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This article examines a wide range of theological writings by Germans and theologians trained in Germany published in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). It looks beyond Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and Bullinger to acknowledge the variety of German Protestant authors who found an audience among Elizabethans. The relative breadth of works published and republished in England at this time testifies to the latitude of Elizabethan religious culture, which proved fertile ground for broadly Lutheran and Melanchthonian authors, along with the more commonly studied reformed theologians. The article also argues that works printed in England were most often (though not always) theologically safe in the English context, downplaying or side-stepping issues divisive among Protestants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Census data for 2011 suggested that around 14.1 million people in England and Wales state that they have no religion and recent survey evidence suggests that the number could be even higher. Drawing on evidence from focus group discussions with people who broadly self-identify with the descriptor 'non-religious', this article examines the diversity of non-religious identities and the interfaces with religion and equalities law. Through analysis of the identity narratives of people who see themselves as non-religious, the findings indicate that people use various conceptualisations of non-religion, belief, and spirituality to describe their identities. Moreover, non-religious people also reported experiences of unfair treatment and discrimination due to their identities. The term 'non-religious' can be problematic; it can be homogenising and limit people to identifying themselves in terms of the negation of religion. The findings highlight different non-religious identities and thus bring into question the conceptions, both popular and official, of the category 'non-religious' and the wider discourse of non-religion. It can be questioned whether the negative label of being non-religious is fit for purpose. There is a need for a new vocabulary to articulate, describe, and understand non-religious identities and experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religion was an important and dynamic aspect of Britain's West African colonial army. The religious composition of the force changed from primarily Muslim in the late nineteenth century to primarily traditionalist and Muslim during the early twentieth century to overwhelmingly Christian during and immediately after the Second World War. These changes reflected not only military requirements but also broader social trends. While Muslim religious life in the military reflected a 'barracks Islam' accommodated by British officers, a top-down form of command Christianity emerged from the 1940s. Appointed during the Second World War, military chaplains and imams encouraged recruiting and strengthened morale but the presence of black religious officials challenged the existing racial hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late summer of 1643 William Twisse, the most prominent predestinarian in the British Isles, fell silent as he presided over one of the Westminster Assembly's most significant debates. The event prompted contemporaries to comment on his appointment to the leadership of the assembly and possible motivations for his inactivity. In this study it serves as a pointer to readings of religious discourse in post-Reformation Britain where analyses of early modern theological conversations are commonly framed in terms of the divine decrees or reduced to political dynamics. The assembly's debate suggests that the use of predestination by historians as an explanatory device for understanding theological exchanges is overextended and that historical reconstructions of theology can benefit by moving beyond generalizations about Calvinist conflict (or consensus) based on predestination and election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Easter and Christmas are the most important events in the Christian calendar. Despite their global reach and cultural significance, astonishingly little is known about the festivals' genesis. Equally obscure is our understanding of the animals that have come to be associated with these celebrations - notably the Christmas Turkey and the Easter 'Bunny' (brown hare and the European rabbit). Like Christianity, none of these animals are native to Britain and the timing and circumstances of their arrivals are poorly understood, often obfuscated by received wisdom. This paper firstly refines the bio-cultural histories of the species that, in contemporary Britain, form integral parts of Easter and Christmas festivities. Secondly, we celebrate the non-native species which have played such an important role in the creation of Britain's cultural heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte: Internationale Zeitschrift für Theologie und Geschichtswissenschaft is the property of Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article considers how lecturing in Victoria Park in the East End of London allowed three early heads of the university settlement Oxford House to engage local communities in a discussion about the place of religion in the modern world. It demonstrates how park lecturing enabled James Adderley, Hebert Hensley Henson, and Arthur Winnington-Ingram, all of whom also held positions in the Church of England, to perform and test out their religious identities. Open-air lecturing was a performance of religious faith for these settlement leaders. It allowed them to move beyond the institutional spaces of the church and the settlement house in order to mediate their faith in the context of open discussion and debate about religion and modern life. The narratives they constructed in and about their park sermons reveal a good deal about how these early settlement leaders imagined themselves as well as their relationship with the working-class men they hoped to reach through settlement work. A vivid picture of Victorian religious and philanthropic life emerges in their accounts of lecturing in Victoria Park. