This important new volume seeks to provide significant contribution to our understanding of religion and politics, demonstrating through comparisons with other countries the unusually complex nature of the interaction of religion and politics in the United Kingdom. Bruce provides a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the field, covering key topics including: Religion and Violence in Northern Ireland A UK-US comparison of the relationship between the church and the nation state Links between Protestantism and the rise of modern democracy The relationship between Methodism and Socialism The impact that ethnic minority status and religious values have on political alignment This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of religion, politics and religious sociology.

This important new volume seeks to provide significant contribution to our understanding of religion and politics, demonstrating through comparisons with other countries the unusually complex nature of the interaction of religion and politics in the United Kingdom.

Bruce provides a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the field, covering key topics including:

• Religion and Violence in Northern Ireland
• A UK-US comparison of the relationship between the church and the nation state
• Links between Protestantism and the rise of modern democracy
• The relationship between Methodism and Socialism
• The impact that ethnic minority status and religious values have on political alignment

This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of religion, politics and religious sociology.

Religion was a central concern for two of the founding fathers of sociology -Weber and Durkheim- and two other pioneers of modern sociology - Marx and Freud- also made important contributions to our understanding of the role of the supernatural in social life. These two volumes of significant writings in the sociology of religion begin with statements of major theoretical positions. Parsons, Bellah, Berger and Luckmann are represented here, as are modern writers in the rational choice school. The changing place of religion has been a major concern for sociologists and the selections include 17 central texts in the debate over secularization. Other areas covered are the forms of religious organization; the nature of conversion, recruitment and commitment; new religious movements; religion and politics; and the links between religion, magic and rationality.

In this book, first published in 1990, the significance of televangelism in America is examined in detail. This well-informed, measured analysis includes discussion of the place of televangelism in the history of American Protestantism; the styles of leading TV preachers and the televangelical star system; the relation of televangelism to conservatism and politics. It also answers the questions of televangelism's organisation and audience, as well as providing an analysis over the wave of scandals which swept over Pray TV in the 1980s.

The main concern of this study, first published in 1990, is the part played by Protestantism in the complex of social processes of 'secularization'. The book deals with the way in which Protestant schism and dissent paved the way for the rise of religious pluralism and toleration; and it also looks at the fragility of the two major responses to religious pluralism - the accommodation of liberal Protestantism and the sectarian rejection of the conservative alternative. It examines the part played by social, economic and political changes in undermining the plausibility of religion in western Europe, and puts forward the argument that core Reformation ideas must not be overlooked, particularly the repercussions of different beliefs about authority in competing Christian traditions.

The main concern of this study, first published in 1990, is the part played by Protestantism in the complex of social processes of 'secularization'. The book deals with the way in which Protestant schism and dissent paved the way for the rise of religious pluralism and toleration; and it also looks at the fragility of the two major responses to religious pluralism - the accommodation of liberal Protestantism and the sectarian rejection of the conservative alternative. It examines the part played by social, economic and political changes in undermining the plausibility of religion in western Europe, and puts forward the argument that core Reformation ideas must not be overlooked, particularly the repercussions of different beliefs about authority in competing Christian traditions.

In this book, first published in 1990, the significance of televangelism in America is examined in detail. This well-informed, measured analysis includes discussion of the place of televangelism in the history of American Protestantism; the styles of leading TV preachers and the televangelical star system; the relation of televangelism to conservatism and politics. It also answers the questions of televangelism's organisation and audience, as well as providing an analysis over the wave of scandals which swept over Pray TV in the 1980s.

This timely new study examines the place and nature of religion in industrial societies through a comparative analysis of conservative Protestant politics in a variety of 'first world' societies. Rejecting the popular, but misleading, grouping of diverse movements under the heading of 'fundamentalism', Bruce presents a series of detailed case studies of the Christian Right in the United States, Protestant unionism in Northen Ireland, anti-Catholicism in Scotland, Afrikaner politics in South Africa, and Empire Loyalism in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. He proceeds to examine the constraints that culturally diverse societies place on those who wish to promote political agendas based on religious ideas or on religiously informed ethnic identities.

