Religion and Politics in Enlightenment Europe
Dale K Van Kley editor James E Bradley editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:University of Notre Dame Press
Published:20th Nov '01
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- Hardback£103.00(9780268040512)
Religion and Politics in Enlightenment Europe, a collection of original essays from leading scholars, demonstrates that the collapse of the post-Reformation confessional state was more the result of religious dissent from within, much of it orthodox, than attacks of an anti-religious Enlightenment. In sharp contrast to the Reformation-era religious conflicts which tended to pit Protestant and Catholic confessions and states against each other, the eighteenth-century religious conflicts described in Religion and Politics in Enlightenment Europe took place within the various confessional establishments and states that founded and maintained them, such as Russian Orthodoxy in the East and the Anglican Establishment in England and Ireland.
In the course of its analysis, Religion and Politics in Enlightenment Europe destroys the notion of any kind of privileged relationship between "religion" and political or social "reaction". This book reveals the religious roots of modern ideas of individual rights and limitations on government, as well as the imperative of political order and the need for social hierarchy. It also shows the impossibility of any purely secular treatment of eighteenth-century European political history or institutions.
Based on fresh, primary research as well as a synthesis of secondary sources, Religion and Politics in Enlightenment Europe turns the familiar eighteenth century of the textbooks upside down and inside out, challenging the dominant narratives of secularization and inevitable conclusion in the French Revolution.
“The editors, Dale Van Kley, a professor of history at Ohio State University, and James E. Bradley, a professor of church history at Fuller Seminary, have produced a remarkably coherent collection that should interest serious students of the Enlightenment. It is a carefully crafted book and will reward thoughtful reading” —History: Reviews of New Books
“These essays are united by the idea that notions of civic rights and representative government so dear to us and so central to our social and political life are not derived from heretical and enlightened sources that challenged orthodox Christianity and polity, but rather from debates within both religious orthodoxy and political status quo. While the Reformation era religious conflicts tended to pit Protest and Catholic confessions and states against each other, the 18th-century religious conflicts took place within various individual confessional establishments and states that founded and maintained them. In their focal coherence, these essays provide us with a model of the comparative study of religion during the Enlightenment.” —Virginia Quarterly Review
“Bradley and Van Kley’s splendid introduction provides a fascinating overview of the earlier literature on the subject and draws credible connections between the diverse accounts that follow. Each of the chapters is a substantial piece of work, written by seasoned scholars who command a broad array of primary sources in making their arguments.” —The Journal of Religion
“... fascinatingly clear. The whole collection therefore constitutes a landmark in the recent rehabilitation of religion into our understanding of the eighteenth century and how it worked.” —French History
“These timely essays focus on conflicts within confessions and the way in which they could become the seedbed of enhanced religious freedom. . . . This invaluable publication affords abundant evidence of what a cockpit for debate the Churches were, very much primary centres of intellectual life in eighteenth-century Europe.” —European History Quarterly
ISBN: 9780268040529
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 24mm
Weight: 620g
424 pages