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the recent trajectories in the study of early modern British religious history, arguing that the modes of cultural history and the rejection of a teleological narrative have opened up new topics and rejuvenated perennial debates while putting older ones to rest. Consequently, a fuller understanding of the long reach and fundamental place of reform within British society has precipitated a “religious turn” within early modern British studies. The article ends with a look at two promising trends: the use of new types of primary sources and a wider geographical scope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from a new question in the 2011 UK census, national identities across minority ethno-religious groups in England, Wales and Scotland are compared. The findings not only substantiate earlier work showing high levels of British identification among minority groups but also demonstrate that this does not extend to sub-state national identities. The extent of sub-state national identification varies between different minorities, but the nature of this variation also depends on the specific (sub-state) national context. The findings may be understood in relation to key biographical 'markers' of national identity. These markers help explain variations in sub-state national identities to a much greater extent than British identity, but their effect also varies across the different nations. The analysis demonstrates the importance of examining sub-state as well as state (British) identities and heeding differences in the ways in which these identities might be conceived and asserted across national borders within the same state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is the Emerging Church movement (ECM) a single transnational movement? Or is it a series of parallel religious orientations framed by nationally specific contexts? Cross-national comparisons of the many manifestations of the ECM remain scarce, especially as the development of the ECM across the globe (e.g., in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand) is most certainly affected by divergent histories and socioreligious landscapes. Focusing on a comparative analysis of the United Kingdom and the United States, I trace how these different cultural contexts determine variant patterns of ECM identity formation. Overall, a global perspective on the ECM calls for a theorization of the national development of religious movements and takes seriously the cultural and historical experiences that shape both its emergence in particular nations and the differentiated development of distinctive manifestations of ECM identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the ramifications of religious engagement in social action initiatives in ethnically and religiously plural urban environments in the UK. In particular, it explores this engagement through a series of inter-related analytical frames, which explain the trajectory and political significance of religiously inflected social action in different ways, before examining specific initiatives in localised context. Behind this approach is the recognition of the need to situate religion in complex contexts, resisting its cross-cultural and trans-historical claims, and of the ways in which religion is deployed as a specific mode of both domination and resistance. The author argues that the pluralism of the contemporary city has critical implications for understanding contemporary religion and social action, both in terms of the range of organisations involved and in terms of the negotiation of difference which is an everyday facet of multicultural urban living. The spaces of engagement opened up by these contemporary contexts allow for the development of new ways of conceptualising religion and new potentialities for the role of religion in the developing politics of living in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ecclesiastical division in recent times within the Anglican and Roman Communions may be influenced not only by active effort of individuals, but also by historical context of social and legal structure. This study investigates both active influence from individuals, including religious leaders, political leaders, "everyday citizens," and others, and contextual influence from history by considering geo-cultural and legal differences between the United States and Great Britain and applying a multipoint economic gravitation model. Such a model can provide insight into the way in which the various actors in the ongoing ecclesiastical situations interact with and influence each other. The model also considers historical factors that lead to differences between the modern American forms of Anglicanism and Catholicism, as well as to the variation in religious belief and action within the United States that may reasonably considered to have played and continue to play a role in influencing modern outcomes. As individuals influence others and are influenced by others, as well as are influenced by historical factors, the make-up of the various sub-groups present within Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism may change over time, thereby also changing the make-up and nature of the overall churches. The application of the multipoint gravitational model helps to explain the way in which different individuals, organizations, and factions in the religious marketplace interact with and influence each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been a growing argument that the end product of secularization may not be a disappearance of all things religious, but rather a polarization between a larger secular group in society and smaller religiously fervent and active communities. Yet, there has been little empirical testing of this theory in contexts of advanced secularization. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap by studying individual belief and religiosity trends over the past four decades in Great Britain, searching specifically for evidence of the population splitting more and more between religious 'nones' removed from all forms of religion, and actively religious individuals characterized by strong beliefs and favourable to the public involvement of religion. Analysing descriptive statistics from the 1983-2012 BSAs as well as more detailed models from the 1991, 1998 and 2008 BSAs, we find growing differences in levels of beliefs and attitudes towards public religion between the increasing proportions of unaffiliated and, in recent years and among younger cohorts, more stable proportions of religiously committed individuals. The remaining religiously committed generally have stronger beliefs and more favourable views towards religious leaders influencing politics in 2008 compared with 1991, and the unaffiliated, less favourable views towards public religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni is the property of Editrice Morcelliana S.p.A. