The Future of Christianity: Historical, Sociological, Political and Theological Perspectives from New Zealand

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This book, written by a group of New Zealand scholars, theologians, historians and lawyers, examines the question of New Zealand's Western culture and Christianity. The contributors explore recent debates over secularisation, exploring its merits and explanatory power, while also showing its limitations. Throughout the West diverse forms of religiosity and spirituality remain widespread and while changing form, show signs of disappearing. The contributors insist that it is impossible to understand contemporary relations between the West, and for example, the Islamic world, without understanding the religiosity on both sides of this complex and portentous divide. Several contributors raise questions about the extent to which Western political, intellectual and media elites really understand what ordinary Westerners, let alone Muslims, actually believe. The assumtion still pervasive among secular Westerners that religion is dying out constitutes a species of wishful thinking that the twenty-first century world can no longer afford. Editor, Professor John Stenhouse teaches history at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.