Religion, Secularity and Cultural Agency

Edited by Anton Kirchhofer and Richard Stinshoff.

The volume aims to re-evaluate the often uncontested notion of religion's waining importance in modern, secularized societies. Containing ten essays, it starts by demonstrating the intimate connection between religion and modernisation from the 17th to the 19th centuries, then going on to reveal the deep religious imprints on regional, popular and elite cultural phenomena and finally highlighting the visibility of religious motives and issues in post-war and modern films. Altogether, the essays demonstrate that there has never been a clear-cut division between the religious and the secular. Instead, the fusion of religious and secular motives has continued to provide a powerful source of individual and collective social, cultural and political agency. 208 Seiten mit 10 Abb., broschiert (anglistik & englischunterricht; Band 74/Universitätsverlag Winter 2010)