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Spirituality has been theorised as a characteristic of late-modern society, a consequence of individualisation and of a relativized marketplace of religion. Drawing on findings from ethnographic fieldwork conducted with Muslim musicians in the UK, the author claims that spirituality can indeed be considered a postmodern discourse of belief – with trans-religious applicability – but that at the same time it can be articulated from within a clear understanding of group/religious membership. The concepts of ‘spiritual capital’ and ‘expressive communalism’ are used to explain the ways through which a postmodern discourse of spirituality is utilised by Muslim musicians from within contemporary networks of Sufism in the West. The author suggests the cosmopolitan and inclusive nature of these types of Sufism in Britain – particularly among third and fourth generation Muslims – represents a frontier of religious change in the UK and a challenge to traditional forms of religious authority, discourse and membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article extends and develops recent historical discussion on the relationship between British Christianity, sexuality, and modernity, proposing some ways forward for future scholarship. Recent accounts have concentrated on liberal Anglican positions on issues of sexuality, but here the focus is on the British Council of Churches, its early moral welfare work, and interdenominational efforts to reconsider Christian sex teaching in the immediate post-war years. While examining broader trends towards positive statements about sex and attempts to assemble self-regulating sexual citizens in Christian moral welfare thinking, the article suggests that, far from a narrative of relatively untroubled and gradual acceptance of progressive Christian views on sex, this was a halting and uncertain process. The article reflects closely on the complexities of post-war Christian attempts to work with new ideas about sexuality and to formulate their own version of them, the difficulties and ambiguities involved in developing a cogent position in a debate where Christian opinion was so fiercely divided, as well as the complicated nature of institutional decision-making. As a case study, the British Council of Churches reflects earlier, problematic attempts to alter Christian sex teaching, as well as the unfolding of later difficulties for the British churches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article re-examines the nature and extent of conformity to the Religious Settlement amongst the parish clergy in the first decades of Elizabeth I's reign. The estimate of Henry Gee, made over a century ago, that only around 300 clergymen were deprived for non-conformity to the Settlement has been remarkably influential and durable, and it continues to shape broader assessments of the ways in which religio-political change was implemented and received in this period. Using digital resources such as the Clergy of the Church of England Database, in conjunction with hitherto neglected biographical compilations, the article argues for a significant revision of Gee's figures. More broadly, it reflects on the complex meanings of ‘conformity’ in a period of perplexing change and dramatic institutional disruption, disputing any suggestion that apparent acquiescence signalled pervasive ‘acceptance’ of the alteration in religion among the clergy. In the process, it draws attention to the pitfalls of uncritical deployment of numbers and statistics, and of using them as explanatory short-cuts in understanding the dynamics of Reformation change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sample surveys on the personal saliency of religion provide an additional lens on the scale and chronology of secularisation in Britain from the 1960s to the present. Six self-rating measures have been derived from both non-recurrent and serial surveys: religiosity (binary questions), religiosity (non-binary questions), spirituality versus religiosity, importance of religion, importance of God, and difference made by religion. The methodological advantages and disadvantages of such sources are explored. Descriptive and tabulated results suggest the very religious have never numbered more than 10% and the tipping-point for the majority of Britons self-identifying as non-religious came in the 1990s, with religious decline quickening after the Millennium. Saliency of religion indicators present one of the bleaker pictures of the extent of secularisation, worse than affiliation or belief in God data, with self-assessed non-religiosity in Britain higher than in most other Western European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Previous studies have found that religious participation is an important source of identity-bridging social capital, as it can serve as a rubric for effective inter-ethnic contacts which narrow those culturally defined gaps between "us" and "them" in a multicultural society. Using the Citizenship Survey data, this study aims to investigate the longneglected role of religious involvement as an incubator of identity-bridging social capital in Britain. The analysis is based on a logistic regression model which predicts the probabilities of having white British close friends for non-white believers in different British faith communities, conditioning on forms of religious involvement, religiosity and other sociocultural factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions about Buddhist meditation in the West usually focus on the post-1960s period and explain the popularity of meditation in a context of modernistic discourses. In this article the author suggests that meditation was in fact available in Britain much earlier than is usually assumed, in a period which was without doubt ‘modern,' yet which did not quickly produce mass acceptance of meditative practices in its host culture. While the migration of meditation was influenced by modernist discourses, these were sometimes contradictory to each other and hindered acceptance. The author examines how the term meditation itself has evolved, who first brought it to Britain and why, as well as the political and social forces that shaped its trajectory of acceptance and rejection in the first half of the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1937, Signalman H. H. Somerfield, serving with the Indian Signal Corps, appeared before his medical officer to get circumcised and become a Muslim. Prior to this incident he spent much of his free time dressing in Indian clothing and darkening his skin while drinking alcohol in cinemas, cafes and dancing halls with Indian soldiers. In order to understand the multiple implications of Somerfield’s flirtation with spiritual and physical transformation, this article situates him within the martial, sexual and spiritual contexts of interwar British India. It explores how and why a working-class man of empire, who despised the incursion of ‘foreigners’ into England, came to desire and emulate colonial bodies. In