In 1980, 1985 and 2001 appeared the three volumes of Cowling's Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England. The political history books required "tiring archival visits"; Cowling much preferred writing these. In researching for these books "He spent his days in his college rooms, muscularly grappling with books, indeed often physically ripping them apart. Made up of hundreds of essays on the thought of individuals, the work neither engaged with other scholarship nor developed an interpretative model for understanding modern Britain". Cowling placed Christianity squarely at the centre of English culture post-1840 and claimed that anti-Christians more often than not held traditional religious assumptions and prejudices. Secularisation was not so fast or complete as had been previously argued, but "defenders of orthodoxy as well as their assailants were subjected to pithy, provocative irony" by Cowling.
Read more about this topic: Maurice Cowling
Famous quotes containing the words public, doctrine and/or modern:
“The Apache have a legend that the coyote brought them fire and that the bear in his hibernations communes with the spirits of the “overworld” and later imparts the wisdom gained thereby to the medicine men.”
—Administration in the State of Arizona, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorise the violation of every positive law. How far that or any other consideration may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice, is a doctrine of which I still desire to remain ignorant.”
—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
“The modern world needs people with a complex identity who are intellectually autonomous and prepared to cope with uncertainty; who are able to tolerate ambiguity and not be driven by fear into a rigid, single-solution approach to problems, who are rational, foresightful and who look for facts; who can draw inferences and can control their behavior in the light of foreseen consequences, who are altruistic and enjoy doing for others, and who understand social forces and trends.”
—Robert Havighurst (20th century)