The Future of Christianity

by David Martin

This book offers a mature assessment of themes preoccupying David Martin over some fifty years, complementing his book On Secularization. Deploying secularisation as an omnibus word bringing many dimensions into play, Martin argues that the boundaries of the concept of secularisation must not be redefined simply to cover aberrant cases, as when the focus was more on America as an exception rather than on Europe as an exception to the 'furiously religious' character of the rest of the world. Particular themes of focus include the dialectic of Christianity and secularization, the relation of Christianity to multiple enlightenments and modes of modernity, the enigmas of East Germany and Eastern Europe, and the rise of the transnational religious voluntary association, including Pentecostalism, as that feeds into vast religious changes in the developing world. Doubts are cast on the idea that religion has ever been privatised and has lately reentered the public realm. The rest of the book deals with the relation of the Christian repertoire to the nexus of religion and politics, including democracy and violence and sharply criticises polemical assertions of a special relation of religion to violence, and explores the contributions of 'cognitive science' to the debate

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another collection of essays by the incomparable David Martin, the world's leading sociologist of religion. (Sorry, Peter Berger; sorry, Robert Wuthnow; sorry, Christian Smith--I admire you guys immensely, but DM is tops in my book!)

I've reviewed the book for The Christian Century (May 2012) and have reproduced that review today on my own weblog: www.johnstackhouse.com/weblog

For now, I'll simply say that this is a book that not only enlightens, it dazzles; it not only informs, it reforms. One of the best books I've read since...the last book of David's I read.

[Neil White · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of this book is a little deceptive since it really spends more time trying to sociologically define the present of Christianity across the world. This is a collection of articles rather so the larger work loses a little coherency. There are still some keen insights in the work and it is worth the investment of the time to engage David Martin's thoughts on secularism, religion, Pentecostalism, violence, democracy and several other topics.