so doing it examines how intimate moments between army men across religious and racial lines redefined international ideas about spirituality, masculinity and the body. By interrogating Somerfield’s desires to emulate and possess the men of the ‘Martial Races’ while in India, this article helps underline the importance of lived experiences of empire. It highlights the importance of individuals in the history of empire by considering how queer performances of the ‘self’ could both reinforce and upend social and cultural meanings of the body across the imperial world. Somerfield’s idiosyncratic story suggests that restrictive army beliefs and practices such as the ‘Martial Races’, which demarcated those bodies that were and were not ‘naturally’ suited to serve in the army, paradoxically offered opportunities for imperial soldiers to rework performances of martial masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues about the relationship between the religious and the secular have become increasingly prominent in recent years. In Britain, one of the central themes around this topic has been the emergence and propagation by leading religious and political figures of a concerted anti-secular discourse. This warns of the dangers posed by a militant, aggressive and intolerant form of secularism which is said to be driven by an ideological desire to force religion out of the public square, representing a clear threat to religious freedoms and social morality. This discourse has been shaped by a number of interrelated causal dynamics, but the religious and political influences involved differ substantially. Respectively, these relate to ongoing processes of secularisation and the increasing use of identity politics, set against the changing capacities of the British state and the electoral considerations of the Conservative Party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike the majority of the major female authors of the Victorian period, Elizabeth Gaskell was a mother, and her understanding of motherhood was one of the defining preoccupations of both her life and her fiction. In her lively and intimate letters to her four daughters, Gaskell provides a fascinating insight into mid-Victorian motherhood. ‘Conscientious and well-informed’, frank and self-reflexive, Gaskell's letters reflect the social and intellectual ferment of the period and shed light on some of the most pressing issues faced by mothers of the period, including the psychological development and education of children, the Victorian crises of religious schism and unbelief, and the rise of feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author’s aim is to offer some critical observations on usage of the terms ‘community’ and ‘faith community’. The central argument is that ‘community’ is a weasel word that occurs frequently in discourses at the levels of everyday life, public policy-making, welfare services and social scientific analysis. The article begins by reviewing relatively uncontentious uses of ‘community’. The second section of the article analyses the UK government’s usage of the term ‘faith community’ in policy documents since 1997. And the third section explores two particularly problematic issues: on the one hand a tension that arises within official discourses about faith communities and, on the other, the UK government’s practice of treating faith communities as if they were undifferentiated collectivities. The conclusion urges sociologists of religion to avoid uncritically reproducing official discourses about faith communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The use by British crowds of victorious admirals to articulate patriotic and libertarian ideas during the wars of the long eighteenth century is well known. But conflict also posed awkward questions about masculinity and issues surrounding it. Was military prowess compatible with politeness, with religiosity? During the 1790s, the fight to the death with revolutionary France made such questions hard to ignore, being compounded by the fact that Britain's most celebrated leader – Nelson – was not a paragon of virtue. This article shows how evangelicals sought to resolve these tensions by advancing a different set of ideals founded on piety and professionalism: by finding heroes of their own. This has crucial consequences for our understanding of how they and the ideas they championed became so prominent in late Hanoverian public life. In contradistinction to recent work suggesting that they exploited causes that were already popular – moral reform, antislavery – this article shows how they advanced a powerful providential narrative in which Christian heroes and godly policy were what made Britain great, a narrative whose veracity was ‘proven’ by wartime successes, especially in the navy, and which would remain highly influential well into the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1883 and early 1884 the controversial commemoration of the four-hundredth birthday of Martin Luther, celebrated in Germany and worldwide, captured much British public attention. The examination of this celebration offered here will improve current understanding of late Victorian religious controversies and indicate their continuing centrality to a range of cultural and historical debates in the period. The commemoration invigorated historic antagonisms in the British religious landscape, yet it also did far more than this. The commemoration provided a platform for those who wanted to foster Protestant unity in the face of what was widely perceived to be a revived threat from ‘popery’ and religious indifference at home and abroad. Whereas some religious and not-very-religious commentators, often belonging to a younger generation, wanted closely to associate Luther's world-historical role with liberalizing intellectual and social progress, others – sceptics, Catholics, high Anglicans, older Protestants – resisted this. Arguments about Luther's life and teaching often became more broadly Victorian discussions of the family, Anglo-German affinities or antagonisms, and the nature of modernity. By relating themes in the study of modern religious history to current concerns in the history of historical writing, this article will point to wider lacunae in scholarly approaches to nineteenth-century culture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on Randall Davidson, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1903 to 1928, and his role as a leader in the Church of England. The author explores the so-called "Edwardian Crisis" that the Church of England faced at the turn of the 20th century, examines Davidson's relationship with British Queen Victoria prior to her death, and discusses how Davidson dealt with Nonconformists.

