Ambitious in scope, Rethinking Church, State, and Modernity considers some central concepts in the sociology and history of religion and, simultaneously, how Canada's religious experience is distinctive in the modern world. The contributors to this volume challenge the institutional approach that stresses a strict division between "church" and "state," which seems inappropriate in late-modern and post-modern scenarios. Rather, the authors favour an interpretation that is marked more by fluidity than fixity.

Canada, which stands somewher between the largely secularised Europe and the...

Academic and popular opinions agree that Canadian public life has become wholly secularized during the last hundred years. As this book acknowledges, religion has indeed lost most of its influence in education, politics and various interest groups. But this rigorously researched volume argues that religion was one of the early institutional bases of the public sphere, and although it has since become differentiated from the state, it should not be overlooked or underestimated by historians and sociologists of modern Canada. A compilation of scholarly case studies, it addresses the...

Ambitious in scope, Rethinking Church, State, and Modernity considers some central concepts in the sociology and history of religion and, simultaneously, how Canada's religious experience is distinctive in the modern world. The contributors to this volume challenge the institutional approach that stresses a strict division between "church" and "state," which seems inappropriate in late-modern and post-modern scenarios. Rather, the authors favour an interpretation that is marked more by fluidity than fixity.

Canada, which stands somewher between the largely secularised Europe and the...

Academic and popular opinions agree that Canadian public life has become wholly secularized during the last hundred years. As this book acknowledges, religion has indeed lost most of its influence in education, politics and various interest groups. But this rigorously researched volume argues that religion was one of the early institutional bases of the public sphere, and although it has since become differentiated from the state, it should not be overlooked or underestimated by historians and sociologists of modern Canada. A compilation of scholarly case studies, it addresses the...