Defending the Faith

Global Histories of Apologetics and Politics in the Twentieth Century

Edited by Todd Weir and Hugh McLeod

Proceedings of the British Academy

The Global coverage of the book allows comparison between Europe and North America, the Middle East, Asia and the Soviet Union
It gives equal weight to religious and politics history unlike other studies which focus either on politics or religion
It covers numerous religious traditions and will appeal to students and scholars of Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant history
One of the first global histories of religion in the twentieth century and will help shape a research agenda for a future field of study
Introduces 'apologetics' as a new analytical concept to the study of politics and religious-secular interactions
The book encourages comparisons across the twentieth century and, in each period, a variety of religious and geographic contexts

Defending the Faith

Global Histories of Apologetics and Politics in the Twentieth Century

Edited by Todd Weir and Hugh McLeod

Proceedings of the British Academy

Description

This volume explores the many ways in which conflicts between secular worldviews and religions shaped the history of the twentieth century. It introduces the notion of 'apologetics' to highlight a common feature of these conflicts: both secular and religious groups employed a mixture of learned argument and popular propaganda to defend their faith, but also to come up with new forms of outreach and mission. By bringing the dynamics of religious and secular apologetics into a comparative perspective, and drawing on examples from Western Europe, the USSR, the USA, North Africa and Asia from the 1920s to the present, the volume offers important historical perspectives on current debates over the place of religion in contemporary politics.

Defending the Faith

Global Histories of Apologetics and Politics in the Twentieth Century

Edited by Todd Weir and Hugh McLeod

Proceedings of the British Academy

Note on Contributors
Introduction HUGH MCLEOD and TODD H. WEIR
Part I: Apologetics in Interwar Europe
1. The Apologetics of Modern Culture Wars: The Case of Weimar Germany, TODD H. WEIR
2. Ideology and Futurology in Early Twentieth-Century Britain: Wells, Haldane, Bernal and their Critics, PETER BOWLER
3. Vivat Christus Rex! The Cult of Christ the King, Vatican Apologetics, Catholic Action and the Far Right, JOHN POLLARD
4. Between Rome and the Godless. Martin Niemöller's apologetic moves, 1930-1950, BENJAMIN ZIEMANN
5. British and Muslim? British Converts and their Apologetics for Islam in the Interwar Period, UMAR RYAD
Part II: Transnational Apologetics during the Cold War
6. From Mental Slavery to Brainwashing: Anti-Catholic Legacies in Anti-Communism Polemics, UDI GREENBERG and JENNIFER MILLER
7. "Communism is a religion that is inspired, directed and motivated by the Devil himself": Billy Graham's apologetics and the Cold War West, UTA BALBIER
8. The apologetics of decolonisation: Defending religion in South and Southeast Asia after the Second World War, CLEMENS SIX
9. Atheism as a Vocation: Soviet Communism, Religious Apostates, and Atheist Apologists, VICTORIA SMOLKIN
Part III: Apologetics since the 1960s
10. "Sacred Values": Islam, Communism, and Moroccan Nationalism in the Long 1960s, ALMA HECKMAN
11. 'A World to be Transfigured': Shaping a Cold War vision of Orthodoxy from the South, VLAD NAUMESCU
12. Louis Jacobs, Revelation, and the Ongoing Battle to Defend Jewish Orthodoxy, MIRI FREUD-KANDEL
13. Recognising secularisation: The Church of England and its struggle for a political role (1960-90), PETER ITZEN
Afterword: Apologetics as a seismograph of social change MONIKA WOHLRAB-SAHR
Index

Defending the Faith

Global Histories of Apologetics and Politics in the Twentieth Century

Edited by Todd Weir and Hugh McLeod

Proceedings of the British Academy

Author Information

Todd Weir,University of Groningen, Hugh McLeod, University of Birmingham

Todd H. Weir is Professor of History of Christianity and Modern Culture in the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen. Prior to arriving in the Netherlands, he taught at Queen's University Belfast for nine years. He is the author of Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The Rise of the Fourth Confession (Cambridge, 2014) which won Jacques Barzun Prize for Cultural History, and is currently completing its sequel: Socialism and Secularism in Germany 1890 to 1933: Two Cultures.

Hugh McLeod was Professor of Church History at the University of Birmingham 1994-2010 and was president of CIHEC, the international organisation of historians of Christianity 2005-10. He has held visiting posts at Amsterdam, Uppsala, Münster and Mainz, and is a Fellow of the British Academy. His books include Piety and Poverty: Working Class Religion in Berlin, London and New York, 1870-1914 (1996), Secularisation in Western Europe, 1848-1914 (2000), The Religious Crisis of the 1960s (2007). He edited the 20th century volume of The Cambridge History of Christianity (2006).

Contributors:

Uta Andrea Balbier / King's College London
Pete J. Bowler FBA / Queen's University Belfast
Miri Freud-Kandel / University of Oxford
Udi Greenberg / Dartmouth College
Alma Rachel Heckman / University of California, Santa Cruz
Peter Itzen / Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg
Hugh McLeod / University of Birmingham
Jennifer M. Miller / Dartmouth College
Vlad Naumescu / Central European University
John Francis Pollard / Trinity Hall, Cambridge
Umar Ryad / University of Leuven
Clemens Six / University of Groningen
Victoria Smolkin / Wesleyan University
Todd H. Weir / University of Groningen
Benjamin Ziemann / University of Sheffield