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Secularisation in Western Europe, 1848-1914. By Hugh McLeod. New York: St. Martin's, 2000. 387 pp. $65.00 cloth; $19.95 paper.
For various reasons, this is a most remarkable book. First, Hugh McLeod, a professor of church history at Birmingham University, compares the progress of secularization in three European countries-in France, in Germany, and in England-and he does so not superficially, but on the basis of a thorough knowledge of recent research on the political, economic, social, cultural, intellectual, and religious history of these three key players in the European theater. Second, and equally important, in this book the topic of secularization is not treated by a religious sociologist in search of a general theory of secularization, but rather by a historian who is aware of specific historical circumstances and of trends which may run counter to what one would like to see; in short, this book is conceived and written by an extremely knowledgeable historian who is capable of seeing the general as well as the particular and who knows how to differentiate between the two. Third, Hugh McLeod has arranged his analysis according to a series of questions: he looks at institutions, especially at the...