Theologically conservative Protestants have entered the political arena with an agenda that is at once political and religious. Assessing the current impact of this New Christian Right (NCR) on American politics, the contributors to this new book present provocative and diverse perspectives on a phenomenon that has, despite its pervasiveness in American culture, been too little examined. While some contributors show a disdain for the NCR, others evince genuine sympathy for the movement.Steve Bruce takes aim at sociologists of religion who, in his estimation, have exaggerated the strength of the NCR. Clyde Wilcox believes the NCR attracts only a limited electoral following, and will have little success at the state and national levels. Stephen Johnson reports on voting patterns of Catholics, mainline Protestants, and conservative Protestants in Muncie, Indiana. And Phillip Hammond and his associates observe that the main fault line between conservatives and liberals is now over "family values." John Simpson singles out debates over abortion and homosexuality as the most potent cultural divisions arising out of the 1980s. Lyman A. Kellstedt and colleagues mark the 1992 presidential election as a watershed event, beginning a dramatic new cleavage in the two-party system. James M. Penning and Matthew C. Moen address issues related to NCR organizations and their place in the political arena.It is clear that the NCR will remain a part of the religious and political landscape lor some time, though there is little consensus over where the NCR will be located in that landscape. The Rapture of Politics will be of interest to political scientists, theologians, sociologists, and scholars of American culture.

The decline in power, popularity and prestige of religion across the modern world is not a short-term or localized trend nor is it an accident. It is a consequence of subtle but powerful features of modernization. Renowned sociologist, Steve Bruce, elaborates the secularization paradigm and defends it against a wide variety of recent attempts at rebuttal and refutation. Using the best available statistical and qualitative evidence Bruce considers the implications for the secularization paradigm of the extent to which new religious movements or New Age spiritualities are replacing religion; changes in the nature and power of folk religion and superstition; rational choice alternatives to the secularization paradigm; the popularity and political influence of religion in the USA; religious change in the developing world; reactions to Islam in Europe; and the effects of recent controversies over the public place of religion. Bruce presents a robust defence of the secularization paradigm, clarifying its arguments for the benefit of all sides of the debate.

Can individual decisions concerning whether or where to attend church, to contribute time or money to religious organizations, or to forgo certain activities be explained as a special case of economic theory? In Sacred Markets, Sacred Canopies, Ted G. Jelen brings together the leading scholars in the sociology of religion to debate market theories of religion. As the contributors examine whether or not religious choices can be understood as responding to the same laws of supply and demand as other forms of consumer behavior, they bring out many of the issues, controversies, and concerns surrounding this innovative theory. The result is a concise source for the arguments, evidence, and criticism of the market model of religious economies-a perfect starting point for students and scholars approaching this set of problems.

Women are more religious than men. Despite being excluded from leadership positions, in almost every culture and religious tradition, women are more likely than men to pray, to worship, and to claim that their faith is important to them. Women also dominate the world of "New Age" spirituality and are far more superstitious than men.
This book reviews the now-sizeable body of social research to consider if the gender gap in religion is indeed universal. Marta Trzebiatowska and Steve Bruce extensively critique competing explanations of the differences found. They conclude that the gender gap is not the result of biology but is rather the consequence of important social differences over-lapping and reinforcing each other. Responsibility for managing birth, child-rearing and death, for example, and attitudes to the body, illness and health, each play a part. In the West, the gender gap is exaggerated because the social changes that undermined the plausibility of religion bore most heavily on men first. Where the lives of men and women become more similar, and where religious indifference grows, the gender gap gradually disappears.
Written in an accessible style whilst drawing some robust conclusions, the book's main purpose is to serve as a state-of-the-art review for those interested in one of the largest differences between male and female behavior.

The claim that modern societies are less religious than their predecessors because modernity itself undermines the plausibility of religion has been almost an orthodoxy. But increasingly this "secularization thesis" is being challenged on a number of fronts. This collection brings together leading sociologists and historians who share a common interest in advancing our understanding of religous change by clarifying the key elements of the thesis and testing them against appropriate bodies of data. The book begins with an exposition of the thesis by two sociologists and goes on to present and interpret new data on church adherence in the 19th century in the USA and Europe, British church membership rates for the last two hundred years and the British 1851 census of church attendance, changes in English Roman Catholicism, and comparisons of American and European religiosity. The collection is completed with a response by Bryan Wilson, for many the chief advocate of the secularization account of religious change. Even where historians and sociologists cannot agree, "Religion and Modernization" aims to clarify the arguments and point the way toward their resolution. This book should be

The career of the Revd Ian Paisley raises vital questions about the links between religion and politics in the modern world. Paisley is unique in having founded his own church and party and led both to success, so that he effectively has a veto over political developments in Northern Ireland. Steve Bruce draws on over 20 years of close acquaintance with Paisley's people to describe and explain Paisleyism. In this clearly written account, Bruce charts Paisley's movement from the maverick fringes to the centre of Ulster politics and discusses in detail the changes in his party that accompanied its rise. At the heart of this account are vital questions for modern societies. How can religion and politics mix? Do different religions produce different sorts of politics? What is clear is that Paisley's people are not jihadis intent on imposing their religion on the unGodly. For all that religion plays a vital part in Paisley's personal political drive and explains some of his success, he plays by the rules of liberal democracy.

