Abstract
‘Religious history’ was not, until recently, an expression much used, and it has not been as fully institutionalised, academically and pedagogically, as ‘Ecclesiastical History’, which for generations was an examinable subject for ordinands and other students of Theology. A subject known as ‘The History of Religions’ turns out, upon examination, to resemble what used to be called ‘Comparative Religion’, not particularly historical at all. So we may begin by defining Ecclesiastical History. This is clearly the parent discipline. The editor of a recent volume of essays called Religion and the People 800–1700 (James Obelkevich) was making, as it were, an adolescent and generational protest when he announced: ‘the authors have broken with the related discipline of ecclesiastical history and have abandoned its confines and conventions’.
The history of ecclesiastical structures? The link between denominations and social change? The history of Christian doctrine? The study of formal beliefs? What people believed? What is religious history?
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Further Reading
Bossy, J., Christianity in the West (Oxford, 1985);
Brooke, Christopher, Medieval Church and Society (London, 1971);
Marriage in Christian History (Cambridge, 1978);
Butterfield, H., Christianity and History (London, 1949);
Chadwick, O., Catholicism and History (Cambridge, 1978);
Collinson, P., Godly People (London, 1983); (ed.), Beginning Church History (London, forthcoming);
Coolidge, J. S., Puritanism and the Bible (Oxford, 1970);
Dodd, C. H., The Parables of the Kingdom (London, 1935);
The Apostolic Preaching and its Developments (London, 1936);
The Founder of Christianity (New York and London, 1970–1);
Gilbert, A. D., Religion and Society in Industrial England: Church, Chapel and Social Change, 1740–1914 (Harlow, 1976);
Greyerz, K. von, Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (London, 1984);
Hill, M., A Sociology of Religion (London, 1973);
Knowles, D., Great Historical Enterprises (1982);
Laqueur, T. W., Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working-Class Culture, 1780–1850 (New Haven, 1976);
Obelkevich, J., Religion and Rural Society: South Lindsey, 1825–1875 (Oxford, 1976);
(ed.), Religion and the People, 800–1700 (Carolina, 1979);
Sharpe, E. J., Understanding Religion (London, 1983);
Sykes, N., Man as Churchman (Cambridge, 1960);
Thomas, K., Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971);
Valenze, D. M., Prophetic Sons and Daughters: Female Preaching and Popular Religion in Industrial England (Princeton, 1985);
Ward, W. R., Religion and Society in England, 1790–1850 (London, 1972).
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© 1988 Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Collinson, P., Brooke, C., Norman, E., Lake, P., Hempton, D. (1988). What is Religious History … ?. In: Gardiner, J. (eds) What is History Today … ?. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19161-1_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19161-1_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-42226-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-19161-1
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