A01=Mary Eberstadt
Author_Mary Eberstadt
Beliefs
Category=QR
Comparative Religion
Culture
divorce
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
Faith
family
family structure
family values
Fundamentalism
gender equality
historical
history
marriage
marriage counseling
Psychology of Religion
religion
Religious Change
Religious Communities
Religious Conflict
religious conquest
Religious Experiences
Religious Identity
religious impact
Religious Influence
Religious Institutions
religious movements
Religious Organization
Religious Pluralism
Religious Practices
religious revolutions
Religious Sociology
Religious Studies
religious traditions
religious wars
Rituals
Sacred
Secularism
Secularization
Social Science
socialization
sociology
Sociology of Belief
Spirituality
world religions
Product details
- ISBN 9781599474663
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 09 Jun 2014
- Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press,U.S.
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In this magisterial work, leading cultural critic Mary Eberstadt delivers an influential new theory about the decline of religion in the Western world. The conventional wisdom is that the West first experienced religious decline, followed by the decline of the family. Eberstadt turns this standard account on its head. Marshaling an impressive array of research, from fascinating historical data on family decline in pre-Revolutionary France to contemporary popular culture both in the United States and Europe, Eberstadt shows the reverse is also true: the undermining of the family has further undermined Christianity itself.
Drawing on sociology, history, demography, theology, literature, and many other sources, Eberstadt shows that family decline and religious decline have gone hand in hand in the Western world in a way that has not been understood before-that they are, as she puts it in a striking new image summarizing the book’s thesis, “the double helix of society, each dependent on the strength of the other for successful reproduction.”
In sobering final chapters, Eberstadt then lays out the enormous ramifications of the mutual demise of family and faith in the West. While it is fashionable in some circles to applaud the decline of both religion and the nuclear family, there are, as Eberstadt reveals, enormous social, economic, civic, and other costs attendant on both declines. Her conclusion considers this compelling question: whether the economic and demographic crisis now roiling Europe and spreading to America will have the unintentional result of reviving the family as the most viable alternative to the failed welfare state-fallout that could also lay the groundwork for a religious revival as well.
How the West Really Lost God is a startlingly original account of how secularization happens and a sweeping brief about why everyone should care. A book written for agnostics as well as believers, atheists as well as “none of the above,” it will permanently change the way every reader understands the two institutions that have hitherto undergirded Western civilization as we know it-family and faith-and the fundamental nature of the relationship between those two pillars of history.
Drawing on sociology, history, demography, theology, literature, and many other sources, Eberstadt shows that family decline and religious decline have gone hand in hand in the Western world in a way that has not been understood before-that they are, as she puts it in a striking new image summarizing the book’s thesis, “the double helix of society, each dependent on the strength of the other for successful reproduction.”
In sobering final chapters, Eberstadt then lays out the enormous ramifications of the mutual demise of family and faith in the West. While it is fashionable in some circles to applaud the decline of both religion and the nuclear family, there are, as Eberstadt reveals, enormous social, economic, civic, and other costs attendant on both declines. Her conclusion considers this compelling question: whether the economic and demographic crisis now roiling Europe and spreading to America will have the unintentional result of reviving the family as the most viable alternative to the failed welfare state-fallout that could also lay the groundwork for a religious revival as well.
How the West Really Lost God is a startlingly original account of how secularization happens and a sweeping brief about why everyone should care. A book written for agnostics as well as believers, atheists as well as “none of the above,” it will permanently change the way every reader understands the two institutions that have hitherto undergirded Western civilization as we know it-family and faith-and the fundamental nature of the relationship between those two pillars of history.