The big picture is well-known: over the last century, religion in Britain has lost power, popularity, and plausibility. Here, Steve Bruce charts the quantifiable changes in religious interest and observance over the last fifty years by returning to a number of towns and villages that were the subject of detailed community studies in the 1950s and 1960s, to see how the status and nature of religion has changed. Drawing on both detailed data on baptism rates, church weddings, church attendance and the like, and on his extensive fieldwork, he considers the broader picture of religion today: the status of the clergy, the churches' attempts to find new roles, links between religion and violence, and the impact of the charismatic movement. Along the way, Bruce encounters and engages with the contemporary rise of secularism, considering our everyday secular tensions with religion: arguments over moral issues such as abortion and gay rights, the effect of social class on belief, the impact of religion on British politics, and the ways that local social structures strengthen or weaken religion. Analysing the obstacles to any religious revival, he explores how the current stock of religious knowledge is so depleted, religion so unpopular, and committed believers so scarce that any significant reversal of religion's decline in Britain is unlikely.

Women are more religious than men. Despite being excluded from leadership positions, in almost every culture and religious tradition, women are more likely than men to pray, to worship, and to claim that their faith is important to them. Women also dominate the world of 'New Age' spirituality and are far more superstitious than men. This book reviews the now sizeable body of social research to consider if the gender gap in religion is indeed universal. Marta Trzebiatowska and Steve Bruce extensively critique competing explanations of the differences found. They conclude that the gender gap is not the result of biology but is rather the consequence of important social differences over-lapping and reinforcing each other. Responsibility for managing birth, child-rearing and death, for example, and attitudes to the body, illness and health, each play a part. In the West, the gender gap is exaggerated because the social changes that undermined the plausibility of religion bore most heavily on men first. Where the lives of men and women become more similar, and where religious indifference grows, the gender gap gradually disappears. Written in an accessible style whilst drawing some robust conclusions, the book's main purpose is to serve as a state-of-the-art review for those interested in one of the largest differences between male and female behaviour.

The decline in power, popularity and prestige of religion across the modern world is not a short-term or localized trend nor is it an accident. It is a consequence of subtle but powerful features of modernization. Renowned sociologist, Steve Bruce, elaborates the secularization paradigm and defends it against a wide variety of recent attempts at rebuttal and refutation. Using the best available statistical and qualitative evidence Bruce considers the implications for the

Fifty years after its publication, Bryan Wilson's Religion in Secular Society (1966) remains a seminal work. It is one of the clearest articulations of the secularization thesis: the claim that modernizations brings with it fundamental changes in the nature and status of religion. For Wilson, secularization refers to the fact that religion has lost influence at the societal, the institutional, and the individual level. Individual secularization is about the loss of authority of the Churches to define what people should believe, practise and accept as moral principles guiding their lives. In other words, individual piety may still persist, however, if it develops independently of religious authorities, then it is an indication of individual secularization. Wilson stresses that the consequences of the process of societalization in modern societies and on this basis he formulated his thesis that secularization is linked to the decline of community and is a concomitant of societalization. Revised and updated, Steve Bruce builds on Wilson's work by noting the changes in religious culture of the UK and US, in an appendix on major changes since the 1960s. Bruce also provides a critical response to the core ideas of Religion in Secular Society.

This book deals with the how and why of over a century of religious and cultural change. Steve Bruce explores Scotland's transformation from the largely devout Presbyterian country of 1900, with the church as a major social force, to the diverse, more secular society of today, when less than 10 per cent of Scots attend church. He bases his study on a career's worth of historical, ethnographic and statistical research, to provide both a coherent description of Scotland's current religious complexion and a considered explanation of the forces that shaped it. Scottish Gods is both a fascinating summary of over a century of religious and cultural change, and a searing analysis of the state of religion in Scotland today by one of our leading social historians. It explores how religion has become more varied over time: growth in Catholicism and charismatic Christian fellowships; easternisation of Scotland's religious vocabulary through Buddhism and Hinduism; the growth of the Muslim population, and pursuit of spiritual interests once considered pagan. It looks at the decline in the Protestant-Catholic divide. It discusses controversies over the proper public place of religion.

