to offer new formulations of religion and secularisation and explores what it has meant to be 'religious' and 'irreligious' during the last 200 years. By listening to people's voices rather than purely counting heads, it offers a fresh history of de-christianisation, and predicts that the British experience since the 1960s is emblematic of the destiny of the whole of western Christianity. Challenging the generally held view that secularization has been a long and gradual process beginning with the industrial revolution, it proposes that it has been a catastrophic short term phenomenon starting with the 1960's. Is Christianity in Britain nearing extinction? Is the decline in Britain emblematic of the fate of western Christianity? Topical and controversial, The Death of Christian Britain is a bold and original work that will bring some uncomfortable truths to light.

The Death of Christian Britain

The first clear guide to the minefields and meanings of postmodernism in the study of history.

Exposes the mechanisms by which conservative Christianity dominated British culture during 1945-65 and their subsequent collapse.

Sex, Humanists and Secularisation, 1945–1980

The Battle for Christian Britain

Providing a comprehensive account of religion in British society and culture between 1900 and 2000, this book traces how Christian Puritanism and respectability framed the people amidst world wars, economic depressions, and social protest.

Callum G. Brown

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