Christianity, Modernity and Culture: New Perspectives on New Zealand History

For much of the 20th century, New Zelaand historians, like most Western scholars, largely took it for granted that as modernity waxed so religion would wane. Secularisation- the fading into insignificance of religion - would distinguish the modern era from previous ages. Until the 1980's, only a handful of scholars around the world raised serious empirical and theoretical questions about a 'Grand Theory' that had become central to the self understanding of the social sciences and of the modern world. Heated debates about this issues have continued since then, and the unmistakable resurgency of world religions, have raised fundamental questions about the empirical and theoretical adequacy of secularisation theory, and especially about how far it applies outside Europe. This volume revisits New Zealand history on the issues surrounding secularisation over time. Essentially a set of historical papers on religious themes by New Zealand scholars.