The Religious Lives of Older Laywomen

The Religious Lives of Older Laywomen PDF

Author: Abby Day

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0198739583

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The Religious Lives of Older Laywomen draws on ethnographic fieldwork, cross-cultural comparisons, and relevant theories exploring the beliefs, identities, and practices of "Generation A"--Anglican laywomen born in the 1920s and 1930s. Now in their 70s, 80s, and 90s, they are often described as the "backbone" of the Church and likely its final active generation. The prevalence of laywomen in mainstream Christian congregations is a widely accepted phenomenon that will cause little surprise amongst the research community or Christian adherents. What is surprising is that we know so little about them. Generation A laywomen have remained largely invisible in previous work on institutional religion in Euro-American countries, particularly as the focus on religion and gender has turned to youth, sexuality, and priesthood. Female Christian Generation A is on the cusp of a catastrophic decline in mainstream Christianity that accelerated during the 'post-war' (post-1945) age. The age profile of mainstream Christianity represents an increasingly aging pattern, with Generation A not being replaced by their children or grandchildren--the Baby-Boomers and generations X, Y, and Z. Generation A is irreplaceable and unique. "Generation" shares specific values, beliefs, behaviors, and orientations, therefore, when this generation finally disappears within the next five to 10 years, their knowledge, insights, and experiences will be lost forever. Abby Day both documents and interprets their religious lives and what we can learn about them and more widely, about contemporary Christianity and its future.

The Life of Christian Doctrine

The Life of Christian Doctrine PDF

Author: Mike Higton

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-07-09

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0567687228

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The lives of Christian churches are shaped by doctrinal theology. That is, they are shaped by practices in which ideas about God and God's ways with the world are developed, discussed and deployed. This book explores those practices, and asks why they matter for communities seeking to follow Jesus. Taking the example of the Church of England, this book highlights the embodied, affective and located reality of all doctrinal practices – and the biases and exclusions that mar them. It argues that doctrinal theology can in principle help the church know God better, even though doctrinal theologians do not know God better than their fellow believers. It claims that it can help the church to hear in Scripture challenges to its life, including to its doctrinal theology. It suggests that doctrinal disagreement is inevitable, but that a better quality of doctrinal disagreement is possible. And, finally, it argues that, by encouraging attention to voices that have previously been ignored, doctrinal theology can foster the ongoing discovery of God's surprising work.

From the Shores of Silence

From the Shores of Silence PDF

Author: Ashley Cocksworth

Publisher: SCM Press

Published: 2023-01-31

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 0334060966

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Feminist practical theology has emerged in the gap between wider feminist and wider practical theology. It celebrates distinctive concerns, arguments, emphases, and questions – unafraid to re-form practical theology in shape and substance, and to guide feminist theology towards the silences and stories of human lives that some professional theologies (including those shaped by feminist commitments) sometimes overlooks. Feminist practical theology is bold in exploration of doctrinal themes in poetic and prayerful modes, characteristically collaborative and in search of alliances with other advocacy perspectives. In the UK, such commitments have been exemplified by Nicola Slee, whom this volume honours. Chapters invite readers into wide ranging conversations that flow from young women’s experiences at university, poetic practice as theology, queer priesthood, theologies of critical masculinities, women presiding in worship, Black and decolonial theologies adjacent to feminist convictions, confrontations with sexual violence, rest and rewilding, and a post-menopausal Mary. Contributors are: Al Barrett, Gavin D’Costa, Deborah Kahn-Harris, Michael N. Jagessar, Sharon Jagger, Rachel Mann, Jenny Morgans, Eleanor Nesbitt, Karen O’Donnell, Mark Pryce, Anthony G. Reddie, Ruth Shelton and Alison Wooley.

Why Baby Boomers Turned from Religion

Why Baby Boomers Turned from Religion PDF

Author: Abby Day

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-09-15

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 0192866680

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Mocked, vilified, blamed, and significantly misunderstood - the 'Baby Boomers' are members of the generation of post-WWII babies who came of age in the 1960s. Parents of the 1940s and 1950s raised their Boomer children to be respectable church-attendees, and yet in some ways demonstrated an ambivalence that permitted their children to spurn religion and eventually to raise their own children to be the least religious generation ever. The Baby Boomers studied here, living in the UK and Canada, were the last generation to have been routinely baptised and taken regularly to mainstream, Anglican churches. So, what went wrong - or, perhaps, right? This study, based on in-depth interviews and compared to other studies and data, is the first to offer a sociological account of the sudden transition from religious parents to non-religious children and grandchildren, focusing exclusively on this generation of ex-Anglican Boomers. Now in their 60s and 70s, the Boomers featured here make sense of their lives and the world they helped create. They discuss how they continue to dis-believe in God yet have an easy relationship with ghosts, and how they did not, as theologians often claim, fall into an immoral self-centred abyss. They forged different practices and sites (whether in 'this world' or 'elsewhere') of meaning, morality, community, and transcendence. They also reveal here the values, practices, and beliefs they transmitted to the future generations, helping shape the non-religious identities of Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z.

