Steve Bruce is Professor of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen. He is the author of many books, including Religion in Modern Britain, The Rise and Fall of the New Christian Right, The Red Hand, and The Edge of the Union, and the co-editor of The Rapture of Politics: The Christian Right as the United States Approaches the Year 2000.
`I will certainly be requiring my students to read this book. It is
an important corrective to too much soft analysis which views every
slight up-turn as a sign of religious revival.'
Church Times
`Steve Bruce, a sociologist with no religious affiliation of his
own, has some interesting points to make in his latest book,
Religion in the Modern World.'
Church of England Newspaper
`Steve Bruce has written a lucid, concise and well informed ...
volume ... It is good to find such a robust, well written and
compact defence of the secularization thesis ... The author's
command of his topic is impressive ... it is good to see such a
well written study.'
Contemporary Review
`This book belongs to a series committed to providing authoritative
introductions to aspects of the social structure of Britain ...
written for a generation of students who may be as unfamiliar with
the nature of religious differences in Britain as with the tools of
sociological enquiry. For the uninitiated it provides a good and
reliable introduction.'
Church of England Newspaper
`Bruce is always fair to those who present another perspective on
contemporary religion. He is just as lucid in dealing with the new
religions and the "New Age" ... as in his analysis of the
mainstream Churches ... his book is ... something of a tour de
force, in which there is scarcely a page which lacks one or another
arresting and challenging ideas.'
Bryan Wilson, The Tablet
Bruce sets out with admirable clarity both the evidence for and
arguments in favour of the secularization thesis ... Bruce's book
should be read by all those who want to faimiliarize themselves
with this thesis-it's origins developments and conclusions; for a
clearer and better written account would be difficult to find.
s
`a subtle but swift-moving argument which draws illustrative
material from widely diverse contexts ... Although contentious,
Bruce is always fair to those who present another perspective on
contemporary religion. He is just as lucid in dealing with the new
religions and the "New Age" ... as in his analysis of the
mainstream Churches ... something of a tour de force, in which
there is scarcely a page which lacks one or another arresting and
challenging
idea.'
John Rowe Townsend, The Tablet
enormous scope, ambition, verve and confidence. Religion in the
Modern World draws upon an impressive range of statistical evidence
to support its account of the dramatic decline of religion in
recent times. Bruce's grand narrative of secularisation is
ambitious, well told, involving, and internally coherent...an
excellent textbook for students - far better at stimulating their
critical faculties than something more "balanced" and "objective".
It will be a
valuable exercise to get students to read this powerful restatement
of the secularisation thesis alongside the qually strong claims
currently being made for "desecularisation" by soliologists
like
Berger. - Lind Woodhead. Relion. January 1998.
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