The secularization of early modern England

by C. John Sommerville

"Secularization is a subject of daunting size and is filled with ambiguity. Through the use of insights gained from anthropology and sociology, and by studying an earlier period than is usually considered, this provocative work overcomes the usual obstacles to exploring and explaining why various aspects of life--art, language, work, play, technology, and power--became divorced from religious values in early modern England." "Sommerville helps modern readers understand what life was like in an age in which society was suffused with religion and was as basic to thought as the structure of language. Concentrating not only on a decline of religious belief, which is the last aspect of secularization, he shows that a transformation of England's cultural grammar preceded the loosening of belief, and that this was largely accomplished between 1500 and 1700, much earlier than commonly believed. Sommerville asserts that only when definitions of space and time changed, and language and technolog