Researching Religion: Why We Need Social Science establishes the relevance of social science for the study of religion and promotes a particular kind of social science. Even if we confine ourselves to academic disciplines, there are very many ways of viewing religion. Certain kinds of questions about religion can only be answered by the methods and approaches of social science: if one is interested in the social causes and consequences of religious belief and behaviour, then one has to do social science. Steve Bruce underlines the value of quantitative social research. He shows that while detailed ethnographies have enormous value in helping us get 'inside' religious belief and behaviour, they are severely limited by problems of scale and representativeness in their value for generating and testing explanations. While the primary focus is social research, the examples are drawn from studies of religious belief and behaviour, so it also presents a very large number of important observations about the nature of religion in the modern world. This book is an informative, concise reference for students trying to unpick quantitative religious research. It shows how to gather valuable research and avoid pitfalls.

The decline of the Christian churches in the West is undeniable but commentators differ in their understanding of what this represents. For some it shows a decline in interest in religion as such; for others, religion has not declined, it has only changed its shape. Possible candidates for Christianity's replacement are the new religious movements of the late 1960s and what is variously called New Age, alternative or contemporary spirituality. Secular Beats Spiritual offers a detailed study of the religious and spiritual innovations of the last 50 years. It assesses their popularity in the UK and concludes that the 'not decline-just change' view cannot be sustained. Serious interest in spirituality has grown far less quickly than has the number of us who have no religious or spiritual interest. The most popular and enduring movements have been the least religious ones and those that have survived have done so by becoming more 'this-worldly' and less patently religious or spiritual. Yoga is popular but as a secular exercise programme; Transcendental Meditation now markets its meditational technique as a purely secular therapy; British Buddhists now offer the secular Mindfulness; and the Findhorn Foundation (Europe's oldest New Age centre) is no longer the germ of a counter-cultural communalism but sells its expertise to major corporations. Steve Bruce also demonstrates that, although eastern religious themes (such as reincarnation and karma) have become more popular as the power of the Christian churches to stigmatise them has declined, such themes have also been significantly altered so that what superficially looks like the easternization of the West might better be described as the westernization of the easternization of the West.

Covering a key topic in both sociology and religious studies, this book is a thorough and lively introduction to the character and place of religion in contemporary British society. A brief introduction places the major British churches in their historical context and explains our curious combination of religious freedom and state-supported churches. Subsequent chapters examine a wide array of evidence on the influence and popularity of the churches, and on religious beliefs and behaviour, and document the following trends: the decline in the mainstream churches; a shift to the sectarian' right in Protestantism; the rise of non-Christian ethnic minority religions; and increasing interest in the occult and New Age spirituality. Particular attention is given to the issue of what sort of people remain religious and how their religious beliefs affect their lives. Throughout the book, Britain's religious life is compared with that of other European societies and the final chapter shows how recent changes can be understood as a response to fundamental features of modern industrial democracies. This book is intended for students up to undergraduate level in sociology, religious studies,

The career of the Revd Ian Paisley raises vital questions about the links between religion and politics in the modern world. Paisley is unique in having founded his own church and party and led both to success, so that he effectively has a veto over political developments in Northern Ireland. Steve Bruce draws on over 20 years of close acquaintance with Paisley's people to describe and explain Paisleyism. In this clearly written account, Bruce charts Paisley's movement from the maverick fringes to the centre of Ulster politics and discusses in detail the changes in his party that accompanied its rise. At the heart of this account are vital questions for modern societies. How can religion and politics mix? Do different religions produce different sorts of politics? What is clear is that Paisley's people are not jihadis intent on imposing their religion on the unGodly. For all that religion plays a vital part in Paisley's personal political drive and explains some of his success, he plays by the rules of liberal democracy.
Newly published in paperback with an afterword discussing the achievement of the devolved executive and Paisley's period as First Minister in the new Assembly.

Drawing on studies of social class, crime and deviance, education, work in bureaucracies and changes in religious and political organizations, this Very Short Introduction explores the tension between the individual's place in society and society's role in shaping the individual, and demonstrates the value of sociology for understanding the modern world. In this new edition Steve Bruce discusses the continuing arguments for social egalitarianism, considering issues such as gay marriage, women in combat roles, and the 2010 Equality Act to debunk contemporary arguments against parity. As gender divisions are increasingly questioned he looks ahead to the likely consequences of this for society. Delving into the theory of sociology, Bruce also argues that the habit of dividing sociology into apparently competing 'sects' is misleading, and shows how a new understanding of the disciplinary background of many of the most famous theorists, which shows that much social theory is actually philosophy or literary theory, will prove useful to today's sociologists. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

People of the western world now have unprecedented freedom to choose their religion. In this book, the world's leading sociologist of religion argues that the liberty and freedom to choose religion corrodes faith and that religion remains most vital when it is part of ethnic and national identity.