This work offers a comprehensive account of religion in Western societies, focusing particularly on Western Europe and North America but taking in developments elsewhere around the globe as appropriate. Offering a guide to the principal forms of religion in the West whether mainline religion, sects or cults, popular superstition or religious fundamentalism, it calls upon both empirical work and theoretical debates to examine beliefs, practices, patterns of organization and significant trends.

Table of Contents

Religion in the West: A Sociological Perspective - Secularisation and the 'Decline' of Religion - The Resurgence of Religion? - Western Religion in the Global Context - Religion: Change and Stability in Western Societies - Belief, Practice and Belonging - Challenges to Western Christianity - Sectarianism and Fundamentalism - Cults and the New Religiosity - The New Religions: Issues and Controversies - The Religions of Ethnic Minorities in the West - Popular Forms of Religiosity - Conclusion

Author Biography

STEPHEN HUNT is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of West of England. He has written widely on contemporary Christianity and new religious movements.