The article offers description of the Marianism of the English Catholic Church - in particular as manifested in the celebration of the definition of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in 1854 and the solemn consecration of England to the Virgin in 1893 - in order to comment on the community's (and more particularly, its leadership's) changing perception of its identity and situation over the course of the later nineteenth century. In doing so, it places particular emphasis on the presence of apocalyptic belief, reflective and supportive of a profound alienation from contemporary English society, which was fundamental in shaping the Catholic body's modern history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the importance of religious change especially the organizational decline of protestant Christianity in Great Britain and the comparison of progress and primitivism in the society. Topics include Victorian public opinion, criminal prosecution of sorcery, economic growth and social change, and industrial-urbanization in England. Also discussed are topics like religious life in the nineteenth century, social development, religious commitment, and Catholicism.

Much has been written in recent years about the life of William Henry Abdullah Quilliam, late-Victorian propagator of Islam in Britain and founder of the Liverpool Muslim Institute (LMI). However, little attention has been given to Quilliam's fellow British Muslim converts, who constituted Britain's first indigenous Muslim community. This article briefly looks at the LMI as a missionary organisation. It then quantifies and examines the socio-demographics and post-conversion lives of the British Muslim community. It argues that individual commitment to both the LMI and Islam was affected by discrimination and misunderstanding of Muslims and their faith in society. However, by considering the fate of the Muslims following the LMI's demise, it is shown that a core of resolute converts held fast to their beliefs and played an important role in the consolidation of Islam in early twentieth-century Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the importance of religious change especially the organizational decline of protestant Christianity in Great Britain and the comparison of progress and primitivism in the society. Topics include Victorian public opinion, criminal prosecution of sorcery, economic growth and social change, and industrial-urbanization in England. Also discussed are topics like religious life in the nineteenth century, social development, religious commitment, and Catholicism.

The article explores possibilities of collaboration between Muslim providers of traditional education (dar al-ulums) and HE/FE institutions in close geographical proximity in the North West England. It reports the outcomes of a project carried out in 2011/2012 influenced by the findings of the Makadam/Scott-Baumann report in 2010, in which it was stated that cross fertilisation of pedagogical methodologies in the dar al-ulums is already achieving a unique synthesis drawing upon skills of memory and cognition. The project had a dual intention to (1) see through to completion a partnership in which a BA in Islamic Education would be created for advanced dar al-ulum students and (2) to focus on the relevance and pedagogical styles of the dars-i nizami curriculum taught in the dar al-ulums and therefore add to scholarly and political debates on the madrasa/dar al-ulum education which has already generated a body of literature. The paper will focus on the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides an across time analysis of traditional religious beliefs and examines the socio-structural and religious correlates of such beliefs in Britain. It examines belief in God, life after death, hell, heaven, sin, as well as the notion of a personal God. It undertakes multivariate analysis of a recurrent social survey conducted over several decades. The main findings are that there is no uniform decline in traditional beliefs, with the picture one of change and continuity. Women, religious adherents and those showing greater religious commitment are more likely to hold traditional beliefs. There is a mixed picture for age effects while higher socio-economic status tends to lead to a lower likelihood of holding religious beliefs, as hypothesised by ‘deprivation theory’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Questions on 'religion' in national censuses have had a long and complex history. In this article, the experiences of the British colonies and the subsequent Commonwealth countries in the conduct of census enquiries into religion are explored. Although the British government issued general instructions for the guidance of population censuses in the colonial empire, little clear advice was offered on the issue. The result was essentially a pragmatic approach, with each census commissioner responsible for the decision to include a religious question and the form and content of the published tables. Decisions taken by early census commissioners tended to be followed subsequently for the sake of maintaining continuity. In most cases smooth bureaucratic transitions at independence resulted in colonial practices being retained, unless there were pressing reasons for change. Nevertheless, the form of the question and particularly the classification scheme were susceptible to modification reflecting changing national priorities. Computerisation of the census has resulted in the widespread