Conservative Protestant Politics
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:27th Aug '98
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This timely new study examines the place and nature of religion in industrial societies through a comparative analysis of conservative Protestant politics in a variety of 'first world' societies. Rejecting the popular, but misleading, grouping of diverse movements under the heading of 'fundamentalism', Bruce presents a series of detailed case studies of the Christian Right in the United States, Protestant unionism in Northen Ireland, anti-Catholicism in Scotland, Afrikaner politics in South Africa, and Empire Loyalism in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. He proceeds to examine the constraints that culturally diverse societies place on those who wish to promote political agendas based on religious ideas or on religiously informed ethnic identities.
Bruce was wise in delimiting the study to conservative Protestant groups that sprang from British religious traditions. As a result, his analysis provides a stronger generalization concerning the interaction between religion and society that would be the case otherwise. While students of church-state religions are familiar with Bruce's earlier work on some of the cases used in the present analysis, they will be particularly interested in his findings from this enlarged investigation. * Charles M Tolbert, Journal of Church and State. *
Steve Bruce has written a compelling account of an important phenonmenon. Bruce's willingness to employ unpopular frameworks like modernisation and secularisation theory, and his impressive grasp of the comparative history of Protestant ethnic decline make this book worthwhile reading for scholars of nationalism ... a work which is engaging, relevant, well-argued and is highly recommended by this reviewer. * Eric Kaufman, Nations and Nationalism, 5:4 1999 *
ISBN: 9780198293927
Dimensions: 225mm x 146mm x 19mm
Weight: 444g
246 pages