Studying Lived Religion

Studying Lived Religion PDF

Author: Nancy Tatom Ammerman

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2021-12-07

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1479804355

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"This book introduces a practice based and contextually sensitive approach to studying lived religion, employing cases from diverse disciplines, locations, and traditions and providing accessible guides to students and novice researchers eager to begin their own exploration of religious and spiritual practices"--

That Was The Church That Was

That Was The Church That Was PDF

Author: Andrew Brown

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-07-28

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1472921658

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The Church of England still seemed an essential part of Englishness, and even of the British state, when Mrs Thatcher was elected in 1979. The decades which followed saw a seismic shift in the foundations of the C of E, leading to the loss of more than half its members and much of its influence. In England today 'religion' has become a toxic brand, and Anglicanism something done by other people. How did this happen? Is there any way back? This 'relentlessly honest' and surprisingly entertaining book tells the dramatic and contentious story of the disappearance of the Church of England from the centre of public life. The authors – religious correspondent Andrew Brown and academic Linda Woodhead – watched this closely, one from the inside and one from the outside. That Was the Church, That Was shows what happened and explains why.

Contemporary Issues in the Worldwide Anglican Communion

Contemporary Issues in the Worldwide Anglican Communion PDF

Author: Abby Day

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-05-15

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1134802013

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Contemporary Issues in the Worldwide Anglican Communion offers unique perspectives on an organisation undergoing significant and rapid change with important religious and wider sociological consequences. The book explores what the academic research community, Anglican clergy and laypeople are suggesting are critical issues facing the Anglican communion as power and authority relations shift, including: gender roles, changing families, challenges of an aging population, demands and opportunities generated by young people, mobility and mutations of worship communities; contested conformities to policies surrounding sexual orientation, impact of social class and income differences, variable patterns of congregational growth and decline, and global power and growth shifts from north to south.

The Religion–Gender Nexus in Development

The Religion–Gender Nexus in Development PDF

Author: Nora Khalaf-Elledge

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-07-28

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 1000454754

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This book illuminates the intersection of religion and gender within the development sector, exposing challenges in both policy and practice and suggesting implementable solutions. This book argues that a better understanding of the religion–gender nexus is needed by development sector practitioners, especially at a time when religious arguments are being used around the world to justify gender inequality and violence against women. The book draws on extensive qualitative research with senior gender personnel, religion advisors, and implementation partners from across the largest bilateral development agencies. The nexus is considered from the grassroots level up to donor country politics and across key themes, such as gender-based violence, reproductive rights, unpaid care and domestic work, and women’s participation in leadership roles. The book concludes by offering implementable solutions for practitioners to address the religion-gender nexus in a more meaningful way. Bridging the gap between academic theory and day-to-day development practice, this book is an important reference for development practitioners, and for researchers from across development studies, gender studies, and religious studies.

Fragments for Fractured Times

Fragments for Fractured Times PDF

Author: Nicola Slee

Publisher: SCM Press

Published: 2020-09-30

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0334059089

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If ever a period of time felt ‘fractured’ it is now. Whichever way we turn, we witness the dismembering and fracturing of many previously taken for granted realities, with maps and borders – physical and metaphorical – being redrawn before our eyes. What place for the feminist practical theologian in such a climate? “In Fragments for Fractured Times”, one of the world’s leading feminist practical theologians, Nicola Slee, brings together 15 years of papers, articles, talks and sermons, many of them previously unpublished. Collected from diverse times, places, settings and occasions, Slee offers an introduction to each fragment, “holding it up to the light and examining its size, shape, texture and pattern”. Drawing on a wide and diverse range of her writing, Slee demonstrates the richness and variety of feminist practical theological writing. What feminist theology brings to the table of scholarly thinking and embodied practice is, she suggests, something creative, artful, prophetic as well as playful – a resource for Christian living and thinking in fractured times.

Why Baby Boomers Turned from Religion

Why Baby Boomers Turned from Religion PDF

Author: Abby Day

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-08-18

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 0192691961

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Mocked, vilified, blamed, and significantly misunderstood - the 'Baby Boomers' are members of the generation of post-WWII babies who came of age in the 1960s. Parents of the 1940s and 1950s raised their Boomer children to be respectable church-attendees, and yet in some ways demonstrated an ambivalence that permitted their children to spurn religion and eventually to raise their own children to be the least religious generation ever. The Baby Boomers studied here, living in the UK and Canada, were the last generation to have been routinely baptised and taken regularly to mainstream, Anglican churches. So, what went wrong - or, perhaps, right? This study, based on in-depth interviews and compared to other studies and data, is the first to offer a sociological account of the sudden transition from religious parents to non-religious children and grandchildren, focusing exclusively on this generation of ex-Anglican Boomers. Now in their 60s and 70s, the Boomers featured here make sense of their lives and the world they helped create. They discuss how they continue to dis-believe in God yet have an easy relationship with ghosts, and how they did not, as theologians often claim, fall into an immoral self-centred abyss. They forged different practices and sites (whether in 'this world' or 'elsewhere') of meaning, morality, community, and transcendence. They also reveal here the values, practices, and beliefs they transmitted to the future generations, helping shape the non-religious identities of Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z.