abandonment of open-ended questions and the presentation of a restricted list of options, unique to each country. Commonwealth countries thus exhibit a highly flexible and diverse range of responses to recording religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1839, six Malagasy Christians arrived in Britain under the auspices of the London Missionary Society. The group had been persecuted in Madagascar for their faith. They were introduced to the British evangelical community as saints and martyrs who were dependent on the missionary society, but their decision to undertake the long journey was shaped by their spiritual beliefs, their desire to develop their education, and their wish to eventually become evangelical missionaries in Madagascar. At public meetings around the country, the Malagasy used a Christian frame of reference to describe their personal stories and their hopes for the future of Christianity in Madagascar. As speaking subjects, not merely objects of spectacle and display, they communicated to British audiences their credibility as fellow Christians, educated individuals, and civilised human beings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the interest of American author T. S. Eliot for theology. Topics mentioned include the influence of the work of theologian Karl Barth, the spiritual aspects of the novel "Four Quartets" by Eliot, and the evolution of Catholicism and Protestantism in Great Britain during the 20th century.

This article presents a new perspective on Elizabethan puritanism. In particular, it examines the ways in which the memory of Marian conformity continued to influence religious and political controversy during the reign of Elizabeth I. Drawing upon extensive archival evidence, it focuses on moments when the chequered pasts of Queen Elizabeth, William Cecil, and other chief officers of English church and state were called into question by puritan critics. In contrast to the prevailing narrative of Elizabethan triumphalism, it argues that late Tudor religion and politics were shaped by lingering puritan distrust of those who had revealed a propensity for idolatry by conforming during the Marian persecution. This fraught history of religious conformity meant that, for some puritans, the Church of England had been built on unstable foundations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent months David Cameron has emphasised both his personal religious faith and the ongoing importance of Christianity and religion in Britain. This article seeks to explain why Cameron has made increasing reference to religious themes, and examines the extent to which they have been reflected in the approach of the current Coalition government. It is argued that Cameron's references to religion have been indicative of still tentative attempts to reaffirm, and in respects redefine, the role of Christianity and faith in British public life in response to the pressures of greater secularisation, religious pluralism and vocal challenges to religious privilege. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates a new version of the Williams Religious Social Capital Index (WRSCI), for use within Friends’ associations of Church of England cathedrals. Like the WRSCI, the modified measure (WRSCIM) takes into consideration four distinct elements: trust, and bonding, bridging and linking social capital. As part of a larger project, 923 Friends from six cathedrals responded to the 12 items concerning religious social capital. The modified index achieved satisfactory levels of internal consistency reliability; and construct validity was supported by a clear relationship between Friends’ activity and levels of religious social capital. However, in contrast to the demands on cathedral congregants (among whom the original WRSCI was developed), there is no expectation that cathedral Friends will have regular face-to-face contact with fellow members; so, a measure of social networks in the association would complement the WRSCIM to provide a more complete picture of Friends’ religious social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While the growth of spiritualties is associated with post-traditional societies and the ability of individuals to engage in reflexive construction of religious biographies in late modernity, these arguments ignore various dimensions of reflexivity and processes of re-traditionalization. In this article I explore linkages and affinity between social discourses in late modernity and a religion, with a distinctive ontology, originating in South Asia. Drawing on qualitative data, I examine processes involved in the construction of a religious self among second-generation Jains in Britain and the USA.Living in late modern societies, young Jains have established a reflexive habitus. Such reflexivity has affinity with a neo-orthodox tendency in Jainism that rejects the authority of ascetics and rituals while elevating one's own knowledge, discipline and insights in the construction of a Jain biography. I find that neo-orthodox Jainism provides resources for young Jains to constantly reflect on and actively choose how to be a Jain; to enact cataphatic reflexivity in the construction of a Jain self. For some second-generation Jains, the Jain tradition also provides resources to enact a noninstrumental, apophatic reflexivity; a calm equanimous state that enables them to create ontological security in the face of risks and uncertainty in late modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]