Religion and the Demographic Revolution: Women and Secularisation in Canada, Ireland, UK and USA since the 1960s. By Callum G. Brown. Studies in Modern British Religious History 29. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2012. xiv + 305 pp. $95.00 cloth.

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Religion and Demographic Revolution: Women and Secularisation in Canada, Ireland, UK and USA since 1960s . By Callum G. Brown . Studies in Modern British Religious History 29. Woodbridge, U.K. : Boydell , 2012. xiv + 305 pp. $95.00 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesSociologists and historians have vigorously debated religious decline in West since 1960s, but until recently, most scholars have paid little attention to gendered dimensions of secularization. Religious decline for these scholars amounted to waning in beliefs and practices of men, with little consideration for women's religious experiences. Callum Brown, social historian of religion, stands out as one of most prominent proponents in gendering of secularization narratives and models. In first volume of his planned trilogy on religious decline, The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation, 1800-2000 (New York: Routledge, 2001), Brown employed discourse analysis to make sense of secularization in modern British history. He made two controversial yet compelling claims in book: 1) secularization was not long, drawn-out process starting with Enlightenment or Industrial Revolution that gradually picked up steam in twentieth century; rather, it was an abrupt if not catastrophic event emerging in 1960s; 2) 1960s witnessed beginning of such marked decline in religious beliefs and practices because it was at this time that women began abandoning church in significant numbers due to sexual revolution and its undermining of traditional Christian constructs of femininity.Religion and Demographic Revolution constitutes second volume of Brown's trilogy. This book differs in some important ways from first volume: methodology is now demography; focus is not on one but four countries on both sides of Atlantic--Canada, Ireland, United Kingdom, and United States; and 1960s, subject of one chapter in first volume, receives Brown's full attention here. But basic argument has not really changed. If anything, what Brown is doing in this book is elaborating and expanding upon connection he made in first volume between women and secularization in 1960s.Brown points to three major cultural and social changes affecting Western societies in 1960s: 1) decline in Christianity's influence in West, particularly Europe and Canada; 2) demographic revolution in which severe drops in fertility and marriage rates revolutionized family structure; 3) the revolution in women's identities that ushered in a transformation in social construction of gender involving search for autonomy in sexual expression, education and economic life (1).Brown's thesis is that all three trends are interconnected. Secularization, in other words, is both demographic and gendered event. Demography and gender interact with religion in complex ways to determine degree of secularization in given context. Of four countries studied in this volume, mainland Britain and Canada represent highly secularized nations for Brown as measured in declining participation of women in churches as well as women increasingly rejecting religious identity. …