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Web End = Soc (2016) 53:665667DOI 10.1007/s12115-016-0081-x
BOOK REVIEW
Grace Davie, Religion in Britain: a Persistent Paradox
Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015. 264 pp. 21.99. ISBN 978-1405135962
R. Wallis1
Published online: 26 October 2016# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
The first edition of Grace Davies sociological account of religion in Britain since 1945 was published more than twenty years ago. A great deal has changed since then, and this edition has been restructured, comprehensively rewritten, and rechristened to reflect this. The persistent paradox of the new subtitle encapsulates the issue at the heart of Davies analysis. On the one hand, the process of secularization has continued and the Christian churches have found themselves in even sharper numerical decline. On the other hand, far from irrelevant, the place of religion and the significance of faith within the public sphere have never been more visible, hotly debated, and politically important.
Anyone in need of a whistle-stop tour of the state of religion in Britain today could do worse than simply read the first part of the introductory chapter, which succinctly sets out six distinguishing features of this religious landscape. In the space of less than ten pages (pp 312), Davie provides a masterly summary of each: the nations Christian cultural heritage; the role and meaning that religion plays in the lives of British people generally; the shift from a predominant sense of duty and obligation in matters of religion, to one more of consumer choice; the significance of cultural diversification as a result of immigration; the rise of what Davie calls Britains secular elites, and in particular, the so-called new atheists; and the extent to which the pattern of religious life across Europe ought to be considered atypical in global terms an
exceptional case. The books third chapter also provides an excellent statistical overview: facts and figures related to the religious constituencies that make up modern Britain.
Much has been made over the past two decades of Davies conceptual catchphrase believing without belonging (the subtitle of the first edition) as a way of explaining the incongruity between numbers of those professing religious belief, and declining participation in their religious institutions. Davies ideas have evolved, and in the intervening years, she has come to...