Overview
- Brings together unique scholars working on religious congregations or spiritual gatherings in Europe
- Offers a wealth of vital and unprecedented information on religion and religious plurality on the Continent
- Allows comparisons of various religious situations happening in Europe
- Takes a new approach to understanding religious secularisation and pluralisation in Europe
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Table of contents (13 chapters)
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Congregational Studies, Methodology and Epistemology
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Congregations and Diversity
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Congregations and Pluralism
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Congregations and Change
Keywords
About this book
This volume describes and maps congregations of Christian confessions and denominations, as well as groups with Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, and various other spiritual faiths, in different European countries. Consisting of three parts, it presents concrete sociological studies addressing how established and not established, old and new congregations of various faiths create a new kind of religious diversity at the country level; how religious congregations are challenged and thrive in large cities; and how religious congregations change in the 21st century.
The book enlightens by its descriptive analysis and the theoretical questions it raises concerning the religious transformations happening all over Europe. It addresses issues of religious diversity in the cities of Europe by presenting large studies conducted in cities such as Barcelona in Spain, and Aarhus in Denmark. By means of large-scale censuses taken in areas such as North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany and in countries like Switzerland and Italy, the book shows how the historically established churches restructure their congregations and activities. It clarifies for the new gatherers where and how a new diversity of religious congregations is in the process of being established. Finally, the book covers two important topical issues: pluralisation and secularisation. It provides new data on religious diversity, painting a new picture of secularisation: the impact and structural consequences of the long-term decrease of membership in the established churches.Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Jörg Stolz is full professor of Sociology of Religion at the University of Lausanne. Substantively, he works on the description and explanation of different forms of religiosity, evangelicalism, secularization, and comparison of religious groups across religious traditions. He is the author of many articles in leading sociology journals,
among which 'Explaining religiosity: towards a unified theoretical framework' in the British Journal of Sociology. He is the president of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Congregations in Europe
Editors: Christophe Monnot, Jörg Stolz
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77261-5
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-77260-8Published: 06 August 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-08413-4Published: 02 February 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-77261-5Published: 14 May 2018
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVIII, 219
Number of Illustrations: 31 b/w illustrations
Topics: Sociology of Culture, Religion and Society, Organizational Studies, Economic Sociology