Material Religion in Modern Britain ― The Spirit of Things

A growing awareness of religious plurality and religious conflict in contemporary society has led to a search for new ways to understand religious change beyond traditional subjects of British ecclesiology. Narratives of the gradual decline of Christianity dominate this field, however, many scholars now concede that Britain's religious landscape was more varied and rich than these narratives would suggest. Material Religion in Modern Britain responds to this challenge by bringing emerging scholarship on material culture to bear on studies of religion and spirituality. The collection is the first to apply this suite of analytical methods alike to the traditional subjects of British religious studies and the full spectrum of religious denominations, sects and movements that constituted Britain's multi-faith landscape in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book reveals how, across this religious spectrum, objects were, and continue to be, used in the performance and production of religious faith and subjectivity. In doing so it expands our understanding of the persistence of religious belief and culture in a secularising, secularised and postsecular society.

Timothy Jones is Australian Research Council DECRA Research Fellow at La Trobe University, Australia.

Lucinda Matthews-Jones is Lecturer in History at Liverpool John Moores University, UK.