Christianity and 'the World'

David Martin was born in 1929. He was a sociologist and theologian, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, Fellow of the British Academy, and an ordained priest in the Church of England. His research concerned problems of secularization, religion and violence, the growth of global Pentecostalism, and the interface of sociology and theology. He published over twenty books and several volumes of sermons.

This is a genuinely unique book. David Martin - probably the greatest British sociologist of religion in recent decades - maps out the basic tensions between Christianity's innate urge to construct an alternative reality, and its accommodations to that world. . . . A treasury for intellect and imagination alike.Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury 2002-2012David Martin, the sociologist who taught us that secularization is not a continuous and uni-directional process, but rather a many-stranded and shifting one, has now added a new dimension to this picture. Looking at the whole story through the lens of poetry, not primarily as expression of belief but through its affinity to invocation, worship, ritual and liturgy, yields an extraordinarily rich and perspicuous account of the currents of English spirituality through many centuries.Charles Taylor, McGill UniversityIn a single volume, David Martin brings together a lifetime's work on secularization, a thousand years of English poetry, and deep theological insight. A chronological sequence of reflections relates each of these strands to the others. Readers will arrive by different routes, but all of them will be enriched by what they find. I recommend this book very warmly.Grace Davie, University of ExeterNot since George MacDonald's England's Antiphon in 1868 has there been an attempt to survey the tradition of English religious poetry in this manner. David Martin, however, is at once a sociologist, a theologian, and (though he modestly denies it) a penetrating literary critic. The resulting cross-fertilization produces so many fresh insights that one's whole field of vision is permanently altered.Stephen Prickett, University of Glasgow, University of KentDavid Martin (1929-2019) was one of the most important sociologists of religion in the last century. His account of secularization was perhaps the most subtle of all the modern stories of decline in belief in the Christian God: among other things, he showed that this decline has never been homogenous and never advanced in a simple or single manner.Kevin Hart, Studies in Christian Ethics, August 2022 issue

• The Rationale of This Book | ixAcknowledgments | xviiIntroduction | 1Chapter 1 An Overview of the Problem | 14Chapter 2 Ninth to Sixteenth Centuries | 21Chapter 3 Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries | 30Chapter 4 The Nineteenth Century: The Early Romantics | 43Chapter 5 The Mid-Victorians | 51Chapter 6 The Early Twentieth Century | 83Chapter 7 War Poets; Pacifists and Marxists;Poets of Wars Post-1945 | 91Chapter 8 Eliot and Auden | 108Chapter 9 Faith and Place | 118Chapter 10 Larkin to Hughes; Plath to Duffy | 129Chapter 11 Donald Davie, Charles Sisson, and Geoffrey Hill;Denise Levertov, Andrew Motion,and Michael Symmonds Roberts | 137Chapter 12 Conclusion | 147Chapter 13 Afterword | 158Appendix Hymnody | 166Bibliography | 183Index | 191