Handbook 1996 : Faculty of Arts (Volume 3 page 108)
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131-440 Religion and Society in Modern England

Year 4 History.

Credit points: 16.7 4th year

Coordinator: Dr P L Nicholls.

Contact: A 2-hour seminar per week.

Timetable: Second semester

Objectives:

Having undertaken this subject, students should be aware of the political and social ramifications of religious belief and denominational allegiance in a modernising industrial society, and of the interaction of tradition, faith and the intellect in an evolving political democracy. They should, further, have an understanding of the concept of, and the debate about, secularisation.

Content:

Students doing this subject shall examine the role of organised religion in the political and social evolution of modern England. The main themes include: the relationship between the political, the social and the ecclesiastical establishments in England's ancient regime; the link between religious dissent and political radicalism in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the growth of, and limits to, religious toleration; organised religion and 'Victorian values'; Protestantism, Catholicism and England's Irish Question; the religious component of 'New Imperialism'; the churches and the Great War; religion and the decline and the rise of capitalism in the twentieth century; permissiveness and the new morality in Swinging Britain; the debate about 'the secularisation thesis'.

Assessment:

Written work amounting to no more than 6,000 words.

Recommended texts:

• Arnstein, Walter L. , The Bradlaugh Case. Atheism, Sex and Politics among the Late Victorians (Missouri, 1984)
• Cox, Jeffrey, The English Churches in a Secular Society. Lambeth 1870-1930 (O. U. P. , 1982)
• Edwards, D. , Christian England. Vol.3 From the 18th Century to the First World War (London, 1985)
• Gilbert, A. D. , The Making of Post-Christian Britain. A History of Secularisation of Modern Society (London, 1980)
• Machin, G. I. T. , Politics and the Churches in Great Britain 1832 to 1868 and Politics and the Churches in Great Britain 1869 to 1921 (O. U. P. )

History subject : Next:131-441 | Prev:131-439 | Search | Help
Handbook 1996 : Faculty of Arts (Volume 3 page 108)

Status:          Official 1996
Date created:    Oct  9 1995
Last modified:   Oct  9 1995
Authorised by:   Academic Registrar
Email enquiries: Course_Information@registrar.unimelb.edu.au

Copyright © University of Melbourne 1995,1996.