Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T03:35:27.607Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Sheridan Gilley
Affiliation:
University of Durham
Brian Stanley
Affiliation:
Henry Martyn Centre, Cambridge
Get access

Summary

Historians of modern Christianity in western Europe, writing amid the chill winds of secularism at the beginning of the twenty-first century, may be tempted to apologise for their subject. Why write about something of diminishing importance, which has been in decline since the French Revolution? No student of the medieval or early modern eras doubts the central role of religion, but modern historiography can get along without it. In fact, the historian of nineteenth-century Christianity need not be defensive about his or her theme, which still entered into the very fabric of the social and political conflicts of the era, and just as the creation of a united Italy was on one level a defeat of Catholicism, and the creation of the German Empire a victory for Protestantism, so the attack upon the churches, in what some have seen as the beginning of secularisation, makes a fascinating story which, at least in the immediate term, led not only to religious decline but also to renewal and revival.

Western Europe might, however, be considered something of an anomaly even in the present, in which Christianity continues to grow and expand elsewhere, in the Third World, in the United States and, with the collapse of atheistic communism, in eastern Europe. This must be one reason for the somewhat unconventional appearance of this volume by the standards of other histories of the nineteenth-century Christian faith, as here at least a third of the space is given to the new Christian churches outside Europe. Catholic Christianity became a global religion through the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the sixteenth century and French missionaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth. There are chapters here reflecting the legacy of this earlier era.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×